Driving the future of web design
Web design is evolving at a rapid rate and web designers are constantly pushing the bar higher in order to gain a competitive advantage. The past few years has seen a large shift in the way people view the internet and this has spurred better designs and a better user experience for all concerned. The move to mobile was driven by search engines, users and as mentioned by web designers and web developers. So what have we seen over the past few years? And what does the future of web design have in store for us?
The last few years have shown one thing and that is user experience matters. In the beginning, the focus was on the technical side, getting things working, decreasing load times and reducing the number of errors on a website. It was during this period that design and user experience was seen as an afterthought. Thankfully over time both users and website owners wanted more from their websites. The technology had reached a stage of stability that allowed website design services focus on the user experience and the aesthetic view of a website in a more meaningful way.
Responsive Web Design
One of the big changes over the past few years is responsive website design. This is not a new thing and to be honest it was a long time coming. Many of us who were amongst the first to get mobile phones saw the birth and death of protocols like WAP (Wireless Application Protocol).This protocol allowed you to read emails and mainly text based content on your phone (with great difficulty, I may add). So responsive web design is indeed a welcome technology that allows you view website content from any device with any size screen.
Scrolling Web Design
Another big web design trend is the introduction of scrolling pages. Again this development is a by-product of the trend towards mobile internet usage. On desktops, using a scroll bar is fine (but dated) and on mobile devices the idea of using a scroll bar is way back in the 90’s. Scrolling websites caught on a couple of years back and it looks like they are here for the foreseeable future. This style of website from an aesthetic point of view is fantastic and it tends to give options for web designers to express some creativity.
Parallax Web Design
As responsive web design has paved the way for scrolling websites, scrolling websites paved the way for parallax web design. Parallax web design gives the feeling of more depth to a web design by having a background image overlaid by text or another image. When scrolling through a website t both images move at slightly different speeds or in some cases one of the images stay static. This style can look great and it really captures the imagination of users and web designers alike.
What is Next for Web Design
The use of animations has become mainstream in video media but not so much on websites. It is my bold prediction that this type of content will become more prevalent in the near future. The real challenge is to do this in a responsive way that does not increase load times. These days’ animated images are used across the web design industry and they can lift a design that could otherwise look flat.
As stated in the first paragraph, web design is evolving at a rapid rate and one thing is for sure, in 5 years we will look back at the styles and technologies we use today and think how dated they are. It is this evolution that creates a great user experience and drives the business of tomorrow. If you have any thoughts on this, please let us know or if you want to get in touch about any questions you might have about our web design service please get in contact with the team from BigNet Design at any stage.