3 Web Design Trends That Are Here to Stay

At ePageCity, we keep up with the forecasts for web design trends – websites are our business. Web design is not built solely on trends, but rather on best practices. Below, we’re highlighting a few of the top trends of 2016 that we see as the new direction for website design practices. Give it a read – and let us know what you think in the comments section below!

1) Responsive Website Design

Responsive web design has been around for a couple years now, but is it here to stay? On April 21, 2015 mobile-friendliness became a part of Google’s algorithm, and for good reason – Google strives to provide its users with the best results in search engine results pages (SERPs). As you may imagine, mobile users are a significant percentage of online users that continues to increase at a tremendous rate:

63% of adult cell phone owners use their phone to go online.
Online mobile users outnumber desktop users
Mobile media time in the US is significantly higher than desktop.

It makes perfect sense that Google would have a preference for websites that are up to speed with the new mobile landscape. A quick rundown: responsive design uses the same HTML code for every device accessing a website, and resizes the site based on the device orientation and screen width. This makes the experience across different devices flawless and uniform. If your website is not responsive, fear not, that is one of our specialties at ePageCity. If you'd like, give us a call for a free consultation.

2) Usability and Navigation

As thenextweb.com puts it, “Users are caring more about how a site functions than looks.” Design that is focused on getting the site visitor to where they want to go is good design. We believe usability has to inform design. One specific example of this is navigation menu design. To quote the blog Hongkiat:

“The navigation menu on a website is like a road sign on a street or a level directory in a shopping mall. You cannot reach your destination without first knowing where you are.”

The primary navigation reflects the information architecture of your site. That's why, here at ePageCity, we design websites using the primary navigation as a starting point. The purpose of a navigational menu, to serve as a “road sign,” is why navigation menu design tends to be stable year over year – the point of a menu is to serve as a straightforward, accessible portal to access the rest of a website. In fact, one of the common website navigation mistakes that KissMetrics notes is using a non-standard website navigation styling. We also prefer the standard navigation design over trends like hiding your key site pages under a hamburger menu for the same reasons above: ease of use and accessibility.

We recommend a strong, strong eye towards user experience. Some new menus look cool, but always keep in mind that your website exists for a purpose. If that menu doesn’t help further that purpose, then it’s worth reconsidering.

3) Designing in Modules

According to a number of trend watchers, web design is moving more and more towards modular and component design. This means the layout of the site comprises a number of different functional pieces. As opposed to creating pages with a single purpose, modular design allows each page to address multiple needs while maintaining the design and functionality of the site as a whole. Bootstrap, a popular web language, is one example of this: it’s modular and designed for mobile-first.

Bootstrap simplifies mobile website building.

As Brad Frost’s website design blog notes, “this is how we’ve been doing things all along, even if we haven’t been consciously thinking about it in this specific way.” So there’s nothing new about modular website design. ePageCity has been designing modular websites for years, and we're glad it is something that the standard is moving towards. We love being able to provide custom website solutions for our clients, and our modular approach ensures that we are only working on design elements that specifically benefit our clients – no cookie-cutter solutions here!