Top Web Design Trends Your Business Should Implement

If you haven't changed up your website in a few years, it's time to consider an update. Just make sure it includes these 3 features.

Ever since businesses started using the Internet for commerce solutions, one thing's been constant: the need to evolve with consumer behaviors. Much like local brick-and-mortar stores need to adapt to compete with off-site retailers, so, too, do businesses need to adapt to the way customers interact with their sites when making a purchase.

As we move into a more mobile-driven landscape—and one where frictionless buying truly is the holy grail—website design mindsets need to change with the ever-evolving buyer. With that in mind, here are three of the top Web design trends for next year.

1. Truly Interactive Storytelling

There's a lot of buzz online at the moment about how businesses need to tell better stories to connect with their customers. The problem is, while this advice is generally good, it also places a lot of pressure on business owners to try to work out what your story is and how to tell it. Some companies have found a way to do it—just take a look at Tesla Motors.

The company's Go Electric page answers consumer questions about the evolution of the Tesla motor, how the electric-powered cars work, the benefits to users and much, much more. Check it out for yourself—simply scroll down the page and see how the story plays out with multiple forms of media.

This is the way to tell your brand's story, and you don't need the design budget of Tesla to do so. If you run a WordPress powered site, Aesop Story Engine is a wonderful solution that enables you to blend multiple media together to tell one cohesive story. From text and full-width images to overlaid videos, PDF embeds and historical timelines, it's an excellent and inexpensive solution for your business.

If you're not on WordPress, then Readz offers another solution for combining multiple media together into an embeddable presentation that can be used on pretty much any main Web platform. (You can see an example of the "9LIVES" project here.) 

This online form of brand storytelling is a powerful and inexpensive way to interact more with your customers and a great way to set yourself apart from your competitors.

2. Richer Backgrounds on Web Pages

One of the most underused components in Web design is the background of your site's pages. Many sites are content to have a simple dark font on a white background (or vice versa) and let the copy do the talking. However, you're missing a big opportunity to really attract your visitors' attention.

While there's been a rise over the past few years in using background images, the ability to really make backgrounds more than just static images opens up a whole new world of design potential. HTML video, for instance, allows you to have fully responsive HD video embedded in the background of whatever your sales page or call-to-action may be.

Think of sports teams selling season tickets: You enter which game you went to that year, and the site loads video replays of that game's best plays on-screen. Depending on which seat you choose, the video can highlight that, and the call-to-action could might be "Relive the magic again—your seat is reserved." The design is simple, effective and plays to the buyer's impulses, given their connection to the product, their sentiment around a victorious day and the very seat from which they watched it all happen. 

3. One-Page Scrolling Instead of Clicking

Scrolling website design, which is when all the information about your company, services and more is on one page, has its critics, mainly because of its potential impact on SEO and how one-page design is implemented. But there's no denying that it's becoming more popular—and understandably so.

Instead of having to worry about poorly implemented navigation menus that use multiple drop-down tabs, the one-page site can offer an elegant and effective experience for the end user.

Additionally, one-page websites are perfect for the kind of interactive storytelling highlighted at the start of this article.

Themeforest offers a great collection of HTML, site templates, WordPress themes and more that offer one-page scrolling with excellent support and documentation. Some good examples of one-page scrolling sites include:

• My Life Without Me 
• Beatrate 
• Whitmans

The Future Is Bright

These three trends are just a few examples of where the Web is heading from a design point of view in the coming 12 months and beyond. Also making inroads in Web design are:

• retina display, which allows for much higher-resolution browsing on tablets, smartphones and hi-definition monitors;
• material design, which takes the current-darling flat design and adds slight gradients and layers to achieve a richer effect; and
• a more personalized experience—driven by cookies—that remembers a visitor's preferences and loads up a customized UX on their next visit.

Creative Web design offers everyone a chance to make their business stand out. The great news is, the cost is becoming less prohibitive and the potential is only beginning to be realized.

by Danny Brown, Manager, iGaming

Keeping Up With Graphic Design Trends

What's hot in graphic design right now could be obsolete in six months, but that doesn't mean you can afford to ignore it. Just as in fashion, graphic design trends come and go. Here are a few trends that are in flux right now:

Skeuomorphism: On the Way Out

A skeuomorph is an icon or design that represents its purpose — the little envelope icon that represents email, for instance. When the computer revolution was in its early stages, that icon served a purpose: reminding people what they could do with email. Now, simple text reading "mail" would work just fine, which means that the little envelope is a skeuomorph. The practice is on its way out as designers refocus on elements that serve a clear purpose.

