Here are 11 web design trends based around design, content, social media, and the fact that it’s no good looking pretty, if no one comes to look at you! Like fashion, fonts and website design styles also change. These trends show current changes that will keep your site up with the play. Although most sites get regular content updates, cosmetic updates happen on average every two years.

Gone are fancy Flash websites that make it hard for search engines to find and index information. Similarly landing splash pages that have pictures, and require you to click to enter do not allow robots to work out what is inside your site and make your site harder to find. Most clients are going for “Content Management Systems” which allow you to add and edit pages without having to pay a coder every time. You can publish new content especially blogs, immediately.

Blogs replace news pages: Have a blog page that automatically pings your articles onto article websites. This helps get more links to your site which helps improve your page ranking.

Video is the number one trend.  Here are a couple of examples: stylish helicopter sales pitch; and  Pure NZ have the budget to do these things nicely.  Keep them short – ideally under 2 minutes.    Gives you ability to demonstrate the experience, or build credibility if you are a services firm.

Adding additional landing pages. Conversion rates for landing pages that match keywords are 25% higher than pages that only match the theme of the keyword. Therefore optimizing the text on your landing pages is key for the most commonly searched terms by customers. Gone are the days when people might only arrive on your home page. If you have different categories, people often search on category info so you need to have a different “home” page for each of your key category pages.

Texture and ripped/broken lines are big such as scrunched up paper, layers or a collection of clear cut images.

Adding headings and sub headings rich in keywords. Most important at the moment is seeding relevant keywords and phrases into the content of your site.  This affects design only in that having relevant headings, and sub headings becomes important for search robots to know what to index your page for.

Gradient is back, and done more stylishly than in the seventies.  Pink is acceptable – more guys are courageously wearing soft and dark pinks these days.

Menu bars stay to the traditional top or just below a banner.  Secondary vertical menus are on the top left or top right.  This eye tracking picture of someone looking at a web site shows a typical  example of where the eye scans. Makes navigation for the user straightforward.  Navigation is also improved by the use of “bread crumbs) which show the hierarchy of how you got to this page so you can find your way back by category.

Web design trend - large photos

Large imagery conveys emotional connection. However not so large that all the text is invisible below the image, and you have to scroll to see it (a mistake I see many companies making!). In the Salomon example below, they can get away with a large pic being a big brand but this is at the expense of keyword text to give them more exposure for different categories.

Ads on your own website advertising your own products – why not?  Many people make their sites generate revenue by hosting ads for Google (Ad sense). This NZ House & Garden site uses business card style ads to draw you into their deeper pages.

In the Rabobank example, they have an “ad” for their interest rate.  There is a little bit of image movement which draws your attention to the interest rate.

Rabobank has ad for own interest rate on right hand side

Alexanders Internet Marketing does a range of web design projects: from cosmetic upgrades if your back end performs well but the visuals are dated; content editing sites to enable you to publish and control content without paying for a programmer for every little change; and economic site builds from a set of pre-designed templates.  If you’re in the mode, have a look at some of our web designs for Christchurch clients.

Any other trends you’ve noticed that I should add? I’d appreciate any links that you think demonstrate good ideas.  If you’re thinking of updating your web site, please have a look at our Christchurch-based web design and marketing service.

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Tags: christchurch, web, web design christchurch, website design trends

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 12th, 2010 at 6:24 am and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.