Every web designer wants to be as creative as possible and the main goal of creating a website is to declare the brand’s presence on the web. The web design has changed a lot in the past two decades.
Adding life into the digital design can be tough. A flat design or surface will always have less attention as compared to the one that creates a 3D feel. It is essential to add depth to the flat design by creating a sense of realism that immediately adds interest to the user.
It is good to update the website design from time to time. Internet users come to expect responsiveness and themes in the site design. Every visitor has different preferences and it is not feasible to please everyone.
The responsive design trend does not mean that all the pages have to move towards a common structure and it is a great approach to emphasize some elements on the page, such as interfaces, headlines, etc.
Importance of Web Design
Web designing industry is playing a key role in promoting business and there are many people who do it using the internet.
Here are the reasons as to why a website should have an amazing design.
- Decreased bounce rate
The users will stay longer and have higher CTRs.
- Decrease retention rate
The users will not leave the site so easily.
- Increased sales and prospects
A great design will motivate the users to the end-goal.
- Improved reputation
It will make the users create the first impression about the site.
- Improved branding
It will encourage trust and credibility for the brand among the users.
- Increased visibility
It will allow great ranking on search engines.
Here are some of the ways that can trigger the designer’s thoughts to add a creative punch to the web design.
1) The Bigger, The Best
It seems to be the single most important principle leading to a great web design today. It is hard to accept for the designers that the homepage consists of just a few words overlaid on an image or video. The navigation is also removed and is only displayed as a small icon that is mostly hidden.
The user should be given maximum impact as soon as they land on the page and the design should work well for both the mobile and the desktop. Full screen image come into trend a year back and with the growing access to the high quality images; the websites take these big layouts to the next level. A full screen video background is in trend and PayPal has updated its homepage with this, bringing the concept into the mainstream.
2) Galleries and Slideshows
Modern websites are able to run dynamic galleries and slideshows on any screen size. Mobile browsers have come a long way combined with responsive designs.
The users are expecting digital media on every website and the designer’s job is to figure out the best method for adding media into the page. JQuery is becoming the quickest way to create galleries.
3) Parallax Scrolling
It is a new technique that allows the foreground images to move faster than the background images. It is a perfect way of storytelling on single page websites. The designers should give more emphasis on the multimedia content, instead of plain text.
4) Scrolling Sites
The new websites tend to be longer in length when scrolling through the page. Due to the increase in popularity of mobile devices, the sites seem to opt for scrolling, instead of linking to display the content on the page.
The users find it easier to scroll rather than clicking to find the information. Long scrolling is not only popular on home pages, but it can be used on other pages as well.
5) Remove Non-essential Design Elements
The design is only complete when all the non-essential elements on the page are removed. The designers have mostly eliminated many design elements from the websites that include adding lots of images, background colors, etc. They should go for a simple and clean website design, so that it can stand out among the crowd of heavy-design websites.
6) Split Screens
Most of the website screens are seen to split using a vertical divide and there are many reasons for this approach. The first one is the design that can have two primary elements with equal importance and the second one is the duality. Both the approaches are equally important for the websites.
7) Sliding Navigation Bar
The trend of fixed headers has recently advanced a bit and the majority of the designers are creating fixed navigation bars that stay on the top of the screen.
The navigation can be blended into the header and when a visitor lands on the page, all the navigation links appear as if they are part of the header. And when the visitor scrolls down the page, the navigation becomes fixed at the screen top.
Some of the designers complained about this approach as they think that this takes a lot of space on the screen. The designer should decide to use this approach or not depending on the type of website.
8) Hand-drawn Illustrations
Illustrated icons, images and backgrounds add creativity to the page beyond the usual simple images that visitors see too often on the web. Illustrations are getting big and bold and a lot of vintage style is coming back.
The design approach doesn’t work well if the site is a corporate B2B, but if you are going to tell a story to the users then it is great for you.
9) Large Typography
The trend of typography was popular a year back and it is not changing any time soon. Large headings with larger typography will be seen on the websites. It is likely to be a key punch for an amazing web design. It will be used as a way to enhance the visual hierarchy of the page by making sure the users read the largest type of the page first.
10) Speed and Performance
The websites need to load faster and should consume less bandwidth. The designer needs to find ways to load the site faster, without compromising the performance of the sites. They are becoming more aware about the weight of the site and how the users interact with them. Responsive design has helped them a lot and the network speed along with the device type have forced the designers to pay attention to the size of files and how fast the site loads on the different speed network.
The site need to be faster and perform amazingly and these will be the key trends for the coming years as this will drive the design decisions on many websites.
To Conclude,
The above ways to design an amazing website are the building blocks that can be assembled in different ways, depending on the designer and the developer. The diversity of web layouts on the web makes it an exciting medium to work with. Every new design trend is creeping into popularity and is likely to influence the way the websites are created. An aesthetic approach towards web design has also revealed many of the mistakes made in the pre-design phases. It is necessary for the designer not to forget the basics in the search for new horizons and new techniques.
Keval Padia is a Founder & CEO of Nimblechapps, a fast-growing android app development company. The current innovation and updates of the field lures him to express his views and thoughts on certain topics.