We don’t mean to shout, but our epic team of designers here at JBi made us stress the fact that the following points are not just a list of passing trends but rather a checklist of MUST HAVES that you absolutely HAVE TO incorporate as part of your web design. So the question is, has your website made the checklist cut? If not, no need to fear, our designers are here!
Responsive Design
Okay, so even my Mum knows that responsive design is a MUST when it comes to designing a website. The fact that smartphones have pretty much outnumbered the human population is probably enough of a hint that designing your website without consideration to mobile and tablet devices will quite simply get you to a place called nowhere! A study carried out by Vibes, a mobile marketing technology provider found that 89% of consumers want some sort of personalised mobile communication from the brand they follow or subscribe to. What’s more, if you’re an E-Commerce shop, a whopping 90% of all smart phone searches lead to an online shopping deal or at least a visit to a business website. This trend isn’t going anywhere, in fact, it’ll probably make it’s mark, so it’s time you joined the league and made responsive web-design a top priority for your project update.
Video content
So you’ve made up your mind that you want to be ahead of the game, but have you thought about introducing video content as apart of your brand promotion? If you haven’t, the fact that statistics show that 17% of people spend less than 4 seconds on a website but will spend 2.7 minutes watching a video online will get you to a video camera pronto! And now that you’re raring to go, we’re not just talking about embedding a YouTube video into your website and being done with it (even though we think YouTube videos are great). We think if you’ve got the creativity bug, why not consider incorporating a video background into your website like the awesome examples below. The rise and rise of HTML5 has made it easier to add things like animation to make the user experience that much more engaging, so really the possibilities are endless. And before you think that video backgrounds are limited to the higher end brands for their promotional needs, our examples show that even a cleaning company website can have you transfixed! One thing to note is that if you do decide that a full stretch video background is the way to go for your website, we’ll have to sit down to make sure that it features equally as well on all devices platforms.
Fixed Navigation
We’ve all been there where you’re at a bottom of a long webpage and you have to scroll all the way up to continue navigating around the website. Let’s face it, it’s a pain, but this is where fixed position navigation comes in giving the user access to the navigation menu at all times when scrolling down a given page. For us, it’s absolute gold for optimum user experience. What’s more, you needn’t compromise on your text content in fear of losing your visitors because access to the navigation panel would always be present as a go-to function. So if your ideal conversion is to have your visitors share your content on their social media platforms or to sell products, this clever little design feature would allow your users the opportunity to click and select, rather than scroll up, click, select and scroll back down! Have a look at the examples below to see a long winded process literally wound down. Phew!
Infinite Scrolling
Now we think that infinite scrolling comes part and parcel with the fixed navigation feature above, and although it’s probably the one feature in our list that comes with it’s fair share of backlash, we think it’s useful when applied to the right platform. So for example, if your site is text heavy it’s probably not the best idea to have a never-ending scroll especially if you want to ensure that great user experience you’re after. But if your site is more image focused- infinite vertical scrolling gives your site a function that avoids the dreaded loading time wait as well as ensuring greater user engagement. What’s more, given that most mobile web users say they’ll only wait between 6-10 seconds for a page to load before they leave to go elsewhere means that it’s pretty obvious that this design feature has a greater chance of keeping your visitor hooked. But more importantly, given the shift in browsing behaviour, infinite scrolling is the ultimate MUST HAVE for your mobile site, so start incorporating it people!
Bold and Minimalistic
Now this is a trend that depends on the type of user you want to attract to your website. For example, we found that this feature is particularly popular among branding agencies especially when it comes to developing top-notch contemporary landing pages like those below.
And given that there’s a certain psychology to design- that being eyes are naturally drawn to bolder statements it seems that less really is more when it comes to delivering a snappy message. What’s more, it’s a piece of cake to make responsive to fit both tablet and mobile devices, but of course this is dependant on the rest of the site’s functionality but otherwise we’re good to go!
Our verdict…
The thing with web design is that it’s totally subjective, and that’s what we’ve tried to show you with the examples above. What works for one might not work for another, but despite that, our designers have made us see why the above points make up an essential checklist that you simply HAVE TO incorporate as part of your website design. Think of them as the foundation blocks on which you can build that epic website. So go on, pick up the phone and we’ll get this ball rolling.
