Web Design Trends for 2013

If you have a business that relies heavily on online marketing, you will understand the need to keep up with the current trends in website design, whether you create your own site in-house or use an external company. Knowing what to ask for in order to best promote your business is vital, and utilising some of these key design elements could set you ahead of your competition for the coming year.

1. Responsive Layouts and Mobile Platforms

Websites don’t just need to be designed for desktops or laptops anymore; there are a wide range of devices out there that rely on sites having a layout which will work for them, no matter what their screen size or dimensions. With the rising popularity of smart phones and tablets, customers want to be able to view your website from any of their portable devices, without having to wait until they can get to their computer to be able to see all of the web page elements. With responsive layouts, the design is made to be supported by all phones, netbooks, tablets and computers (and anything that may come out in the future).

The idea is to have a set of codes that will run well on all of these devices, without having to come up with more than one design, but this doesn’t mean just changing the dimensions to suit each type of browser. Responsive sites can make use of the size of the window, for example, by adding bigger graphics or more images when they have more space to work with. The main notion is to start small – with a mobile-sized layout – and build your way up from there, adding more elements as you go, instead of tackling it the other way round.

2. Infinite Scrolling

The idea of infinite scrolling – made popular by social networking sites such as Twitter and, recently, Pinterest–is expected to really gain speed this year. The main advantage for using this type of scrolling is that it provides an easy way for the visitor to view all of the required information without having to constantly load new pages, but it clearly won’t be useful to a lot of websites that rely on stable links to get customers to visit. Infinite scrolling works best on sites such as Twitter, where the content of the user feed is ever changing and updating, and no specific pagination is needed for permalinks. It is a simple design element that will enhance user experience, but only on specific types of pages.

3. Large Photo Backgrounds

If you have a specific product to sell or are trying to evoke a certain kind of emotion in your visitors, using a big, oversized photo for the background on your site could be the way to go. Not only can this create an aesthetically pleasing website, but potential customers will immediately know what you or your firm does. There can be problems with getting all your content to fit into the layout, but a professional digital agency can help you with this.

4. Focus on Typography

Like with oversized photos, using full screen typography can make a bold statement on your website. In 2013, try using a particularly distinctive font to create a unique website that will immediately grab people’s attention.

If you want to find out more about how you can utilise these trends to market your own company, feel free to contact us and we can help you create a cutting edge site that will not only look professional and be easy to navigate, but will also attract the right kinds of customers for your business.