Design Trends
If you look at the websites around these days they’re completely different to the ones you might have seen back in the day. The main reason websites change is because people find ways to make them more effective. They wouldn’t keep changing things around if it was going to cost them a lot of money, but do you know what this means? If you get left behind there is a chance you’re leaving money on the table. We’re going to look at some of the things that are popular at the moment. Don’t think you need to change everything about your site because that isn’t the way it works, but just be aware of what is working because making a few changes to your site could take it to the next level.
Infinite scrolling
Do you remember a few years ago when people told you nobody scrolled down the page? I guess something must have changed because more and more websites now have infinite scrolling so all their content is in the same place. You see this a lot on social media sites, but it obviously won’t work with every website because some will need to create permalinks for specific pages. It’s more suited to sites where the current information is always changing.
Responsive design
Anyone who spends any time in their analytics will have a responsive design because it’s crazy not to when someone knows how many people are accessing their site from a mobile device. Not only is a non-responsive design annoying for your readers, but you’re also throwing money away. If you currently run your website on WordPress you can pick up a responsive theme easily and there are a huge number of options available to you.
Lots of Whitespace
Some people still fill their website with as many things as possible, but the sensible ones know a business website should only do one thing. If you want to make money from your site the conversion rate is the most important thing in the world. It’s hard to have a great conversion rate when visitors have so many things to click on. If you don’t have a lot of whitespace on your site at the moment you should try taking things away to see what happens.
Professional Photos
A lot of websites are beautiful because they use big professional photos and it makes them stand out from the sites using horrible stock photos. Just because something is cheap doesn’t mean you should use it, especially when you’re trying to run a business. If you want to make a great impression like those other sites you will have to improve the quality of the photos you’re currently using at the moment.
Extra opt-in boxes
I’ve already talked about the conversion rate being the most important thing you need to concentrate on. People know their conversion rate will improve if they get a lot of people onto their email list, so they add a lot more opt-in boxes to their site. In the past you might have seen one at the top of the sidebar, but now they are scattered about everywhere. You can try it yourself and watch your email list explode.
Use of infographics
A few years ago you didn’t see many infographics floating around, but you can see them everywhere you look nowadays. People don’t use them because they have nothing better to do. If you look at the pages they’re on you will see the amount of social shares is through the roof. Before you publish any more articles you should think about whether or not the information would be better in infographic form because it might be worth trying one out.
This post has been contributed by Michael Todd, a web designer at PenTech Consulting, a leading SEO company based in Connecticut. He enjoys traveling and exploring new places when he gets free from work.
