Website design

Trevor Johnson looks at the key developments to consider if you’re having your website updated this year

How much business does your website attract? If the latest studies are to be believed, probably not as much as you’d hoped - and there could be good reason for that. A recent London Business School survey apparently found that small and medium-sized enterprises that hadn’t updated their websites for up to two years were the ones that consistently complained about a lack of visitors.

“Website development is moving so fast that regularly updating is now essential,” web design consultant Hilary Prentice says. “You simply can’t afford to be left behind.”

Mobile market

Experts predict that many of the expected 2015 website trends will be based on the needs of the ever growing mobile web user. Hilary explains: “Consumers want something that is functional and fast, while also being visually pleasing.

“Companies that disregard the mobile web user in the coming year could be in serious danger of holding products back from reaching a mass market. The number of people using mobile devices to access the web is increasing every month and it will soon be the most common way to visit websites, particularly in the business-to-business market.

“Having a website that can be easily viewed on a phone or a tablet, along with traditional desktops, is a must - customers want products or services to be available 24/7 wherever they are.”

If you’re having your website updated for the coming year, what are the key developments to go for? Here are some that experts are tipping as major developments businesses would be foolish to ignore:

Responsive web design is expected to become a must-have feature, but remember that if you are building apps rather than websites, they are very different and RWD won’t help you.

Twitter Bootstrap and Zurb Foundation are two of the most popular RWD frameworks at the moment for targeting mobile users.

Some people may have mixed feelings about Windows 8, but it has provided the foundation for what is being called flat design, which is expected to remain a major website influence in the coming months.

Basically, flat design is simple and elegant, with clean lines and elements that appear smooth and minimalistic on screen, with the use of vibrant colours (more on this later) to help bring the site to life. A major advantage of flat design is that it’s quick to load.

Typography is becoming increasingly important when planning websites, computer print expert Alan Hodgson says, who predicts:

“One trend we can expect to see is typefaces with personality. With emphasis on content to get better search results, using non-boring typography is the new medium of style and sophistication that can easily be added to websites - high quality fonts are available at a reasonable price or even free.

“We expect to see many more websites in 2015 getting away from standard and overused typefaces and instead using some with more style and personality.”

Has your website got a hero area? “To me, this is the number one trend in web design at the moment,” Hilary Prentice says. “In simple terms, a hero area - a term borrowed from print design - involves an image with a small amount of text at the top of a website. They are quickly replacing sliders as the new attention grabbers and are becoming increasingly creative and elaborate.”

Bigger images

Of course, using pictures has always been a major way of putting over ideas online - and the 2015 trend is for even bigger images. But some experts warn they shouldn’t overwhelm the text and that content is always more important than images.

On the other hand, there’s a growing philosophy that puts videos in place of text. Says online consultant Amber Leigh Turner: “Why read about it when you can watch it, especially in hero areas?

“Videos are becoming easier to produce and easier to share, not only on a website, but on social media as well. While some may argue that videos don’t belong on a website’s home page due to the large amount of data they take to load and run - especially on mobiles - videos are an effective way to communicate something technical or new when words just don’t cut it.”

You can also expect to see more and bigger scrolling sites in the coming months, if expert predictions are correct. Says blogger Qadir Rahim: “Scrolling, or parallax sites, as they are also known, can be very pleasing aesthetically. Traditionally, sites with multiple pages are nice to work with and while it is more difficult to optimise a parallax site, it can be done.

“Remember it is far more user friendly to scroll on a smartphone or tablet than have to click around and wait for pages to load. Long scrolling sites are starting to appear again and the content is more organised and in a much easier format to digest than in the past. They don’t seem boring because in many cases the layout continually changes.”

Simple colour schemes are all set to be a major 2015 website trend, often relying on one or two shades or just black and white incorporated in the latest flat designs. But that doesn’t mean colour isn’t important - it’s never been more vital in the race to grab a browser’s attention away from other sites.

For instance, according to top website colour consultant Brian Morris, red is the colour of power and the most popular shade for online marketing: “It gets people’s attention and holds it. But don’t overdo it.”

If you want to be viewed as trustworthy and cool, blue is the colour to go for. Mix it with complementary colours for the best results. Targeting a young female audience? Then you can’t go far wrong with pink. It’s regarded as fun and totally feminine.

Yellow is a powerful colour, but also the most dangerous. Use it to grab your audience’s attention and let them know you’re confident of your abilities. Green is a valuable website colour - not only is it warm and inviting, but it denotes health, the environment and goodwill. It’s also the colour of money and creates thoughts of wealth.

Purple is the royal colour, which makes it great for giving a touch of elegance and prestige to a marketing campaign. The same goes for gold, which adds an element of power that purple can’t match. Combine gold with purple or green to symbolise wealth and pedigree.

According to the pundits, orange is the colour of energy and has powerful attention grabbing properties. Brian Morris says: “It’s fun and cool and makes customers feel they’re dealing with a cutting edge company.” On the other hand, brown is regarded as a comfortable and relaxing shade. And black? Apparently it adds weight and drama to any mood you want to create.

Simplified content

Experts believe 2015 will be the year of simplified website content, resulting in short bursts of content, as our attention spans apparently become shorter. Not many areas on the latest websites will have more than about 250 characters, catering for users who like to swiftly scan a page.

Many sites are already dropping sidebars, allowing for more visual impact and easier responsive web development, with less distractions to get in the way of the central message.

Manipulated imagery is opening up a whole new website trend, according to Hilary Prentice, who says: “Expect to see more colour overlays, blurred images or even pictures reminiscent of Instagram images with filters. Thanks to the latest technology, images can be manipulated to match the feel of the rest of the site.

“The majority of the latest trends are based on the needs of the ever growing mobile web user market, which will only get bigger and more demanding. Get left behind this year and there’ll be an awful lot of catching up to do.” MM