Every year brings new trends and new fashions. The website design industry is no exception. Some of them were best left alone, but 2013 is bringing some hot new trends which really enhance websites.
These are just a few of the trends you should take advantage of in 2013 if you want to stay ahead of the competition.
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Website Design 2013: Hot New Trends
Responsive website design
This trend carries over from 2012. Responsive website design is about having one set of codes which will fit more than one platform. These include smartphones, tablet PCs, laptops, and computers. In short, a website which has invested in responsive website design will automatically adjust itself to the screen resolution of the device in question.
It’s more convenient for users and prevents the dreaded horizontal scrolling effect. With more people than ever accessing the web from mobile devices, this is essential.
CSS Transparency
You might have started seeing lots of websites with content areas which are transparent. You can see a big background image behind it. It adds an extra dimension to your website design. You have to play around with the opacity to see which works best for your website, but once you get used to it this will be easy.
Minimalism
Minimalism is the big thing at the moment and has continued to gather pace over the past few years. These days, you’ll start seeing less and less websites with lots of banner ads and flashing promotions. And if you do see these websites there’s a high chance they’re unsuccessful and get little traffic.
Take a look at Amazon an eBay as an example. These have only what’s necessary and nothing else. No fancy images and no pointless animations, just the main features.
Try it yourself. You’ll also benefit in terms of load times. Google actively penalizes websites which take longer than five seconds to load. Reducing the amount of content on each page increases your load times and enhances the SEO value of the website.
Social Media Icons
Social media plays an important role in active interaction and passive SEO. Since the Google Panda and Google Penguin updates, this continues to ring true. Social media icons in all styles and shapes should feature on a website. Internet marketing guides will always talk about the importance of having these in place.
As a web designer, you should have a bank of styles you can use on any website. Make sure it fits with the site’s theme.
Endless Scrolling
Huge galleries of photographs can be an annoyance if you have to click a button after every 20-50 images. Endless scrolling solves the problem. Google Images has already implemented this to a certain extent. You should take advantage of endless scrolling if you’re designing a website with lots of images and larger product portfolios.
It won’t work with every website and some people find it annoying. If you want to compromise, follow the path of Google and increase the scrolling to 50-100 images per page. It still offers convenience without adding thousands of images to every page.
Rightly mentioned, Resposive WebDesign will have a huge role to play with.