Fabulising Your Website
Current Design Trends
We keep saying it — your website is your business’s salesperson. And how it looks will affect the way your customers perceive and interpret the brand. Clearly, you want a website that is professional and on-trend.
But what exactly is ‘on-trend’? How do we take your website from ‘just fine’ to ‘fabulous’?
When it comes to website design, the only thing that stays the same is the fact that things won’t stay the same. Current design trends will come and go; features that are considered modern will be altered according to the audience’s constantly changing expectations, wants, and needs.
At nucleo, part of our job is interpreting the ebb and flow of website trends so we can provide your business with seamless designs, engaging digital solutions, and optimal user experiences.
So what are some of the current website design
trends that we have seen this year?
Visual headers
A picture paints a thousand words (stop groaning. Clichés exist for a reason). Studies have shown that our brains can process and respond to a visual image 60,000 times faster than to text. Use of large header images — the first thing someone will see upon visiting your website — can immediately portray your business’s services, evoke a response from your customers, and create a lasting impression.
Long-scrolling sites
Many new site designs tend to exhibit lengthy homepages that provide the most relevant information while you scroll. The source of this trend lies with mobile devices, which are becoming increasingly popular for people’s everyday internet use. Ease of access demands that websites opt for responsive design; many users will find that scrolling is easier than linking to find the majority of content.
Long-scrolling sites also provide opportunities for clever animations or visual techniques to make the scrolling experience more enjoyable and memorable for the customer.
Rich typography
Typography and font-related choices will always be an important feature in site design, but a current trend involves increased use of cleaner, sharper, and larger fonts. Like the use of images, larger typeface is more likely to make an immediate statement upon arriving at the site. It is also useful in establishing a visual hierarchy, ensuring your customers’ eyes are drawn to the largest — and ideally most important — written information first.
Minimalist approach
Sometimes less is more. Many designers are adopting a new approach to website design wherein non-essential elements are removed, and use of colour and texture is kept flat yet vibrant. The juxtaposition of something unexpected — pops of colour; large-scale typography; professional custom photography — against muted, minimalist environments allows designers to create depth and draw attention to wherever attention is needed.
Clean and simple site design can create as striking an impact as design-heavy alternatives.
Identifying useful trends
One should never jump indiscriminately onto the trend bandwagon when designing a website. Design features are about more than appearance; thought must also be paid to what it is that certain techniques will do for your website and business.
Consider these questions:
- Does this trend complement the overall tone/idea/feel of the brand?
- Does it improve the way that information and services can be delivered to customers?
- Does it promote a seamless, user-friendly online experience?
- Would it help the business to stand out in a crowded marketplace?
- (Is it fabulous?)
Remember — your website design serves a purpose. You are dressing up your virtual salesperson in order to express a message and help your customers fulfill their needs.
But wait… there’s a catch
Keeping up with design trends is hard work. Not only do we have to consider features that have already gone, we also must interpret trends that have barely begun.
Why? Because as soon as a trend becomes truly trendy, it starts not being trendy. That is to say, once those new design elements, which earlier made your site look fabulous, start being used by every Tom, Dick and Harry, they suddenly become run-of-the-mill.
And so our job begins again.
But trust us — trend-tracking is in our nature. Let nucleo go the long mile for your business. Our team constantly studies these areas to stay on top of design trends and developments. We’ll keep fabulising your virtual salesperson so the website works its hardest for your business.