Top Web Design Trends for 2016

As 2016 sets in, many Sunshine Coast businesses are curious to know some of the top website design trends. This article provides a brief overview of the most interesting updates in web design and how they can affect the success of any online portal.

Sunshine Coast Web Design: Make 2016 a Stellar Year

It pays to be smart when designing a website. Modern techniques need to be highly efficient while making the most out of the resources at hand. 2016 is set to be a red-letter year for businesses which are able to take advantage of this maxim. How can turnkey website design solutions help?

Importance of Good Web Design

If you're the owner of a business, and you want your firm to keep up with the ever-changing conventions and practices of modern mercantile, then you'll need to implement professional-grade web design. While website design is a huge industry in itself, many people aren't aware of the important benefits of good web design.

How Does Web Good Design Lead to Better ROI?

Business clients need the best returns from investing in web design for any company on the Sunshine Coast, ensuring a unique and valuable experience for every browser landing on the site. Our region's top performing sectors include tourism, construction, retail and agriculture. Any start up faces stiff competition from established businesses when launching in these areas. The good news is that some = established business organisations haven't yet caught onto the benefits of great web design and just how important their website has become within any industry.

Key Elements of Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design (RWD) is more than simply adjusting a website’s layout and appearance to the appropriate screen size. Various other elements also enter the picture when determining how well a website responds to different screen sizes and orientations.

The SEO Benefits of Responsive Web Design

You’d think SEO and web design are two completely different beasts, but they’re not. The two processes go hand in hand such that you almost can’t do one without the other. In recent years, responsive web design has steadily become an SEO standard. You would not find a successful website that is not based on responsive design principles nowadays. Here’s why:

Optimising Sites for Mobile: No Longer Optional

With mobile web access overtaking desktop, it seems that “web design for mobile” should simply be “web design”. Design that does not take the mobile experience into account is just plain suicidal. Here are some tips on how to optimise your site for mobile devices.

Keep it Simple

A minimalist approach is highly recommended for both mobile websites and apps. Scrap the fancy 3D effects; a flat design makes it easier for users to comprehend your content and the functions in your website.

Make it Fast

If your site takes too long to load, then you are bound to drive users away. Remember that mobile web is generally slower than web browsing through fibre optic cables. Keep the mobile site load speeds short. Take it a step further by only including media when necessary and using images with small file sizes.

Go Responsive

Responsive web design (RWD) has been around for over a decade now but has only gained greater significance in recent years. Choosing RWD is not just about making a site equally optimal for viewing and use in mobile and desktop. It also allows your site to cope with the fact that mobile devices also have varying screen sizes.

Importance of Web Design in Conversion

For a business website, you should not be content with people visiting your site. You’ll want page views to turn into revenue as often as possible. Thus, all aspects of your online marketing campaign need to take conversion into account.

Web design is one effective vehicle to increase your conversion rate. Below are some characteristics of a website designed with conversion in mind:

Usable. Any design optimised for conversion is dependent on usability as its framework. After all, you can’t expect visitors to take action if you make those actions hard for them.

Persuasive. Making your site usable is just the first step. What you want to do next is to make each of your calls to action convincing. There are many ways to do this, such as putting your call to action in an enclosed or highlighted section, using colour theory, utilising whitespace, using a clear visual hierarchy, and implementing directional cues. Sometimes, a slight variation on visual design can make or break your website.

Shows Proper Priority. A website with good usability and persuasive design can still fail to convert visitors. This happens when visitors don’t grasp the difference between multiple options. When a page in your website has multiple calls to action, the user must be able to visually detect differences between the available options.

Two Technical Aspects of SEO

As many businesses and online marketers have come to realise, search engine optimisation (SEO) is far from simple. You must strike the right balance between what human users want and what search engine crawlers seek. Unless most of your visitors are web developers, they probably have little to no appreciation of your site’s source code.

That being said, you should care about the technical aspects of your website as these have an impact on your SEO efforts. Take broken pages, for instance, which require redirection. Whilst search engines mostly frown upon redirects as a black hat SEO tactic, you’ll need to redirect visitors to other pages in some instances. After all, you certainly don’t need search engines to crawl and index pages that do not work.

Top Web Design Trends for 2015

The core principles of web design, such as usability and consistency, remain constant. Some trends, however, should not be overlooked. Here’s a look at some of them.

The World is Flat

Minimalist, flat design (as opposed to highly stylistic Web 2.0 design) has become dominant in recent years and isn’t likely to go away any time soon. This characteristic is especially common among smaller design elements such as menus, icons, and illustrations. 

