As the World Wide Web continues to evolve, new web design trends, techniques and ideas are also surfacing constantly. To ensure that your website is effective and reaching your visitors in the best possible way, it is necessary for you to analyze your website design, content and features frequently. Some new trends were arriving in 2013; however, some among them have been faded out and others are stuck around and still having a strong presence. While in 2014, these are some of the web design trends that have started to emerge:
Single Page Websites
A single page web design is great for small websites that don’t have too much of the content. It helps you to keep your content easy to navigate while heavily relying on scrolling. The single page design technique enables you to convey linear and controlled information to your visitors and makes them focus on important details.
Scrolling
Today, website visitors are used to scroll down a website to read more information that leads to more possibilities for the layout of your site. A lengthy homepage with many web design elements can help convey more information to the visitor; however, longer pages can also overwhelm visitors if they are cluttered with website content. In 2014, keep an eye out for lengthy and considerately designed web pages, and also consider about how you might engage your visitors by encouraging them to scroll.
Flat UI
Flat user-interface or flat UI is an up-and-coming concept in web design, which is being implemented on so many websites. This is a technique that focuses on website content and provides a fundamental design with less distracting elements. Flat UI takes a much more basic approach, mostly with a less image-intensive web design. Less number of images and simpler web design elements enable faster load times and thus help those who will load the website on a slower internet connection.
Fixed Header Bar
Previously, menu bars are placed in the header of a website, mostly near the logo. As the users scroll down, the navigation would disappear with the header. So, if the users want to navigate further on the website, they have to scroll back to the top of the web page. To avoid this, many websites have now fixed the header bar at the top of the browser window, allowing it to follow users as they scroll down the web page. This allows users to easily access the menu, and thus improves navigation and serves as a subtle prompt for the users to drive deeper into the website.
Large type
If your web page consists of too much of the text, then your visitor might choose not to take the time to read it. Large type can help you to make headings that draw the attention of the readers and make them to read the rest of the content. Generally, the average reader decides within a few seconds whether your website is worth exploring. So, these large headings can help you to grab the attention of the readers and pull them into other content on your website.
HTML 5 Animations / CSS 3 / JavaScript / Flash / Silverlight
For so many years, Adobe’s Flash plug-in is dominated video, games, and other animations on the World Wide Web. However, recently, Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in helps to cover much of the same ground similar to Flash. Both Microsoft’s Silverlight and Flash are rapidly fading due to the emergence of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, which help bring a website to life and create an excellent and unique browser experience.
Parallax Scrolling
Parallax Scrolling is a special scrolling technique that helps in animating both background and foreground images as you scroll. This not only creates depth but also the web page to life. As you scroll through the web page, both text and other graphics will become animated, and they also move on the web page to help create scenery and change content.
Large Backgrounds
In the past, having large background images on a web page is hideous as it takes too much time for loading. Also, it makes a website look horrific, distracting and annoying. But, nowadays, large background images are no longer an issue of loading time. But, the question here is whether the background image fits with the website. With the perfect web design and image, the web designers can easily connect large background images into the rest of the web design, helps in enhancing the user experience.
Video Backgrounds
In previous days, the browser limitations and the low internet speed connections prevent video backgrounds from being easily implemented within a website. However, the newly introduced browsers can able to seamlessly play video that can ingeniously augment a website’s design. This is because video backgrounds are generally designed to support the website design and content.
Responsive Web Design
The best way to implement a mobile website is a responsive web design. It helps you to avoid having a completely separate set of content and a new web design. Using responsive web design, you can utilize existing content that perfectly responds to the resolution of any devices, such as mobile, tablet or desktop, whichever your visitor is using. Within a responsive design, you can accentuate website content important to mobile users, such as time, location, or phone number. The responsive web design has been very helpful to maintain mobile websites effortlessly; Instead of just having to persistently change a second set of website content, the responsive web design will integrate with your already existing content to provide a flawless browsing experience for your mobile visitors.
High-Resolution Screens
Due to the adaptation of Apple’s Retina screens within the iPhone, iPad and MacBook products, we have seen the requirement to have high resolution graphics integrated into websites. Hence, high-resolution screens are doing a great job of reducing pixilation and making websites look exceptional.
Third-Party Services
Third-party services are available in handy, helps in showing video on a website, implementing a newsletter system, or collecting stats on visitors to a website. Using third-party services, you can get your website access to fantastic and robust software that can satisfy many expectations.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Software as a service or SaaS allows you to integrate with a service that is already being developed for solving a problem. These services are free for a certain amount of usage and then they charge for additional usage or for more features. Examples for Software as a service are MailChimp, Post Kudos, etc.
Open Source Software
Open source software helps you to build and implement so many features faster than ever, as it is developed by a large community to solve most common problems. Today, many websites are relying on content management system for adding, updating, and maintaining the content on the website. These content management systems are often open source platforms that have a community frequently adding new features, fixing errors and creating additional plug-ins to enhance the system.
