Understanding Web Design Trends and What to Look for When Designing Your Website

What is Responsive Design?
Responsive Design is designing elements such as text and images on a web page to be “responsive”, meaning making sure that the elements respond to the size of the viewport, increasing or decreasing in size. For example, let’s say you put an image on the page that looks fantastic on your desktop, but when you look on your phone the image is wrapping all over your text or going off the page entirely.

A responsive design element will automatically adjust itself depending on the size of your device, be it desktop, tablet or mobile. This can mean shrinking the element, or in the case of a multi-column layout switching to fewer or even singular columns. It’s very important to prioritize responsive design so that no matter what device your users are checking out your website on it will look great.

Web design doesn’t always have to be flashy, moving objects on a page. Sometimes less is more, especially for web design. Removing clutter off of a web page can help user retention by removing distractions and guiding your users to exactly where you want to go. Minimalist design doesn’t have to be boring however, adding in touches of color in your design or breaking up the content with a related image helps keep the user interested without being too jarring.

Have you ever been to a website that’s nothing but plain text and no character to speak of? Pretty boring, right? Adding in interactive elements can help break up the monotony. For example, did you notice the call-to-action just above this paragraph? Adding in calls-to-action throughout your text can help users convert on your website by linking them to related products or services.

Another key aspect of interactive elements is adding in animation, whether on hover or when the view loads. Want an example? Hover over this text box!

Choosing the right font for your website is just as important to your online presence as the words that you’re saying. Your font choice helps define your website’s look and feel, as well as catering to your target audience if done correctly. For example, since this is a website dedicated to a web design company, our fonts are reminiscent of digital typography, and have elements of video gaming culture mixed in. This works great for us, but might not work as well for something like a dentist or a church organization.

In addition to branding, choosing the right font is also important for accessibility. There’s a few things to consider when choosing an accessible font:

• Is the font easy to read?
  • If your font is too difficult to read then you have a problem. Some examples include overly italicized fonts or fonts with complex serif designs.
• Does your font avoid too much character ambiguity?
  • For example, how difficult is it to tell the difference between the letter O and the number 0?
• Are you avoiding adding too many typefaces, fonts or font variations to your website?
  • Having too many different font styles can really clutter things up. It’s important to stick with one or two fonts to help with not only accessibility, but also to improve pagespeed by not having to load too many fonts at once. We recommend sticking with one font for headings, and one font for body text.