With the rise of new media technology, it’s become essential for companies to promote their products and businesses with creative web design.
Studies show that 87% of Americans use the internet. For marketers, this means that one of best places to reach potential customers is online. Businesses without a strong online presence are missing out on thousands of potential clients.
But it’s important to remember that technology and web design are constantly changing and growing. In order to design the best webpage, it’s crucial to stay up to date with current creative web design trends. This will ensure that your page looks fresh, rather than outdated.
Let’s take a look at some of the most important creative web design trends of 2017.
Why Trends Matter
Staying up to date on creative web design trends isn’t just a matter of aesthetic preferences. It’s also a matter of usability. If your website looks old and outdated, it will turn visitors away.
Human computer interaction studies show that visitors decide whether they like a particular webpage in the first ten seconds of visiting it. If your website looks clunky or is difficult to use, visitors will likely decide to leave.
Keeping your website up to date will help make it easier for your customers to use. The easier it is to use, the more time they’ll spend there, which will lead to more conversions and revenue.
Make Yourself Credible
The internet is the ultimate public square. Through blogs and social media, anyone can go online and publish content. In most cases, there is little to no effort to fact-check this content.
Because of this, many users have become skeptical of the content they find on line. To address this, it’s important to make it clear that your company is an authority.
Your website will be the first impression that most customers have of your business. To establish your credibility, you must incorporate creative web design that makes your site look professional.
Another way to establish credibility is by creating original content that is high-quality and produced by qualified people. Visitors will be able to evaluate this content on its own merits and judge your credibility accordingly.
Diversify Your Content
When it comes to building your digital presence, content is king.
Modern consumers are skeptical of ads and “hard sells.” Instead, consumers prefer to patronize businesses that inform their customers with creative and compelling content.
To make great content for your website, it’s important to include multiple types of content. While text content can be informative, evidence shows that pictures and videos are more engaging. In fact, millennials are 112% more likely to share a video than a text article.
Video can be a great medium to use for describing and explaining your products and services to customers. With a video, you can demonstrate the product or service in use. Seeing what your company has to offer in action can be a great way of helping customers appreciate your value.
When you incorporate video content and pictures into your creative web design, make sure to use authentic content. Stock photos won’t be able to tell the story of your company in the same way that original content can.
Virtual Reality and 360 Video
As technology has advanced, we’ve developed new and innovative ways of creating video content. Lately, it’s become popular to use VR headsets to record active videos.
360 video could be a great source of unique, original video content to incorporate into your website. This could create a virtual reality experience for your visitors that makes them feel immersed in your product or service.
Add GIFs
Another engaging form of content is the GIF. These animated images work particularly well in banners and advertisements.
If you include video content and GIFs on your web page, visitors will be more likely both to watch it and to share it on social media. This, in turn, will drive even more visitors to your site.
Don’t Forget About Load Times
One of the main features of creative web design is that it relies on a variety of engaging and multi-modal content. While this content is effective in engaging visitors, it also requires a lot of bandwidth. This can make your website slow down, and lead to long loading times.
Luckily, there are some steps you can take to make your web pages load faster. First, make sure not to put too much multimedia content on one page. A page will not be able to load as quickly if there are multiples videos on it.
Also, make sure not to overload your homepage with too much content. The homepage is the most visited page, so if there are many visitors on it at the same time, this will slow it down.
Avoid including video content that plays automatically. This will slow down the page’s loading time, which can be frustrating to users. It’s also especially frustrating for mobile users, which do not have the same capability as a computer.
If your webpage has high traffic, consider investing in a private server, rather than sharing a server with other websites. This will help your pages load quickly more consistently.
Pay Attention to Typeface
Even when you add video content to your site, creative web design will still include plenty of written content. To make this content engaging, it’s important to use an attractive and interesting font.
For longer articles, it’s important to choose a font that is clear, and readable. That said, we recommend not using Time New Roman. While this font is standard, it’s almost too standard, which can make it look plain and boring.
It’s also important to consider font when developing logo design. Your logo will be featured prominently on your webpage, so it’s important to choose an interesting font that will make the logo memorable. Some logos even include multiple fonts, which can also be interesting.
Choose Color Wisely
The colors you use on your web page will be one of the first things that visitors notice. It’s important that the colors you choose communicate your business’s identity. The colors you choose should also work together, rather than clashing.
