3 Website Fashion Trends to Follow

The Sprocket Report

Your teens insist on having the latest look in back-to-school clothes so peers can see at a glance that they are hip, cool or whatever the current slang for “up-to-date” is. Website designs have trends, too. Is your site embarrassingly unfashionable? Take a look at these three trends.

Between Microsoft’s release of Windows 8 last summer and Apple’s final iOS 7 release happening shortly, visual designers have been greatly influenced and it’s showing up more often on websites. Even if you’re not a trend follower, you have no doubt seen this graphics movement yourself.

The changing look of websites is mainly due to the growing use of mobile technology. Reacting to the limits of mobile such as download speed and screen size, the user experience can be improved by changing the way websites are laid out. Read on for the three biggest design trends that you can use on your own website.

Flat Design

The wooden bookshelf and yellow post-it note backgrounds that used to be so cute on the iphone are a thing of the past as graphic artists jump on the minimalist flat design bandwagon. Imitating three-dimensional objects has given way to simple boxes that are clean and colorful and lined up neatly for quick perusal. While written content is still important, it’s stripped down to essentials and generously augmented with graphics and lots of white space.

Proving "form follow function," this trend toward flat design stems from the increased use of mobile devices. Long text blocks get too teeny to read on a small screen and white space buffers help reduce "fat finger" mistakes on navigation buttons.

Infinite Scroll

Some websites created today are basically just one page. One really, really long page, broken up with multiple banner graphics or headlines that let visitors scroll down seemingly forever. Even sites that require separate pages for specific functions are using this style on their home page or landing page.

Again, this design trend arises from mobile viewing. Rather than tap on a navigation button and wait for the new page to load, which can sometimes be a lengthy process if your signal isn’t strong, you can just flick the screen up a few times to find the info you need.

Responsive Layout

As you can see from the previous design trends, mobile technology continues to grow and you can’t pretend it isn’t. Mobile is not just for people who spend money for cutting-edge technology. Given a limited budget that doesn’t allow for both a phone AND a home computer, guess what folks will choose? Exactly! So people are visiting your website on their mobile devices out of convenience as well as out of necessity. You need to be ready for them.

Building and maintaining a single website that works well on a wide range of mobile devices makes more sense than creating separate websites or apps. Responsive Design means that your site is coded to appropriately size and arrange itself to the screen on which it is viewed, whether a phone, tablet or laptop, for optimal readability.

Responsive design technology is exploding and influencing the look of the web. Contact us today to talk about what can be done to outfit your website in the latest fashion and establish your organization’s cool factor.

Kate GingoldKate Gingold

I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.

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Full biography

I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.

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