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?

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.

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.

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.

Here’s what People Hate Most about your Website

If you’ve ever wondered why your website is still ranked at the lower half of the search results pages (and way below the positions of your competitors’ sites), you could point to one culprit: people simply don’t like it and what’s contained in it. Here are a few reasons.

How it works on mobile – People don’t have time to face their PCs anymore, so they turn to their phones—but what they experience on sites like yours are extremely long loading times, coupled with poor responsiveness and visuals.

How Web Design Can Affect Your Site’s SEO

Web designers sometimes get too creative and forget why they are creating a site. Some are probably under the impression that if they focus on optimisation, their creativity will be stifled. The truth is designers should work closely with SEO experts to create outstanding web design in the Sunshine Coast because too many bells and whistles could end up making a lot of noise and undermining the site’s optimisation.

Not-so-hot Flash

Inasmuch as Flash is interesting to watch, it doesn’t get indexed by search engines, thereby lowering the site’s ranking. Designers should use it sparingly, and not with important content and navigation. Search engine spiders also devalue java applets and non-textual content.

Newbie Web Design Pitfalls to Avoid

Small businesses should always make it a point to make and build their own website so their target market can easily find them. However, even if you’ve hired a reputable web design company, don’t be in a rush to get your site on the Net before you have inspected it thoroughly, particularly for any of these potential problems:

Text Walls

A website, especially one for a business, should entice visitors and encourage clicks. Now, what would make you want to see more of a site you’re visiting, seeing a clean homepage with simple images and a few engaging words for content, or one with nothing but a wall of text that could make your eyes ache before you can even figure out what it’s about? Definitely it’s the former.

Complex Navigation

If you want your customers to keep coming back to your site to do business with you, then make sure that it won’t take them too long just to find the page or content that they’re looking for. Keep it simple and easy to navigate (put a search bar on top of your home page to make things even easier).

Needy Popups

There are two ways to do popup windows on your site: one that gives suggestions or further information to your visitors, and one that motivates them to perform actions like subscribe or post comments before they can continue. The latter will only serve to catch the ire of your clients.

The Value of a Good Website Design

One of the most common mistakes businesses make in their online marketing efforts is that they do not pay much attention to their website’s aesthetics and navigability. They concentrate on optimizing basic SEO tools, such as sitemap creation, title tag optimization, and link building. While these methods are essential in catching users’ attention, they are hardly capable of keeping visitors’ interest and converting that interest to sales.

The website must be appealing enough for visitors to stay longer, check out the content, and take advantage of the products and services being offered. Designing a website is much like designing a physical store—simply attracting onlookers or window-shoppers won’t do a business any good. The entire online marketing effort should translate to actual sales.

What is an ideal website design then? A website is like a magazine; it has to be loaded with useful information, yet those information must be understandable and strategically arranged on every page. The content of each page must not only come with good quality but must be arranged such that viewers will not get easily bored or overwhelmed.

A good navigation system is also crucial in any website. There must be easy-to-find buttons to help viewers coast along while browsing. Generally, the website must be user-friendly so that visitors will stay long enough to actually close a sale.

Web Design and the Digital Storefront

The internet continues to be accessible while on the go, with the constant advancement of smartphones and tablets. Thanks to this convenience, it has now become a habit for customers to look for and do research on the products or services they need before deciding on the purchase. This allows for a better use of time and money, as they find numerous options, and can, for the most part, complete transactions electronically.

Why Web Design is Crucial in Online Marketing

The foremost rule in marketing is that it’s the job of a marketer to make a product or service desirable to, even needed by, the consumer. Appeal is a powerful motivator in sales, and businesses should always make it a point to entice their customers through one way or another. While there are many ways to market goods or services, it can be difficult to attract consumers through online marketing.

Why Responsive Web Design is Important

The landscape is changing for the world of the Internet. Since the World Wide Web first came into being, there has never been such a time as this where access to the Internet is possible from so many devices. Where Internet access used to be confined to the domain of the personal computer, a multitude of devices are now able to pull websites, pages, pictures, video, and other media from the interwoven network that is the web we know today.