We’ve all heard of the phrase “your first impression is your last impression.” This is just as much true for websites as it is for people. The first impression of a website consists of: the design of the site, the overall aesthetic, and the experience that the website provides to us.
If we find the design of the website unattractive, we simply log out of the site within a matter of a few seconds. But, on the other hand, if we find the site visually appealing, we want to stay longer and explore each and every aspect of the site, and we may even bookmark it to come back to again.
Innovative Design Trends for Your Website
Today I’m going to talk about some innovative design trends for your website that are taking over the internet and will help you a lot if you are looking to revamp your site.
Flat Design
Flat design UI has been dominating the web for quite some time, and it has been continuing to do so throughout 2016. This is because of the great advantage of user experience that it offers to website visitors.
A website with flat design, which is personally my favorite as well, has really fast loading time because of the minimum graphic elements used. This is particularly useful for those people who are accessing your site from a slow internet connection, e.g. from a cafe or a library, etc.
This type of web design is also very good in terms of responsibility across various devices. Moreover, they look really vibrant because of the great color schemes. Thus, flat design is one of the best innovative design trends and has greatly improved user experience.
Long Scroll Websites
You might have heard of the myth that you should place your website’s main content “above the fold,” or else you won’t rank well on the web. Well now you can get over this myth! Because long scroll websites are one of the hottest new innovative design trends.
Thanks to smart phones and mobile apps, people nowadays like to keep on scrolling down their phones. The longer the page, they longer the users stay. Some people use parallax scrolling effects on their website, and others prefer scroll linked animations. Things like this keep the readers hooked to your site and make them stay longer, as they scroll down out of curiosity to see what will come up next.
But some people do this the wrong way. They use really heavy animations that reduce the loading speed greatly, which creates a bad experience for the users. So, if you want to follow this trend, make sure your website pages are lightweight and don’t take ages to load!
Moreover, long scroll websites offer as great visual experience to readers and make websites really fun and interactive to use. They also help present hoards of information in digestible chunks.So they are really good for those of you who use your website for an educational purpose, or even to provide information about your brand in an interesting way.
Hero Headers
The trend of hero headers on websites has been around for quite some time because it’s really popular among users who like to visit websites that are rich with visual content.
Hero headers or full-page headers are especially good for parallax websites, cover pages and landing pages. They are really pretty to look at, but one of the biggest drawbacks is that, if your graphic images don’t load, your website will look really bad. So, if you are planning to use hero headers on your website, make sure your loading speed is not too long.
Full-Screen Galleries and Slideshows
As the internet continues to evolve, full-page galleries and slideshows have become really popular. They are widely used by photographers, or other people who want to showcase their work on a portfolio website.
If you are a photographer, or you own a creative business, then you should definitely consider following this trend. Gone are the times when people needed to write long paragraphs about their product in order to sell it. Now, if you upload pictures that show every dimension of your product and its quality, it will speak for itself and attract your ideal customers.
Custom Web Illustrations
I really love those websites that offer a custom experience, and I’m sure you do as well. Custom illustrations can not only give your viewers a unique user experience, but can also help you sell your products. They are good on the eyes and boost your site’s rankings, while giving your viewers a surreal experience.
Adding small animations to your website will serve as a cherry on the ice cream and really make your website fun and user friendly. I highly recommend them!
Conclusion
The reason why we all have websites is because we want to have an audience, build readership and possibly attract customers. Therefore, it is really important to take care of what they demand from us: clean, attractive, user-friendly, quick-loading websites.
To provide this, you should invest into your website, in terms of both time and money, so that you get maximum benefits from your website. Moreover, keeping your website updated according to the newest and most innovative design trends will help you achieve your desired results.
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