With 2016 well and truly underway, we are becoming more aware of what is (and isn’t) popular for web design at the moment. If you were reading blogs and articles in the final days of 2015, trying to get on top of all the projected trends for this year, you might be surprised at what has emerged so far. We have picked 6 of the predictions that we believe have started to come to fruition already and shared them with you in the list below.
- User-Centered Design
Research has shown that the average user spends 10 to 20 seconds on a web page before leaving. The only way to improve this is by having clear value proposition, which is in keeping with Google’s newest edition of their Quality Guidelines. Basically, content that is above the fold will be ranked better than content that is hidden below it.
- More Single Page Design
There’s so much clutter online today, so it should come as no surprise that minimalist web design is on the rise. It is expected that single page designs will grow in popularity this year as a result of decreasing attention spans, impatient users and a desire for instant gratification. Users no longer want to scroll through multiple pages.
- Responsive Design
Whilst responsive web design has been a trend for many years now, it is becoming even more important in this day and age. Website owners haven’t taken the importance of this design seriously until now, as Google began to penalise websites that weren’t mobile-friendly. It is considered far better to go with responsive than a separate mobile design.
- Speed is a Necessity
This is another aspect that has always been important, but now websites that ignore speed are really going to suffer. Research has shown that our attention span has decreased significantly over the years – from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2015 – if users have to wait for your pages to load, they’re going to go elsewhere.
- Scalable Vector Graphics
More commonly known as SVG, these started to grow in prominence throughout 2015. Even Google redesigned their logo to make it a smaller, cleaner SVG file. These sorts of graphics are becoming more mainstream because they’re presented as vectors, which can scale regardless of the resolution of the device they’re being viewed upon.
- Modular Design
Although the average media website publishing hundreds of articles every day, content-rich sites have always seemed to struggle with organisation. Modular design can help to solve this problem by making content more presentable thanks to a block grid pattern. You can showcase more content whilst avoiding clutter.
We hope that the above list of web design predictions for 2016 has given you an idea of what to expect should you be planning to have your website redone at some point. Whilst you by no means need to include all of the points that have been outlined above, we certainly hope that you will consider each of them thoroughly in regards to your business, your website and your overall needs – this will result in a truly successful experience.
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