Like clothes, hair styles and makeup, website design trends come and go. While some trends are determined by necessity such as Google algorithm updates, others are just general shifts. Think carefully before blindly following the latest website design trends…it may not be right for your target audience, your brand or your business. Websites that are built purely on the latest trends will very quickly date and the need to update and redesign will arrive very fast, leading to a larger investment over time, in effort, money and time.
Here are some website design trends that you might want to consider carefully before implementing:
The Hamburger Menu
As mobile devices become more popular and search engine algorithms demanded responsive design, navigation that was easier to use became important. Enter, the Hamburger Menu and it’s not only for mobile versions of websites either, they have moved into desktop versions too.
We understand the appeal – it makes the website sleek, clean, clear and visitors are already familiar with it but it doesn’t work for all websites and can impede discoverability.
Forcing users to open the Hamburger navigation menu may, in fact, create unnecessary friction as it essentially hides topics and items. This may not be a great option for ecommerce and news websites.
“Even if the global navigation is difficult to design and hard to maintain, most sites will still be better off showing top-level categories to users right away. It’s simply one of the most effective ways of helping users quickly understand what the site is about.” – Jennifer Cardello & Kathryn Whitenton
Front-page Carousels
Carousels can create visual interest and reduce clutter but due to their rise in popularity they are falling the way of a ‘cookie cutter’ feel. Add to that, there are a few issues with carousels worth thinking about:
- They aren’t good for SEO – their lack of content ensures that it is tricky to get meta data information into the page. Now that Google isn’t crawling for meta keywords and takes the keyword information from the page it makes the slider headings and content below the carousel that much more important.
- They can affect performance badly – high-res carousel images that are under-optimised can drastically slow the load time. This is big no, no on your home page.
- They push content below the fold – okay, so content above the fold is not as important as it once was but it’s still not recommended by Google that you have your content lower down on the page. Just remember, often a carousel doesn’t offer much in the way of value to the visitor – it just looks pretty.
- They tend to be inaccessible – studies have shown that only 1% of viewers click on carousels and many simply ignore the content they contain, all thanks to ‘banner blindness’. A sliding animation might be more useful and worth discussing with your website designer.For more information contact the team at Website Design Centre and see our part two blog.