Bold colors will grab a visitor’s attention. That said, make sure to use one or two bold colors, so as not to overwhelm the senses. Combining bold colors with simpler colors is a good way to create contrast.
Also, keep in mind the connotations that different colors typically have. For instance, green is usually associated with nature or new beginnings, while blue is associated with authority. Choose colors that align with your business.
Keep in mind that the colors you choose are closely tied to your brand. Your logo, your website, and your printed documents should all use the same color scheme. This will make your brand easily recognizable.
Duotone
Another popular color trend in creative web design is duotone. Duotone refers to images that are composed of just two colors. These types of images are particularly popular for thumbnails or profile pictures on social media.
Duotone can be a great way to add your brand to images, by using your colors. It can also make your images look more interesting. Be careful not to overdo it, though; too many duotone images can look tacky, or cliche.
Modern Retro
We’ve all heard the saying that there’s nothing new under the sun. There are many designs that are trendy in 2017 that are based on trends from earlier times.
Whether it’s your video, your color choice, or your typography, keep in mind that retro looks are coming back in style. Many web designers are incorporating images from the 80s and 90s and giving it a modern twist.
Pixelated art is a good example of a vintage look that has come back into style. Sketches and modular layouts also feature a retro look that can be updated.
Modular Design
Let’s take a moment to look at modular design in more detail. Modular design uses a grid or block layout to display content.
This design style clearly separates different types of content. Text, pictures, and video can be laid out logically on a single page. This makes it easy for visitors to navigate and understand.
Make Use of Negative Space
When it comes to creative web design, less is more. A website with too much content on it can look busy and crowded. It can also be difficult for a visitor to navigate.
By contrast, using empty, or negative space allows your page to “breathe,” and give the user’s eye a rest. It also helps direct the user’s eye to the content you want them to focus on.
Mobile Friendliness Is a Necessity
In the last decade, smartphones have become nearly ubiquitous.
People use their phones to contact people, get directions, and search the web. In fact, 60% of all web searches are conducted from a mobile device.
This means that, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, that you’ll be missing out on more than half of your potential visitors. Additionally, lacking a mobile design can hurt your website’s search engine rankings. This is because many search engines have changed their algorithms to favor mobile-friendly sites.
It’s also important not to treat your mobile-strategy as secondary. Instead, your company should adopt a mobile-first attitude, assuming that most visitors will be using a mobile device.
To take mobile-first to the next level, you can consider supplementing your creative web design by developing a mobile application for your business. This will make it even easier for customers to conduct transactions from their phone.
Another recent development in mobile is a cohesive experience. Many users begin interacting with a website on their smartphone, and then move to a tablet or laptop. Websites should be optimized to make this transition seamless.
Streamline Navigation
For a long time in creative web design, websites focused on complex navigation bars to guide visitors through the site. But for many reasons, creative web design has been moving away from this feature, and towards a scrolling homepage.
For one, a scrolling home page is more mobile-friendly than a complex navigation bar. Also, it allows you to highlight multimedia content.
One creative way to optimize navigation is to use engaging images. These pictures will draw your visitors’ attention, and help them identify the section on your web page that they want to visit.
Interactive Interfaces
Another popular technology trend in 2017 is artificial intelligence. In addition to personal assistants for smartphones, AI can also be a great addition to your website.
Many sites have added conversational chatbots to their web pages. These bots help users find exactly what they need quickly and easily. They can even be optimized to connect users with a human assistant if they need additional help.
Tracking Visitor Behavior
Web page analytics have made it easier for companies to track the behaviors of users that visit their website.
This information can show you the exact path that visitors take when they visit your page by tracking their clicks. This will help you to understand which content is most engaging. It will also help you understand how visitors actually interact with your site.
You may have designed your site intending for users to take one path, but analytics might show that they actually take a very different path. If you notice many users doing this, it might indicate that you should consider adjusting your design.
Lately, web designers have also become interested in microinteractions. These are small actions such as liking a blog post. Paying attention to these minor activities will help you create more of the content that your customers like.
Putting Creative Web Design to Work
Keeping an eye on these trends will help your company build a dynamic website that your customers will love. Driving customers to your web page will help your business to grow.
If you’d like to learn more about creative web design could improve your business, contact us. Our experts will work with you to develop the perfect solution for your company’s needs.
