Over the years we have seen an explosive growth in internet usage and website development technology has advanced at extreme rapid pace. The first quarter of 2014 has passed with flying colours and this industry is set to reach new heights for remaining of the year. Both technical and creative aspects are getting equal acknowledgment which is just making web browsing experience of us as user more engaging, interesting, secure and easy.
Let’s find out some of the latest website development trends which have been picking up and becoming more popular for this year.
Use of Ready Themes
One thing what we have found selling like hot cakes in the web development industry are ready made themes available for popular CMS and eCommerce platforms. Reputed theme selling websites like TemplateMonster and ThemeForest have amazing collection of highly creative and brilliant themes which can be purchased at affordable rates. Both small and large businesses are buying into this. Further customization is also easy and time saving and a great design can be implemented across spectrum of website development platforms like Magento eCommerce or WordPress.
Single Page Website
Single page website is a hot trend these days. They are simply using long scrolling pages and this could be an ideal choice when it comes to show a visually appealing story of product or service. Single page website has gained amazing popularity due to easy access on mobile devices where clicking from page to page could be an annoying for viewers unless website possess responsive template.
If you have made your mind for single page long scrolling website then you should plan for engaging good quality content, highly creative graphics and if possible video as well. This would help to keep visitors occupied on your website. You need to make sure that the web designers should grasp both intuitive design and representation of content in the context of scrolling pages. Have a good UX test prior to agreeing on design.
Flat Design
Over the last several months, Flat Design has created its own big space in web design industry. It seems like many web designers are adopting the trend of so-called ‘Flat Design’ and implementing in into their work. Even large companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft have followed this trend on their own website.
Flat design is in demand right now because it is all about improving user experience that is very important element for online businesses to attract more traffic.
Mobile platforms
Responsive web design has been an essential need of business websites recently since they identify the screen resolution and reformat web pages and creates a smooth communication between users and websites whether on tablet, Smartphone or traditional Desktop PCs.
With the increase in use of tablet and smartphones for internet browsing and online shopping, this has become necessary for an effective and successful online marketing strategy.
Typography
Designers are now focusing more on giving website a fantastic look using custom-made fonts such as Google Fonts with unique flavors. Use of too many different font types in website can make website look confusing to readers unless they are used wisely.
Do you want to know more about typography trends in upcoming years then read this typography.
Javascript / HTML 5 / CSS3
It was time when designers loved to use Flash plugins to built something intuitive and creative animation. In recent years, Microsoft Silverlight plugin has helped designers covers as much the same ground offered by Flash. However these plugins have helped a lot but the issue is, search robots struggle to crawl web pages who use Flash content and also web pages with Flash content usually take longer time to load. With the advent of Javascript, HTML and CSS, these plugins have starting losing edge and today we have smart and even better way to feed the advance browsers with brilliant and visually appealing rich content which can be easily read by search robots. You will easily come across excellent slider, drop downs, mouse roll over and much more. Using Java Script your website can be extremely impressive.
Large Background Images & Video
In the past, website with large background images took ages to load and also make website look horrific. These large background images certainly distracted and annoyed the users and failed to convey a clear message. With the faster internet connections, today large background images are no longer an issue since web designers now can smoothly implement the large background images that actually enhance the user experience. People love to see brilliant photographs spread across the web page.
Along with large background image, use of video background is also a hot trend these days. With the fast internet connections and advance technologies such as HTML5, implementing video in background has become so easy for designers. While video background still has problem in older browsers, new browsers seamlessly play video that eventually improve the site design and user experience.