Conclusion
The above mentioned web design trends are booming in this current year 2014. It is nonetheless agreeable that many of these web design trends are going to set solid foundations for the future. Also, there is no doubt that there will be even bigger and industry-changing web design trends will take off in the next coming years.
Single Page Websites
A single page web design is great for small websites that don’t have too much of the content. It helps you to keep your content easy to navigate while heavily relying on scrolling. The single page design technique enables you to convey linear and controlled information to your visitors and makes them focus on important details.
Scrolling
Today, website visitors are used to scroll down a website to read more information that leads to more possibilities for the layout of your site. A lengthy homepage with many web design elements can help convey more information to the visitor; however, longer pages can also overwhelm visitors if they are cluttered with website content. In 2014, keep an eye out for lengthy and considerately designed web pages, and also consider about how you might engage your visitors by encouraging them to scroll.
Flat UI
Flat user-interface or flat UI is an up-and-coming concept in web design, which is being implemented on so many websites. This is a technique that focuses on website content and provides a fundamental design with less distracting elements. Flat UI takes a much more basic approach, mostly with a less image-intensive web design. Less number of images and simpler web design elements enable faster load times and thus help those who will load the website on a slower internet connection.
Fixed Header Bar
Previously, menu bars are placed in the header of a website, mostly near the logo. As the users scroll down, the navigation would disappear with the header. So, if the users want to navigate further on the website, they have to scroll back to the top of the web page. To avoid this, many websites have now fixed the header bar at the top of the browser window, allowing it to follow users as they scroll down the web page. This allows users to easily access the menu, and thus improves navigation and serves as a subtle prompt for the users to drive deeper into the website.
Large type
If your web page consists of too much of the text, then your visitor might choose not to take the time to read it. Large type can help you to make headings that draw the attention of the readers and make them to read the rest of the content. Generally, the average reader decides within a few seconds whether your website is worth exploring. So, these large headings can help you to grab the attention of the readers and pull them into other content on your website.
HTML 5 Animations / CSS 3 / JavaScript / Flash / Silverlight
For so many years, Adobe’s Flash plug-in is dominated video, games, and other animations on the World Wide Web. However, recently, Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in helps to cover much of the same ground similar to Flash. Both Microsoft’s Silverlight and Flash are rapidly fading due to the emergence of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, which help bring a website to life and create an excellent and unique browser experience.
Parallax Scrolling
Parallax Scrolling is a special scrolling technique that helps in animating both background and foreground images as you scroll. This not only creates depth but also the web page to life. As you scroll through the web page, both text and other graphics will become animated, and they also move on the web page to help create scenery and change content.
Large Backgrounds
In the past, having large background images on a web page is hideous as it takes too much time for loading. Also, it makes a website look horrific, distracting and annoying. But, nowadays, large background images are no longer an issue of loading time. But, the question here is whether the background image fits with the website. With the perfect web design and image, the web designers can easily connect large background images into the rest of the web design, helps in enhancing the user experience.
Video Backgrounds
In previous days, the browser limitations and the low internet speed connections prevent video backgrounds from being easily implemented within a website. However, the newly introduced browsers can able to seamlessly play video that can ingeniously augment a website’s design. This is because video backgrounds are generally designed to support the website design and content.
Responsive Web Design
The best way to implement a mobile website is a responsive web design. It helps you to avoid having a completely separate set of content and a new web design. Using responsive web design, you can utilize existing content that perfectly responds to the resolution of any devices, such as mobile, tablet or desktop, whichever your visitor is using. Within a responsive design, you can accentuate website content important to mobile users, such as time, location, or phone number. The responsive web design has been very helpful to maintain mobile websites effortlessly; Instead of just having to persistently change a second set of website content, the responsive web design will integrate with your already existing content to provide a flawless browsing experience for your mobile visitors.
High-Resolution Screens
Due to the adaptation of Apple’s Retina screens within the iPhone, iPad and MacBook products, we have seen the requirement to have high resolution graphics integrated into websites. Hence, high-resolution screens are doing a great job of reducing pixilation and making websites look exceptional.
Third-Party Services
Third-party services are available in handy, helps in showing video on a website, implementing a newsletter system, or collecting stats on visitors to a website. Using third-party services, you can get your website access to fantastic and robust software that can satisfy many expectations.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Software as a service or SaaS allows you to integrate with a service that is already being developed for solving a problem. These services are free for a certain amount of usage and then they charge for additional usage or for more features. Examples for Software as a service are MailChimp, Post Kudos, etc.
Open Source Software
Open source software helps you to build and implement so many features faster than ever, as it is developed by a large community to solve most common problems. Today, many websites are relying on content management system for adding, updating, and maintaining the content on the website. These content management systems are often open source platforms that have a community frequently adding new features, fixing errors and creating additional plug-ins to enhance the system.
Conclusion
The above mentioned web design trends are booming in this current year 2014. It is nonetheless agreeable that many of these web design trends are going to set solid foundations for the future. Also, there is no doubt that there will be even bigger and industry-changing web design trends will take off in the next coming years.
