We all have been talking about responsive web design for so long. So, till now we all are aware about its importance and how useful it can be. Responsive web design was introduced to the world five years ago.
Within this short time span, it has become an interesting topic of discussion as well as an approach that is accepted by the entire industry. As we are heading ahead with the New Year 2016; we can see several best practices and certain exciting trends.
So, let’s take a look at some successful trends of the year and eagerly welcome our bright future:
- Captivating Storytelling: Stories are the perfect source to reveal the ideas and gather information. Stories keep your brain active which facts and figures cannot. If storytelling is used on websites then the site becomes more engaging with memorable content.
This concept is taken by many of the sites like Medium and by several web writers who are using the stories to express important details, information as well as compelling data.
Like others, if you too are thinking to use storytelling in your responsive website then here are some tips to be followed:
- Quickly catch the readers’ attention and get them glued to your articles. This can be done by using a strong opening which is extremely interesting for all types of readers and an important thing is it must be seen immediately by the readers.
- The length of the lines must be determined keeping in mind both the large and small screens. It is hard to follow the huge lines and on the other hand, short lines can easily break the flow.
Make sure to include 6 to 75 characters per line and then adjust for font sizes so as to achieve best results.
- Use visuals to highlight your stories but make sure to choose the images of appropriate sizes and make sure that these get downloaded quickly on all devices.
- Make it easy for readers to share stories with others. Make sure to include placing sharing functionality at the top and bottom of the content so that readers do not have to scroll to use these features.
It is widely used for small screen layouts which need proper scrolling. Also, the buttons that you use must be designed properly in such a way that they can be easily used on touch screens.
- Less is More: Nowdays, there’s a trend to have less pages in the website. Days back it was believed that your website should have more pages as websites with maximum pages have a good chance to be ranked.
Such websites can actually confuse people and these can also be difficult to get updated. Outdated pages as well as content are sometimes neglected. Your content must easily get loaded on smaller devices.
Certain websites take opposite approach. Smaller websites are focused on topics and hence pages are reduced because no unnecessary content is available.” Less is more” this trend is popular for single page websites. This can also be seen in websites which have aggressively simplified their sitemaps.
- Make use of Different Patterns: A responsive web design is popular only when it has different patterns. Using a good web design can easily solve the problem and hence users will be familiar with your solution.
To use established patterns, it is necessary that everyone uses different patterns because same patterns will provide a common look to the website and as a result, design uniqueness is lost.
The benefit of an established pattern is that you don’t have to design something new and unique every time.
When you are selecting the design pattern for your site, ask yourself these questions:
- Will this pattern solve my problem?
- Has this pattern helped others to solve the same problem?
- Is this pattern a particular solution or is used as a best practice?
- Is this pattern overused?
- What are the barriers for using this pattern?
- Card Layouts: One of the popular design trends is “Card Layout”. This card layout has become widely used approach. Card layouts are very attractive when you consider the user experience of responsive websites.
These cards break the content down into small blocks and then these blocks can be easily arranged for various screen sizes as well as layout needs. These cards can then improve information distribution.
This is one of the reasons; websites like Twitter and Google follow the leads of Pinterest and in 2016, this approach will be widely used to develop websites.
- Hidden menus: Hidden menu is another design pattern which is widely popular when it comes to responsive web design. These are used to save space while making menu options available to a website’s visitor.
The benefit of saving space on a responsive design cannot be denied. There are several number of people who have various arguments regarding the usage of hidden menus. Menus which are hidden to save space are less likely to be accessed as compared to those that are shown consistently.
- Making proper advertisements: Online ads and responsive websites have a challenging relationship. During many years, online ads were sold based on size and location. This causes a problem with responsive sites as the size and replacement of various UI elements changes across different screen sizes.
Due to this fixed advertising sizes don’t serve the purpose and there has to be custom size advertisements for a responsive website. Changes in privacy concern as well as the way web browsers handle advertising; both send shockwave during the entire time on the Web.
So, slowly every website will have to rethink as to how advertising can be used.
- Improved Workflow: Every trend cannot be seen visually on the final website. There are certain trends that are not to be seen on the site when it is in the development process. Improved responsive workflow is one of such trends.
Today, responsive prototyping is widely used by many web designers. So, instead of using a static design camp with different break points, several responsive prototype tools can create authentic experiences which can be quickly and easily deployed.
These prototypes will convey interactions which will then be useful to get more detailed feedback so that it can help you to make better overall UI design decisions.
Wind Up:
So, follow these trends whenever you wish to create a responsive web design. Remember that latest trends will help you to create an updated website and this will lead to utmost client satisfaction.
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