Your website could be the very first impression that a potential customer has of your business — and we all know how important first impressions are! Keeping up with the latest trends is the best way of making sure that your website attracts visitors, keeps them interested in your content, and converts them into paying customers.

So what are the current trends that you should think about using for your website in 2017?

Full-Screen Approach

Long-form content in a full-screen approach is becoming hugely popular as it allows users to take in a large volume of content in one scan of the page. It’s clean and professional and makes quite a statement immediately when a visitor views the page.

Scrolling

Scrolling is more than just moving the page up and down or from side to side. And now with content being viewed on all different sized devices, it’s no longer as important to think about content just being “above the fold”. Scrolling has become innovative and actually encourages users to roll their fingers or mouse wheels down the page, displaying animated content or even videos playing and pausing.

Parallax

Parallax is essentially an “add-on” to scrolling, which gives a sort of 3D effect as the images on the foreground of the page move quicker than the background, making the image “pop” off the page. It’s still pretty unique, but looks amazing when used properly. Check out Parallax.js for a demo of how it works…it’s really cool.

UI Patterns & Frameworks

Pre-designed website themes available on WordPress and the likes are responsible for UI and UX patterns popping up all over the internet. While it means that a lot of website layouts look similar to each other, it actually creates a very consistent website experience for users. Why wouldn’t you use a pattern that you know already works well for visitors and is highly rated on the UX scale?

Advanced Animations

Developments in HTML5 and CSS are enabling brands to make more use of animation throughout their sites. Anywhere from full-screen animations to simpler ones that are displayed while a site transaction is taking place, the use of animation will help to enhance your users’ experience and use story-telling to build your brand.

Gradients

Web designers in 2016 have started to experiment with more vivid colours and gradient shading. Why? Because they add levels of complexity and warmth and help your web pages stand out. Just be careful not to go too strong and overwhelming on the colour palette, and stick to gradients that complement your brand and logo.

Authentic Photography

Stock images are out and authentic, genuine photography is in. Men in business suits, sitting around a boardroom table in various states of conversation just won’t cut it anymore. In order to portray yourself and your business as authentic and “real”, you need to use real images of places and people, from real perspectives: think selfies, drone shots, un-staged, head-on ’emotion’ shots of smiles and laughter, etc.

Bold Typography

Big and bold typography is a trend that’s been on the rise for a while now, as an amazing visual tool that reaches out of the screen towards viewers. A good font has the ability to display brand personality and evoke emotion, and you can expect to see even more beautiful and unique fonts popping out from the trendiest websites in 2017.

Video

We’ve been talking about how video content is planning to take over the world in 2017 and onwards, and this applies to video on websites as well.  Video captures users’ attention like no other,  and you can squeeze more content into a video than you can into text on a page  without it being immediately overwhelming to a viewer. Video on a webpage is a dynamic and interactive way to immerse your visitors in your content.

Limited Navigation

Simpler is sometimes better, and this is no truer than on well-designed websites. People don’t want to visit a website and be overwhelmed with a ton of different navigation options. Instead, be thoughtful and intentional about using fewer navigation options, and this will help you to “point” your visitors in the direction you want them to go (ie: to a certain landing page or other page waiting with a call to action).

Summary

In summary, website in 2017 will continue modernizing — using cool visual effects, typography, video content and animations. They’ll also focus on the “less is more” philosophy with less navigation options, bigger, full-page displays, and unique scrolling functions, allowing visitors to take in more content, all at once. But if you are thinking of making these big and responsive changes to your website, make sure your site has the capacity to handle it. Learn more about Growth-Driven Design in our free eBook.