In my previous post we spoke about the new
Web Design Trends
for 2016. The first part of it this edition is centered on how brands need to create an interactive website that tells a story – this was just a brief introduction to the many different trends 2016 has in store for web design in Ireland and abroad. If you guys want to check out the first part of this edition, feel free to click here. But for now, let’s talk about two new topics – flat design and call to action (CTA). Before we delve into the phenomenon that is flat design and the reason it is becoming such a big deal, we first need to understand exactly what ‘flat design’ is and where did it all start?
Flat Design
In case you haven’t heard the term – “flat design” is actually the given to the style of design in which we remove any type of stylistic character that gives 3D effect. For example, gradients drop shadows and textures. It was widely used during the ’40s and ’50s across print and promotional media and was known as the Swiss Style. Unfortunately, we can’t actually tell when and where did it originated from but we know that during ’40s and ’50s flat design was the ‘it’ trend. Now I’m sure you’re wondering how that could be more interesting than 3D? Well for starters, it gives a much better UX (user experience ), expands the usability of the elements and allows us to make websites look a lot more mature and simple – cause we know minimalistic is ‘in’ right now! And since we such a wide variety of devices such as TV’s, desktop, notebook, tablet, smartphone, and many more, developers struggle to find a way to represent a consistent design across such an array of different browsers. In order to make everything work properly on all devices, the quickest and most effective option is to use flat designs. Thanks to large companies and industry leaders, flat design has exploded and is now something that you can find wherever you go. Even Google opted for a flat design in 2014 when they decided to “reduce” their logo from soft 3D design to full flat design.
Once Google made the big leap to flat design, we can see that many other worldwide brands and companies have also shifted from classic 3D design to flat designs. Again, if you can’t beat them, join them! There’s no need to reinvent the wheel so I would strongly recommend using flat design across our next website redesign in order to reduce the weight of the page, give it a quicker loading time and significantly improve the website users experience.
Call to Action
Now that we’ve decided to redesign our website using flatter designs, it’s probably time to encourage your users to do something! The most important aspect of any website is the use of CTA’s (Call To Action). Whether this is the use of specific buttons across your site, a pop-up newsletter form or anything else that will encourage the user into making some kind of conversion. Having already spoken about flat designs, we are not going to discuss the use of 3D CTA’s in order to achieve conversion – by now you should know we use FLAT!
In my opinion, the design of the CTA and its’ content is the most important part of your website. We must remember that your call to action is the only thing encouraging a user to actually do something on your site. Try out some simple CTA’s on your site and watch the bounce rates significantly decrease! Now, remember – too many CTA’s can look like spam and NOBODY likes spam sites! Users will quickly bounce away from your new website and chances of a returning visitor are very slim. In order to reduce bounce rates and achieve a clean, professional image you must be conscious about the design and content used on your call to actions. They need to be simple, clear and easy to navigate. Also, never be afraid to try out new animations, something custom and test the response rates. That’s all folks! I hope you enjoyed reading my second post about WDT (web design trends in 2016). Don’t forget to follow up next week and hopefully, we’ll both learn something new!
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