While innovation and imitation drive web design, it’s too easy to overuse the latest trends and end up with a website that seems dated, or worse yet, ends up with one that blends in with all the rest. To avoid this trap, stay away from microtrends and look to the big picture. Here are five web design ideas that we believe offer the longevity and practicality a professionally designed website demands.

1.  Diversity in Design

Who says all websites have to fit a certain look dictated by their market? With the rampant spread of WordPress templates, all websites within a particular industry tend to look the same. It’s time to break the mold. Stick to the basics that make for a smooth user experience, but push the boundaries everywhere else. For example, the use of theatrical presentations with semi-transparent control overlays is an emerging trend, along with grids on demand, unique layouts, and CSS3 animations, to deliver information to the user. These maintain the ease of navigation throughout the site but offer the user a novel way of interacting with the website.

2.  Rich Illustrations and Even Richer Animations

Stock photography is moving over and making room for the new kid on the block, hand-drawn art.  Authenticity is king, and websites that feature unique and original visual experiences deliver a memorable calling card to the consumer. It takes branding up a notch, as consumers begin to associate the art style with the company. Better yet, enhance a website with well-thought-out animations to engage the user and convey storytelling. The interactive experience of story-telling through animations should flow intuitively, delivering the information a user is searching for along a thematically consistent path. It’s important to resist the urge to use animations for everything since doing so will dilute their impact. They should be used selectively to illustrate important points or to indicate a required action.

3. Artificial Intelligence

Emergent technology is yielding sophisticated intelligence engines that can read a user’s context in real time, meaning that data relating to how a user interacts with your information can be used to maximize the user experience. Are they indoors, outdoors, on a phone, or tablet, or engaged in a particular activity? In the search to make a product’s response as seamless as possible, designers are turning to AI engines such as Facebook M, Smart Reply for Gmail, and The Grid to automate the web and use such information to best serve the user. The result is solutions and offers that are perfectly coordinated and tailored to fit the user’s needs. 

4. Wearable/ Mobile First

The wearables market is estimated to be worth $31 billion by 2020, and along with mobile-first design, is now well underway. Platforms such as the Oculus Rift and other VR technology present a new challenge for designers to make applications and websites accessible. Fluid designs that accommodate smaller or odd-sized screens and interfaces will come to the forefront, while still having to maintain basic principles of good UI design. Designing your website with an eye toward these technologies is imperative to staying current and keeping your website relevant. 

5. Microinteractions

Seamless user experience will become more important than ever as information becomes platform-agnostic and accessible through watches, TVs, phones, and tablets. Microinteractions, or the series of small events that add up to a complete experience, will be the vehicle by which users interact with these devices. Microinteractions must require almost no effort on the part of the user and be as unobtrusive as possible. They can involve just a few clicks or a more in-depth process, but they typically consist of four steps: the trigger, the rule, feedback, and the loop/mode. The trigger initiates the action, and the rule is made up of the predefined constraints that govern the interaction. The rule can also be a form that the user fills out. Feedback is the response to the user’s action, and the loop dictates how long the interaction lasts or if it is repeated.  Modes are usually made up of necessary disruptions from the micro-interaction flow described above, and as such, should be used sparingly, if at all. Wise use of microinteractions will ensure your website flows smoothly no matter the platform being used to access it.

Some of these web design trends are incumbent on the technology driving them, and as such, they ensure that your website will be cutting-edge and functional from the ground up. Other trends depend on thinking outside the box and bringing the warmth of human touch and originality to a previously stark and cookie-cutter web environment.  

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Planet Media is an eco-friendly and sustainable creative agency specializing in branding, UX/UI design, web development, ecommerce, and digital marketing solutions. We have extensive experience in developing, promoting, expanding, or reinventing your web presence.

Contact our Denver, Colorado office for a no-obligation, project cost analysis.