Happy New Year! 2015 brings all sorts of changes to the internet and web development / design. We’re seeing old trends come back and 2014 common trends fall away quickly!
Be sure to be Responsive! If your website is not Responsive in 2015 – you’re WAY WAY behind the curve. Make the investment this year and make your customers LOVE you even more! Want to know what Responsive Design is? Check out this page – https://webtegrity.wpengine.com/web-design-company-in-san-antonio/mobile-friendly-websites/
#1 No More Slideshows
In 2014 we saw pretty much every website have this rotating slideshow on the home page that companies would bog down with 3, 5, 10 slides. First of all – that drags your load time down drastically and the truth is – who is going to sit and watch those slides? No One! So ditch the slideshow and use great professional photography instead. Large photos (that load quickly) are the new 2015 trend.
#2 Large Fonts
Typography will be another focal point on websites this year. As we see more and more clean and simple websites appearing we find LARGE FONTS becoming eye-catching and really user friendly – giving them instant confirmation that they’ve found what they’re looking for and giving them clearer navigation.
#3 Storytelling
We’ve all been told that Content is King. But the question came to us over and over in 2014 – how much content do we need? What’s the magic word count? Our answer to that was always – The perfect text count is when you’ve told the story. Don’t beat a dead horse, but also don’t have such slim text on a page that you waste a user’s time.
This complaint would naturally be said, “But I can’t write 2,000 words when I blog.” Folks are getting around that by Storytelling. Not only is it more interesting for the end user to read, but it also is a very natural way to write. We’ve found that you can quickly go from 300 words to 5,000 – just by telling a story.
The end user becomes engaged quickly and will read and read, click and click to follow the story and become interactive… Goal Accomplished!!
#4 Longer Pages
As the blog article word count has increased – we’ve seen the page length predictably increase as well. This has been embraced by the end user and is once again acceptable. In 2015 we’ll see longer pages.
#5 Faster Loading Pages
With the larger images and the longer pages – you’d think that your website would severely slow down. However – website owners are going to push this year for faster load times. Hosting companies will start to brag and use as a selling point – their ability to load your website in under 2 seconds. That’s what you want! Faster if possible – and it is!
Be sure as you implement these new trends that you monitor your users’ experience and your analytics to gain insight directly from your customers. The last thing you want to do is frustrate them or cause them to lose interest in your website.
Monitor the time spent on the website. Monitor how many pages are visited per user. Be sure that any changes you make increase these numbers. Your bounce rate is another statistic that you always want to work toward lowering.
We here at WebTegrity hope that 2015 is a success for you online and that your website brings new business and more loyal customers! Happy New Year!
