Even websites with the best intentions can fail to help their visitors miserably. Case in point: A 2008 website listing resources for disabled people covered every sort of disability recognized by the Americans with Disabilities Act, but people suffering from color blindness couldn’t look at the website for more than a few minutes. The colors contrasted sharply, making the content unreadable. Navigating around the website was nearly impossible, due to a lack of flow and clarity. In addition, it took a while to load.
The days of waiting for a page to load up from the top down over several minutes are over. Today’s websites are living and responsive sources of communication, information and entertainment. Web designers command a set of skills that allow them to make websites completely user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing. Web designers can also infuse tons of cool features and content that can turn visiting a website into a mini-vacation, according to www.webhostingbluebook.com.
Here’s a review of the new crop of Web design trends that designers are embracing:
Direct Social Media Access
This trend is especially useful for mobile Web users who see something they want to share immediately with their friends via social networking. If you look at quality blogs, you will see what looks like a bunch of tiny letters at first. Upon a closer look, they are the graphic symbols of social media networking websites. Like something and want to share it on Pinterest? Click the Pinterest symbol, and you’ve shared. There are several sites that allow you to add these symbols (called widgets) to your own blog.
Enhanced Text
The current crop of Web designers isn’t entirely focused on making websites graphically pleasing. Rather, they are focusing on the way the text looks on the site. The current trend is to make the text appear large and striking, using a font that stands out. There are many sites that draw the user’s attention with this trend instead of relying on flashy images.
All Content on One Page
Web browsing is evolving with this trend. To surf before was to find a website and trudge through an endless collection of Web pages. Now, designers are utilizing a one-page approach, where all content is literally placed all on one page. The information and content are divided up visually by lines and sectioned off in a top-down fashion. What better way to keep people on your page then having them scroll down through your content? This approach also goes a long way into branding your business, hence the rise in use by designers.
Hand-Drawn Graphics
The websites making great use of hand-drawn graphics interlaced with traditional Web design graphics, attract the visitors and compell them to stay on the website. If you’re designing a website, keep your original sketches. You may see an opportunity to revamp them and actually use them on your own site.
