Looking back at 2015 Web Design Trends

2015 was a big year. As a web designer and web developer, there were so many things to get excited about. In this article I am covering a briefly about some of web design trends that were quiet big and influential in how we design and develop websites. Rather than including points like usage of […]

web design trends 2015

2015 was a big year. As a web designer and web developer, there were so many things to get excited about.

In this article I am covering a briefly about some of web design trends that were quiet big and influential in how we design and develop websites. Rather than including points like usage of white spaces, usage of bigger images, I am trying to trace some technical aspects of trends that were quiet prominent last year.

Responsive Design was hot as ever

Responsive design already had been quiet hot topic in the web design community. With Google prioritising mobile website with the release of Mobile Friendly Algorithm and making it part of SEO Rankings, there was rise in number of website going mobile friendly. In most of the case, responsive web design was preferred choice.

Rise of Material Design

Material design had been here for a while. If you don’t know what material design is, it’s the design principle advocated by Google. Material design primarily focuses on the usage of good design and development principles to enhance user experiences. Good Typography, grid based design, motion animations [including CSS3 and JavaScript] etc are core parts of Material Design.

If you are interested in learning more about Material design you can have a look on official Material Design Site.

Data Driven Design

Data driven design as name goes is a design methodology that depends on real analytical data. Data can be generated from Analytical tools like Google Analytics or from various marketing process such as surveys and questionnaires.

With Data Driven Design aren’t based on any hypothesis rather than they are based on proper and accurate information in the form of various data. Various or different designs are implemented or tested using A/B Split test method to choose the one that converts well.

Flat Designs - Designing for Speed

Late 2015, when Google made changes and consider the speed as one of the ranking factors.

Does a good design help make site faster. Yes it does. A good and well planned design definitely help website loads faster. Towards this shift, the site are becoming more and more relying towards flat design. If you are interested in learning about flat design, please refer to this article I wrote about Flat Design.

Mobile First Approach

With the rise of mobile user, and continually growing on exponential figure, it wasn’t a big surprise to see the rise Mobile First Approach.

With mobile first approach, web design starts with first targeting mobile devices which is gradually accommodated to facilitate the desktop designs.

Conclusion

Web design should be done with end user in mind. There is no point of having website if it doesn’t convert and deliver the end results you are looking for. Web accessibility, user experiences and SEO are always part of website. And they can start right from the web design in process. A good well planned web development strategy, marketing campaigns or SEO starts right from the web design process.

For someone like me who is targeting small to medium business, the concept of being full stack web developer had risen recently. Working as a team, never have been as important too. A good collaborative effort surely leads to better converting websites.