Alive with SVG

The XML-based Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format enables sharp and easily scalable web design elements as well as animation that help sites come alive.

Responsive Design

With new devices such as smart TVs and even watches making an entrance, the ability to provide a seamless browsing experience regardless of the user’s platform or screen size becomes more significant than ever. 

Why You Need Responsive Web Design

Before you move on to any other search engine optimisation efforts, you need to get your website’s design and content down pat. Your website, after all, should serve as a strong foundation of your business’ online presence. Responsive web design became a byword a few years ago when tablets and smartphones began to dominate the market, and has since seen widespread implementation. A mobile-responsive website has the following advantages. 

Functionality and Impact: Double-Edged Sword

In order for Sunshine Coast web design to be truly effective, both edges (functionality and impact) have to be kept clean and razor-sharp.

Functionality

It's of the utmost importance that visitors know how to use and navigate your site. On a desktop site people are used to seeing navigation at the top or on the left. Placing it somewhere else would be like putting the contents page of the book randomly in the middle. Extras could be added, but the basics need to be obvious.

Be Ready to Make Changes in Web Design

Continuous refinement in algorithms used by popular search engines like Google have always called the concern of many businesses, as this means that they have to implement changes towards their overall Internet marketing strategies. The most common among revisions companies have to make on their online promotion efforts is the style or technique employed in web design.

Over the years, a number of web design trends came and went, like the creation of a separate mobile website, using web templates and flat website design, and employing big images and flash in letterbox format. At one point, all these web design elements dominated the Internet and have even web designers scrambling to outdo others in a particular style (as they still do today). However, web design principles continue to evolve along with the reinvention of the Internet as a place that facilitates efficient information exchanges.

While it cannot be expected or predicted when a particular web design concept will last or remain a favorite among designers and search engines, businesses must always be prepared to make the necessary changes. Being ready to adapt to new trends will be a useful attitude that can help companies bring their A-game when competing with their peers.

SEO Trends for 2015

2014 is in the home stretch, and before long, you’ll be hanging a new calendar on the wall. In the world of online marketing, though, a lot can happen in 12 months. As such, you need to know the latest traffic-boosting techniques to maintain your business’ competitive edge through 2015.

To help you achieve this, here are three important SEO trends you need to know for the upcoming year:

Conversational Phrases

Gone are the days when Google interpreted search terms on a word-for-word basis; now, it tries to make sense of the meaning behind phrases—as if you were talking to a person. As a result, integrating keywords in a conversational or natural manner becomes even more important.

Brand Mentions

Google eventually caught on that backlinks can be utilized to artificially boost a site’s search ranking. Nowadays, it takes a more nuanced approach to understanding a website’s popularity by focusing on implied links or “brand mentions”—references to your company or brand without the use of hyperlinks. In the next year, cultivate your brand so netizens will talk about your brand on blog posts and social media updates in a positive light.

Holistic Approach

SEO is no longer just about strategic keyword placement, it’s now a holistic marketing strategy which involves building a fast, mobile-responsive website, posting useful articles for readers, being an active player in social media, and producing multi-media content.

Sunshine Coast Web Design: Smart Design Begins at UX Task Analysis

At no point were available solutions or current technology discussed until they identified the desired outcome: a quick and effortless way to allow men to shop for flowers for women. By sticking to this ideal, Proflowers outpaced its competition, pulling the most profitable segment of the market out from under them.

The approach Marine shares in his article has important implications that apply to the process of contracting services for web design in Sunshine Coast. It reminds companies to focus on understanding customers’ needs first when having a website designed, rather than chasing after features that they don’t really need.

http://marketing.theproduct.com.au/industry-news/sunshine-coast-web-design-smart-design-begins-ux-task-analysis/

On Site, In Sight: On Creating Proper Web Design in the Sunshine Coast

Young and tech-savvy employees can indeed bring something fresh and exciting to the table. Yet while the cost-saving prospects may prove attractive, businesses need to be more serious about constructing a compelling website and should be willing to invest in professional web design in the Sunshine Coast. A trusted company like Marketing theProduct can help businesses command a strong online presence through the kind of web design that delivers great visuals and a great site navigation experience with search engine optimisation and other online marketing techniques.

The layout, content, and overall design of a website shouldn’t be left in the hands of a raw recruit if a business hopes to attract more customers online. Instead, one should do the smart thing and enlist a Sunshine Coast web design expert for optimum results.

http://marketing.theproduct.com.au/industry-news/site-sight-creating-proper-web-design-sunshine-coast/