Web development is as relevant as never before. More and more businesses, organizations and individuals are establishing their presence online. More and more local software is being moved into the cloud. The industry is experiencing big changes as users are shifting towards mobile internet experiences. Therefore in order to achieve specific goals and to drive real customer value web developers have to adjust to the latest changes in the environment. Here are the web development trends for 2015, guiding where the industry is heading. Inspired by Acodez.
Responsive Web Design
It’s one of the biggest trends in web development, evolving naturally from the users’ need to access information from different devices, gadgets and tools. Not only it is essential in providing visitors with enhanced experience, but also it’s a strong requirement for Google web standards and becomes and important aspect of SEO.
Together with the responsive trend, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is gaining popularity. It’s related to the same need of responsive design and to scale and downscale pictures and fonts without losing their quality.
Simplified Navigation
The web clutter is growing rapidly and users become more and more demanding in terms of simplicity, clarity and immediate recognition of potential interest and value. Therefore there is a trend of simplifying navigation to make sure users understand it immediately and do not drop-off frequently. Web designers and web developers try to balance two extremes – presenting all the navigation options upfront and risking to overpopulate the page with clear minimalism and a threat that users will not be able to navigate themselves. Yet, it seems that minimalistic and clean patterns seem to dominate more.
Parallax scrolling
It’s another technique to enhance customer experience. It’s comprised of two pictures on top of each other, where the background item moves slower than the one on top. This is how a depth and immersion effects are being created. It requires different attributes to successfully implement Parallax effects. One way is creating image layers through attribution as well as assigning a scroll function and determining different velocities for each of them. These tasks should be followed by CSS or HTML fixes to adjust to different browsers. Parallax is not easy to implement, yet visually enriches the web and help to distinguish it from the majority of boring websites.
Personalised Content
Personification is a great trend in general. It can be spotted in emerging consumer businesses (Birchbox), in the advertisement world (Youtube ads) and obviously in the increasing demand for personified content (Feedly, Medium). Web development is also pushed hard to develop solutions for content personification. Complementary and suggested products start having more weight. User accounts with personal profiles and then content, tailored for those personal details, are becoming more and more relevant.
Flat Design
Design-wise there is a strong movement towards a minimalistic design, stressing usability. It’s characterized by clarity, open spaces, sharp edges, bright colors and flat icons.
A great example of flat design can be Microsoft implementing it into it’s latest versions of Windows OS. Instead of trying to convert elements of real life into accurate digital representations, flat designers simply use icons as symbols.
The Year of Html5 and Css3
HTML5 is definitely on hype nowadays. It’s built to help web developers avoid additional extensions. HTML5 does not have specific policy restrictions and is relatively cheap. Most importantly it does not depend on specific devices, thus bug fixing is relatively easier.
CSS3 usually works with other modules, which assist to build simple animated design elements as well as transitions. The success factor of this technology is the combination of simplicity with powerful front-end development results.
Maps Integration
Needless to say, we start living in the integrations world. They even redefine CIS (Chief Information Officer) as Chief Integrations Officer. Therefore in many cases when geographical representation of a location is needed, a map is suggested to be placed on the website. The integrations trend suggests using the existing cloud solutions, where Google Maps appear to be the most popular. It also helps users smoothly transit from having an address to actually navigating towards it using mobile devices.
Big Letters in Typography
Many companies, creative agencies as well as web designers choose big fonts in order to grab visitors attention. Sometimes for companies the web typography even differs from their established brandbooks, which brings some spice to the brand and its website and also illustrates the need to align with the latest web development trends. The big texts are often accompanied by minimal design (simple background without any other design attributes).
Gridlines
An illustration above is an example of another web design and development trend, relevant for many designers, UI, UX specialists as well as product managers. It’s the gridlines effect and layout derived from it. Nothing for it, nothing against it – however, it’s part of the trends in 2015. The weighted proportions, “German” order, discipline and clarity contribute to the appealing design of a website.
Landingpage With Animated Images
In order to spark emotions and attract user’s emotions many web designers suggest having a static clean and minimalistic landing page, with big fonts expressing the essential message and then next to that adding a animated images or simplified videos to make the website pretty attractive. Toggle is a great example of that.
Here we go! The list is definitely not inclusive, so feel free to comment about other trends and especially, sub-trends as there are so many of that it’s difficult to cover all. We hope this post will help you to check if you are aligned with the latest developments in the web industry as well as teach something new.
