The landscape of web design is rapidly evolving in its very own space. The scope for huge experimentation and innovation in all creative fields including web design makes the emerging trends a driving force for change every year. And 2017 is no different. The technology revolution and its ever empowering tools allow a greater freedom of designing interfaces and interactions. As web designers, it is our job to adapt to those changes and re-evaluate our designs to create a visually appealing, fast and actionable website with user-friendly interfaces.
According to Adobe, “38% of people will stop engaging with a website and 35% will switch devices if the content/layout is unattractive” and also “48% of people cited a website’s design as the number one factor in deciding the credibility of a business.”
To stay ahead of the curve, explore the following web design trends to create a unique browsing experience for your users.
Innovative Scrolling and Parallax:
Parallax scrolling effects, a big trend in 2016 isn’t a new mechanic but still continues to be implemented by many brands even this year. Designers are using these less traditional layouts to help lift content off the page and engage users by using it in conjunction with imagery, text and a less rigid layout to create fluid, layered content.
Our web designers at TULI eServices have experimented with these mouse-based movements to give our website a fancier look. The dynamism creates movements that capture a much more layered design giving a sense of depth as users scroll. The key to almost every design trend in 2017 is that touch of reality and parallax will be no exception. The more real the movement looks on the screen, the more users will want it.
The Rise of Mobile-First Websites:
The ‘mobile-first approach’ to design has been around for a few years now. The dramatic increase in mobile traffic makes tons of opportunity for major brands to take a paradigm shift in their designing strategies for promising results. This means you have to focus on brief yet valuable content, take advantage of mobile-specific advanced features like mobility, GPS, touch screen and more, that desktops are yet to offer. Redesigning a mobile-ready website can maximize the potential to reach more target audience by presenting an adaptive, future-friendly solution for your business.
The Cinematic Era of Cinemagraphs:
The human brain loves visual information and cinemagraphs have all the right attributes to capture visitors’ attention. Not quite a photograph but not a video either, a cinemagraph creates an immediately impressive user experience.
The appeal of the technique is not only soothing as it brings life to an image but also comes with the added advantage of not decreasing the page load speed. We can expect to see visually-driven brands experimenting with this trend over the next 12 months.
Video becomes king-360º Video and VR Effects:
Videos are literally taking over the internet. The endless possibilities of 3D graphics and HD quality videos in websites are proving to be an effective storytelling tool while trying to make an impression of real life experience for your brand image.
A recent report by CISCO suggests that by 2018, 80% of all consumer internet traffic will be video.
2016 has been the year of VR. With various VR headsets like Google’s Daydream taking the world of technology by a storm, the trend continues to set a strong foothold in the web design industry even this year. Incorporating VR and 360º video into web design to create breathtaking, highly interactive experience is a clever choice to connect brands with their customers on a more personal level.
High-quality Authentic Photography:
The old saying ‘a picture says a thousand words’ still remains true to this day, and in the world of UI design is still a great way to quickly grab the user’s attention.
Stock photos are still pretty popular. But business owners can’t ignore the fact that people resonate more with real images while engaging with the brand rather than artificial looking stock images.
People make purchases based on their emotions. It’s not enough to show the product as users want to get an ‘up close and personal’ feel to relate to the product as well as the company. And this personal touch can only be put using a real image. Bring out the trustworthiness of your brand by using real photos on your website to connect more with your audience in a genuine way.
Interactive Microinteractions:
Micro-interactions, a subtle small form of on-screen animation are playing a major role when it comes to interacting with the website, especially on mobile and smaller screen devices. This small visual cue creates a personal moment for users when they perform certain tasks on your website such as hover, click animations, scrolling effects and so on.
Good Micro-interactions separates successful websites from the crowd. Nowadays designers are spending more time to humanize UI and UX design by incorporating creative site navigation for a delightful user experience.
Typography Goes Bigger and Bolder:
Typography, a powerful weapon of content creation is taking the centre stage in the design scene. With an ever-increasing range of web font services (Google Fonts, Typekit) offering free or cost-effective font service, making it easier for designers to experiment more with unique typefaces like hand-rendered typography, font pairing, a combination of photography and typography and so on.
After years of flat design and minimalism, adding illustrated touches to your site is a great way to inject a little personality. With all these changes going around, designers are coming up with bigger and bolder typography to anchor their homepage.
Color Branding-A Treat to Eyes:
The bang-on-trend of color branding is inspiring designers to play with color pallets to revamp your website with a stylish and classy appearance. More brands today are making conscious efforts in their approach to using super-rich color to ingrain diverse vibrant hues and the use of revitalized gradients into their core branding.
Trends will come and go but some will go with the flow and become fundamental. From modular design to duotone images, creative typography to more focused content layouts, to microinteractions to cinemagraphs, these design trends will dominate web design in this year. 2017 is a significant year for brands to move these elements in-house in the design culture to break new ground, moving away from the previously established, ‘safer-bet’ practices.