2016 Web Design Trends You Can’t Afford To Ignore

Source: Wikimedia

It’s the latter half of 2016 now, and business websites are more important than they’ve ever been. In a lot of cases, a company’s website is the first impression we ever get of it. the brand personality and sense of professionalism we get from that first landing page is going to affect the way we perceive that business indefinitely. Because your business website has such a big impact on how people perceive your brand, it’s essential that you’re keeping on top of 2016’s leading web design trends. Here are a few to consider.

First of all, the rapid spread of UI patterns. Business owners are finally getting the message about responsive design, and now almost every website can be used comfortably through any mobile device. We can certainly consider this progress, however, there have been certain negative side effects to this shift. One of the drawbacks of responsive web design taking off is that a lot of modern sites are starting to look very similar. The rising popularity of WordPress sites, and the massive theme market that comes with them, has also had a hand in modern sites starting to look uniform. As always, you should make a point of setting yourself aside from some of your closest competitors. However, there’s another reason as to why so many modern websites have similar UI conventions: they work! Hamburger menus, card layouts and long-scroll UIs have all become much more commonplace in recent years, so don’t try to reinvent the wheel.

The utilisation of micro-interactions is another growing trend in modern web design. If you’re not sure what micro-interactions are, then that’s totally understandable – they haven’t been around for that long! You’ve probably performed several different micro-interactions just today. From turning off your phone’s alarm in the morning to liking that hilarious picture you saw on Facebook. A micro-interaction is basically any time you engage with a user interface in an instant. These features are already pretty inescapable, and more and more apps and devices are having micro-interactions added into them all the time. Of course, there’s only so much a person can do with one momentary action. Most micro-interactions are used to see the result of an action, communicate some kind of status or feedback, or to manipulate some other feature of the page. When you’re implementing micro-interactions on your website, you need to make sure that they happen as invisibly as possible. Keep it simple, with text that’s more human than robot, and don’t go overboard. You’d be worked pretty hard if you had to design a modern app which doesn’t use some kind of micro-interaction. These days, web design firms like https://www.webdesignperth.com.au/ are also starting to see the massive popularity, and incorporating micro-interactions with their work.

Taking advantage of material design is another important trend which you should really be joining. Google’s new style language, “material design”, has been out since last year, yet many business owners have still been slow to catch on. Beat your competitors to it, and you’ll have a definite edge in the way your customers perceive your brand. This new style language incorporates movement and depth, along with sophisticated shadow effects, to create an overall experience that feels more realistic to your users. The end goal of “material design” is having a tidy and modern design that has a strong focus on user experience. Sure, not everyone is happy with the aesthetic direction Google has taken. By and large though, this latest shift has been hailed and praised as revolutionary. You can read more about this new style language at material.google.com/.

Source: Flickr

Finally, high-end responsive web design. So you finally got your website functioning on all possible devices? I hate to break it to you, but this isn’t anything special anymore! Responsive web design is more of a given than anything these days, and standards have really hot up. You may have responsive design, but it’s also important that you maximise its performance. Try to avoid using CSS and JavaScript image loading with a “display:none” tag. Look for ways to incorporate performance testing into the process, in order to measure and optimise the site. When you’re using JavaScript, try to stick to conditional loading. A lot of JavaScript components which can be used on a site viewed through a desktop often can’t be used on a phone or a tablet. It’s especially important to pay attention to third-party scripts, such as those used for Facebook sharing. These can often drag down the performance of your page when viewed through a mobile device.