While each of you runs a different business, from a design perspective, your needs are all the same: Your new visitors need to know who you are and what you do in about 30 seconds. Repeat visitors need to find want they need to make a decision quickly + effortlessly.
Here are some of the more popular design trends that help make that happen.
1. “Flat art” buttons and links:
The kind of buttons and social channel links used by iOS7, Android and Windows 8 operating systems, are coming to a website near you and replacing “3-D jelly-bean” and “Chiclets with a drop-shadow” that were all the rage a few years ago.
2. Simple colour schemes:
The days of digital velvet flock, grass-cloth, shot silk and linen background wallpapers are over (for now). While I’m sure they’ll return along with paisley and flared jeans, for now solid + translucent pastels colours compliment flat art buttons.
3. One large (still) image instead of a “slider”:
Some web designers are mimicking magazine ads: they use one big image along with a bit of carefully crafted copy to set the stage for the brand “story”. The short “corporate copy” looks more like an elevator script than an “About” page.