Flat Design: On the Way In

Flat design is what you're left with when you do away with skeuomorphism. It's minimalism on hyperdrive, reducing the user interface down to the bare essentials. Designers are moving away from using all the bells and whistles in their toolboxes and focusing instead on what works. Flat design is about functionality.

Retro Simplicity: On the Way In

Back in the early days of computer-based graphic design, graphics were simple, because that's all the medium could handle. Such designs, reminiscent of early video games, fit in perfectly with the minimalism of flat design.

Emotional Connection: On the Way In

There's never just one trend, and sometimes they're contradictory; graphic design trends are no exception. While minimalist, flat design is hot in user interfaces, graphics that tell a story are being adopting to provide an emotional punch. They're about real people doing real things that everyone can relate to. According to Shutterstock, demand for "real-life" images is up 347 percent.

Craftsmanship: On the Way In

On the surface, craftsmanship — meaning intricately detailed drawings — might seem contradictory to flat design. But both hearken back to the early days of graphic design, when the ability to create intricate images depended entirely on personal on computer power.

It is of utmost importance to stay on top of new trends and developments and to adapt your skills to give your clients what they want. A solid foundation in the elements of good design can give you the skills you need to meet the demands of any new trends.

Source: Briarcliffe College

Resolve to Communicate Better Despite Technology Lowering Standards

As we roll into 2016, it’s clear that a trend has become a pandemic – millions now speak and write in the workplace with an alarming lack of clarity, grammar and graciousness.

What’s to blame?

Social media has had a lot to do with it, making everyone his or her own star, and loosening (and thereby lowering) the standards and boundaries of public expression. But it goes deeper than that, to an accepted carelessness that’s rendered clear, lean, strategic communication increasingly rare, and thus more potent.

The New Year is an ideal time to review our careers, and implement changes that can strengthen them. By integrating the following old school communication resolutions with current technology, you can shoot the vocational lights out in 2016:

Be simple: With more options than ever by which to convey a message, the more confusing the message seems to get. Simplicity has never been more important. It’s increasingly rare because it takes a ton of time and hard work to get there. It’s worth every second. A straightforward, consistent, easily understandable story is the foundation of communication success. Once established, it can be effectively rolled out across a myriad of platforms.

Be brief: With each passing year, our collective attention span diminishes. To influence your audience – whether it’s one or 100,000 -- keep your narrative tight and bright. Brevity delivers impact. Write long, and cut short. When speaking, never go over the allotted time. It’s resented.

Be prepared: You’re a brand in a transforming world. Be able to tell others what value you bring – in no more than three points. Monitor, manage and protect your online identity – it can enhance your standing, or undermine it – for example, with drunken bathing suit shots from Cancun.

Be certain: Speak like the leader you are, or want to be. Start slowly, and put plenty of space around key words and phrases. Inflect down, not up. “Up talk” can make the most accomplished executive sound like a 12-year-old. And never begin a sentence with the word “like”, as in, “Like, I texted her, but she didn’t text back.”

Be listening: Give the people around you the time and respect to fully express themselves. Interruption is verbal mugging. When your boss, client or prospect is talking (and you aren’t), you’ll learn stuff. Silence is a killer app of the early 21st century. A famous quote goes: “Only silence is great.”

Be grammatical: One grammatical or spelling error – especially of someone’s name – can undermine the credibility of an otherwise sound document. Ditch online acronyms in business correspondence. If you’re speaking and flub, calmly correct yourself and move on. The bigger deal you make of it, the bigger deal it will become in the minds of your listeners.

Be positive: It’s easy to buy into today’s pervasive negativity, and hard to maintain an enthusiastic outlook amid an uncertain future. But leaders, in speech and correspondence, emphasize the positive while realistically acknowledging challenges. They seek to conclude every interaction on a high, knowing it can galvanize and inspire others. Negativity is a drag – so low end, so limiting, and so damaging to an organization. Optimism is contagious.

Be memorable: Business is about relationships. Look to expand and deepen yours. Compliment others, sincerely, not gratuitously. Take the time to hand-write notes. If you need to discuss a difficult issue with someone, it’s of course best to do so in person, or at least over the phone. However, if you absolutely have to do it by email, don’t copy the world, lest you escalate a situation that could have been resolved amicably.

That’s a worthy objective for 2016, and for years to come.

by Jim Gray, Special to The Globe and Mail