7 Trends That Will Shape Web Design Come 2017
Web designers in 2017 have to deliver an interactive, personalized and relevant user experience.
One size no longer fits all, and design teams need to address this reality. But how do web designers rise to the challenge?
Here are some fast emerging web design trends you can expect to see more of in the year ahead3 — trends that will propel your website to the top in user.
1.Material Design & Material Motion
Material design is a visual language developed by Google to create a unified experience across platforms and device sizes.
Bold, graphic and intentional material design creates hierarchy, meaning and focus. It makes flexible use of grid-based layouts, padding, responsive transitions and animations, lighting and shadow depth effects.
Motion in material design provides meaning. Material can be spontaneously generated or destroyed anywhere in the environment and you can make it move along any axis.
Google wanted to give unified experience to all users regardless of screen size. It has applied material design to all of its Android mobile applications including Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, YouTube, Google Maps, and, to a certain extent, its Chrome browser.
Google design has become standard and will continue shaping many web applications in 2017. Earlier this year, Google removed paid right hand side ads from search results.
2.Grids, frameworks and pre-made themes
As CSS frameworks and grids mature, more and more coders use them as a basis for their web development work. They allow beginner coders to step up their game and they help digital agencies to streamline their production. Frameworks might sometimes contribute to bloated code but they cut down development time and take care of responsiveness, which makes them a good choice for many digital projects.
In addition to Bootstrap, UIKit and Foundation, which have been around for a while, new front-end development frameworks such as Suzy, Jeet and Breakpoint are also getting traction.
Pre-made themes from EnvatoMarket and TemplateMonster can also be a valid choice. Developers of paid templates tend to respond to customer feedback and continuously iterate their product, so some of the most popular themes have now gone through many improvements, to become what they are today.
3.Flat Colors
Google Material Design was first introduced in 2014. It’s a set of principles and best practices for web designers and mobile app developers. Google Material Design is about going back to basics, focusing on what’s important, but still accounting for multiple resolutions and devices – an over-engineered simplicity, if you like.
Google Material Design with its flat colours isn’t the only approach to web and mobile app design but it continues to be popular and trendy. Fabulous app, Google Material Design Awards winner, is a remarkable example of Google Material Design principles at its best.
4.Custom Explainer Videos
Big and small companies alike have taken to the trend of custom explainer videos. These are often created with animation like the Crazy Egg example. But other videos rely on real-life footage like Instagram Direct.
The purpose of an explainer video is to demonstrate how a product or service works. Visitors may skim a list of features and still have no idea how the product operates. Videos clarify everything visually and cover the important stuff in just a few minutes.
If you want to try your hand at making a custom explainer video check out this Udemy course. It’s an in-depth study focusing on videos for landing page design.
5.Performance and intelligent analytics insight
Average weight of the homepage across the websites reviewed in this article is approximately 3.5MB. With all the high resolution images, interactive scripts, font replacement techniques, webpage performance requires special consideration. “If you can make the site load a second faster, you can drive engagement by 5%" according to Financial Times. Note the use of engagement as website metrics in this quote. Intelligent insight that goes beyond page views and unique visitors is increasingly important for understanding what works and what doesn’t on your website.
6.Greater Focus on UX Design
The field of user experience design will continue to grow rapidly with more designers and developers taking notice. UI design is part of UX design but it’s not the final goal. UI is a means to an end, with the end being a fantastic user experience.
7.Server-Side JavaScript
While there have been past options for server-side JS, none have permeated as quickly as Node.js. JavaScript devs have fallen in love with this library and watched it rise into direct competition with other backend languages such as Python or PHP.
Conclusion
Looking over these trends it should be clear that we’re seeing a real concerted effort from the web community to make the process of building websites easier. We all want to save time in our day-to-day workflow.
Since the web’s inception we’ve seen many technologies rise, only to be replaced by better alternatives. These 2016 trends are pushing for a more uniform set of design techniques that will make building websites easier and much less complex.
