A great user experience (UX) is crucial to keeping your online visitors interested and engaged. More than ever, people are spending hours on the web browsing at work, gaming on-the-go during a commute and utilising online tools to increase efficiency on a personal level. The demands of having a fast on-boarding experience and unparalleled user interface (UI) is becoming an industry standard for an unforgettable experience.
The year of 2014 has brought on new trends and best design practices in web and mobile and we would like to share this with all of you! Let’s jump right in:
1. Video Content
With production cost getting lower and the increasing upload of high-definition stock videography online, a short snippet of video is slowly taking the place of traditional copy on web and mobile interfaces. Continuous streaming of moving objects and people within a video brings about a whole new level of perceived interactivity, further captivating the audience to stay longer on your website.
2. Flat UI
The introduction of flat UI design elements marks the beginning of the retina-resolution design era. When Apple first released a design revamp in their iOS 7 update, the public took it as a hard hit but the flat UI trend is here to stay. The increasing screen resolution quality in hardware across Apple or other manufacturers demand elements of minimalism, absence of depth and use of simple colors.
For those who are in the development/design community, there are no shortages of useful libraries and downloadable kits for us to use. Scouring the web for UI kits is highly encouraged.
3. Responsiveness
We would have thought that the consulting and development community would have picked up on mobile responsive websites being the next standard to adhere to. But we are 3 to 4 years in with this concept and are still seeing plenty of Fortune 500 companies not adhering to these practices in user experience. At every forum, every conference, whenever you need to do a simple google search on something, the most commonly used device is mobile. So if you are not already part of the band wagon, don’t get left behind.
4. Parallax
Like the video content background mentioned above, the parallax effect has also been a hit in the past year as viewers are looking for new ways of engagement. No longer are slider images a hot topic. The parallax wows viewers with page depth and animation with its scrolling property, and it provokes the user's curiosity as the page moves at a different speed than the rest.
4. Fixed navigation bars
The past 2 years have given rise to the popular single page websites. This has called for fixed navigation bars to follow you as the user scrolls deeper to avoid getting lost within the website. Also named ‘sticky’ navigation bars, users can easily access core functionalities within the content area and reduce the time going through copious amounts of information.
I hope this has been a fruitful summary of the latest design trends. By no means does anybody have to adhere to it but it’s always good to know what sort of older design trends are phasing out so you can retain a fresh look for your users!