The website’s latest design trends and best practices should be reflected in your company’s website. You want visitors to stay on your page for as long as possible for two reasons.

One, the longer the visitors stays on your page, the more likely they are to make a decision to purchase. Secondly, the longer a visitor views your page, the better it will rank with the search engines like Google.

One driver behind some of the new trends and best practices in website design is driven by the more common use of smartphones and tablets, often used instead of a traditional laptop or PC. Here is your definitive website checklist.

Flat Design

One major change in website design style driven by the use of smartphones is “flat design”.

Instead of lots of drop-down menus or pop-ups, a flat design uses a minimalistic approach with simplistic pages suitable for viewing and navigating on small smart devices.

Huge fancy fonts, shadow effects and other complex graphics that aren’t pertinent as value-added elements of the website are disappearing in the latest websites.

Simplistic

Another approach to the use of smartphones as mini-computers is the simplistic design where not everything seen on a PC screen is visible when viewed on a smartphone.

This trend is not as strong as the flat design, but it is being used by some website designers.

Tell a Story

Another trend in website design is the story-telling concept. Well written, carefully chosen words are used with compelling well-done graphics to tell the story of what a company does, what services or products it provides.

Fixed Position Header Bars

After studying how people navigate and expect to navigate websites, designers have to deploy a CCS technique that is being used to keep the header bars in a fixed position as page content scrolls below.

This solves a significant navigation problem experienced in the past.

Long Scroll

Because the navigation problem has been resolved, long scroll pages are now popular rather than the one-screen page that requires navigation to get to the next page.

Experts say that ‘above the fold’ web page design is dead while deep scroll remains strong and healthy.

Content Remains King

One best practice in website design that is not changing is the fact that ‘Content is King”. While more concise text messages and better use of wordcraft is trending, the fact still remains that you have to have a message important enough to cause visitors to want to read your message.

Videos

Embedded videos is another hot trend and one that can help keep the visitor on the page longer. Videos must be short and informative or the viewer will move on, but a well-told message can help market a product.

While some designers are making the video play immediately on landing on the page, most users prefer a choice of when or if they want to play the video or audio message.

Make Sharing Easy

A key trend in website design is driven by the popularity of social media. Websites should make it easy to Like or Share websites they like on social media, helping spread visibility of the website.

Follow the Website Checklist

These are the website checklist item and best practices currently in use and coming into vogue.

Don’t let your website be left behind when a little redesign can provide pizazz you need to attract viewers and improve your business. To learn more about current trends and how your new or existing website can reflect these trends, contact us.