Four Web Design Trends Reshaping the Web in 2014
By now, you’ve no doubt seen an overwhelming volume of content espousing the importance of high quality content and eCommerce website development for success in 2014. That content certainly wasn’t wrong. After all, eMarketer estimates web users will part with a staggering $1.5 trillion this year in exchange for goods and services bought online. The trick, of course, is that web development and design is a dynamic beast, ever changing as time goes on. If you truly want to succeed this year and tap into the constantly growing digital revenue stream, you need to stay ahead of the hottest web design trends in 2014.
Four Web Design Trends You Need to Stay Ahead Of
- Flat, Clean Design
- Catering to All Web Users with Responsive Web Design
- Sharp, Focused Landing Pages
- A Move Towards Memorable, Quality Imagery
As Web Design Ledger writes, one of the biggest web design trends for 2014 is stripping a webpage of any non-functional, purely aesthetic design elements, and why not? Too much frill and not enough function can lead to slow loading times and a poor user experience. That’s why Taco Bell, Apple, and many others are making a point to implement flat design across all of their pages.
The move toward responsive web design began in 2013, but it has taken on a new level of necessity in 2014. Why? As statistics from Pew Internet show, approximately 60% of all Americans use a smartphone. They’re using their smartphones to search for businesses like yours at an ever increasing rate. If your website isn’t optimized for being viewed on mobile devices, you’re going to lose the mobile market. Subsequently, as Forbes aptly points out, you need to offer all of your customers a website they can actually use, and there is no better way to do that than with responsive design.
For HongKiat, one of the most interesting and effective web design trends of 2014 is the move toward focused landing pages. Whereas in the past your landing page would be used to gather information about your clients so you could distribute general information about your company, now the name of the game is building focused landing pages promoting specific products. Facebook does this to promote its mobile applications, and many others follow suit to promote their full line of products. You can improve your own marketing efforts by doing the same.
One of the most visible shifts in web design this year has been the implementation of more imagery. 99designs.com, a popular creative web design blog, points out that 2014 is the year of using creative imagery to promote different brands. In the past, web designers had to worry about image-heavy websites weighing down a site’s responsiveness. However, with website loading speeds faster than ever before, more and more businesses are harnessing the power of relevant imagery in their designs.
Keep these hot web design trends in mind when you’re having your website built or updated. Doing so, you can show your brand’s best possible side to the world, improving your reputation and your income potential.
