New Year, new you—you’ve heard it before. How about New Year, new website?
When was the last time you redesigned your website? A couple of years ago? Never?
Think of your website like a bowl of Doritos and think of the Internet like a summer lawn party. If you let that bowl sit out in the heat too long, those chips are going to lose their crunch. Sure, maybe a few desperate (and most likely drunk) people will still partake in a soggy, cheesy triangle or two, but most people are going to look elsewhere for a better snack.
As technology improves, the online marketing arena changes with it.
It doesn’t take long for your website to look outdated.
If you think of your website as an online brochure, you probably don’t care if it looks outdated. But if you think of your website as a virtual sales rep and a lead generation machine, you’re not going to want it to wear last year’s Campbell’s.
At the very minimum, your website should be SEO friendly, user friendly, and attractive—a.ka. not a seizure-inducing eye sore. But if you really want to impress your potential customers, you’re going to want that sucker to be a bit more cutting edge.
Fortunately for you, the head of Blue Corona’s Web team—Chase Wolf—has shared his predictions for the hottest Web design trends in 2014.
Responsive Sites
We’ve talked about the importance of having a responsive site before, and in 2014 you’re going to see even more websites going responsive.
According to Chase, “As tablets and Windows 8 continue to saturate the market, the need for sites to scale freely across devices is only going to grow. Google’s stance on going responsive to have only one website is another factor pushing the market further down this path. I expect more open source add-ons in the coming year to help existing website ‘go responsive’ in a quick and simplistic way.”
Flat Design Techniques
And now for something a bit more aesthetic! “Intense obvious gradients are a thing of the 90’s,” Chase told me while obviously ignoring the fact that the 90’s were my favorite decade.
“For anyone who has seen the newest Apple IOS design, you will notice that gradients and implied depth are being replaced with a more flat 2-D approach,” he said. “Overlapping flat elements are being used to replace shadows and harsh gradients to create depth. Parallax in slideshows are helping push flat design as well.”
And speaking of parallax…
Parallax Scrolling
According to Chase, parallax scrolling is a technique to create depth by allowing multiple elements to be animated individually. So on a rotating banner you might see the background scroll in, the text overlay in a fade in transition and still a third icon tile in at the end.
“This creates a unique interaction that gives the user a feeling that there is more at play then just one static banner image changing,” he said.
Dynamic Websites
Pushing the boundaries of interaction even further are dynamic websites with HTML5 animations, side page scrolling, and complex JQuery effects. All of these elements work together to make your website feel more alive.
“It seems that more and more sites are testing the single page scrolling with anchors that auto scroll your view to that section of the page. This technique means you don’t have to load new pages,” Chase said. “Similarly, the advanced HTML5 and JQuery scripting techniques are encouraging more interaction now to keep the short attention spans engaged and coming back to see the cool elements of a given page.”
Ready for a New Website in 2014?
Blue Corona can help! Our goal is to build SEO-friendly, user friendly, and attractive websites that will help you generate more leads and sales from the Web. Contact us today for more information.
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About The Author: Blue Corona is a data-driven online marketing company with offices in Gaithersburg, MD and Charlotte, N.C.
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