Web Design Trends to Watch Out for in 2014

The scope of web designing is ever expanding in proportion to the rapid online space spreading out. And to get the spotlight in this era of fast paced development, keeping up to date with the trends is essential. Like the internet, website design techniques continually grow to augment the user experience. 2014 is shaping up to be a year of many changes in the web design industry and the changes that you SHOULD adopt to stand out from the crowd. Though not all of the upcoming trends may be fitting to your website redesign or audience needs, it’s always good to be acquainted with what’s available. So, let us give a glimpse to the upcoming web design trends in 2014…

Design To Get The Most Out Of One Page!

Loading new pages every now and then is no more liked by a big number of websites rather; the trend portrays the use of additional content on the current pages to solve the purpose. So, in order to reduce the significant amount of clicks in an average user’s journey, you can make use of Light boxes, overlays, and expanding / repositioned tiles.

Newsletter Designs Tailored For the Specific Audience

Email Marketing is no longer the only way to reach your customer base, but still is amongst the most effective mediums to keep your audience interested and connected to your business. The upcoming trends in 2014 predict that newsletters will demand more creativity and will stay afloat by being more exciting. So, newsletters might not be the favourite channel any more, but can do wonders if designed to target the specific audience.

Personal Portraits Are In!

Even a small photograph on your homepage or about page grabs visitors’ instant attention and gives a glimpse of who you are. It is proven by various studies that even a simple portfolio website attracts more visitors than others. The ultimate goal is to tell who you are, what you do and showcase some of your samples, but to keep people actually interested in you, there is a need of a human connection. And the one of the best and the easiest ways to do this is placing your sample photograph, somewhere on the page.

Time to Replace the Sliders with Hero Graphics

The trends have shifted to the less flashy design elements and hero graphics are just the right move. A hero graphic is a large image, generally convoyed by a little amount of text that occupies the top of a website’s home page. More than expected websites are using hero graphics as the acceptance of new design trends as they create much more visual impact than the sliders with images.

Use of Larger Fonts Makes You More Visible

Multiple platform usage of your website is one aspect that you should never neglect. You cannot deny the fact that a majority of your site visitors could be mobile device users. So, it is evident that you need a design that can meet the requirement of audiences using these hand held, small screen devices. Hence, as the mobile device users are rapidly booming, you need your website design to hold larger images, pictures and fonts. This will ensure a trouble-free and satisfied experience for mobile users.

Parallax Scrolling…

One of the key design features that seem to dominate in 2014 is the parallax scrolling that has proved to be advantageous for websites with animations in their design. This incredible design feature enables a designer to control an object’s depth and provide greater liberty of movement and spacing. Parallax scrolling can impress visitors for sure, when combined with HTML5 and CSS3.

Flat UI Going Stronger With Time

Flat design was amongst the biggest trends last year, but the most amazing fact is its growing popularity in 2014. Flat design is SIMPLY minimalist design on steroids. Big industry shots, including Apple, Windows 8, Facebook and GMail are stripping the design elements until they are stark naked in favour of flat design and bidding goodbye to graphics. This entails getting rid of 3-D graphics and gradients and essentially just using flat shapes and indicators to aid the visitor have a more handy experience.

Fixed Headers In 2014’s Web Design Trends

So, here’s something for the content rich websites! The hottest design trend 2014 for you is the fixed header bar at the top of the page. A fixed header stays on a browser window and doesn’t hide even when the user scrolls down the page. This design technique favours easy navigation amid website pages and saves from the hassles of scrolling back to the top of the page.

Nothing Can Beat a Responsive Design

Well! Responsive design has become a standard and will be soon the need of every client. Since Smartphones and the tablets are selling like hotcakes there is huge potential for this designing technique. Responsive designs make ready a website for both desktop and mobile keeping it consistent in looks and functionality for all device sizes.

A trendy website design that doesn’t serve a purpose is always scored less than a focused web design. Before you opt for any of the trending design techniques, consider your website goals, your company’s objectives and values, and key conversion points that you wish to enhance.

What other design trends do you think we’ll see in 2014? Do share your thoughts below…

This article is written by Mohit Maheshwari. He is chief strategist at New Media Guru, a full service digital agency offering SEO Company India, PPC, and Website development services. He’s been in search since 2000 and focuses on long-term strategies, intuitive user experience and successful customer acquisition.

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