Web design trends in 2014

This week, we made the list of most important trends in web design for 2014. Based on agency experience and according to dozens of web pros, these are the most important things you should always keep on mind while creating site in 2014:
1. Responsive is a must

According to Forbes, “responsive design means a set website is a thing of the past. Instead, we must not feel like all elements that fit on a desktop must be present on the screen of a smartphone.”
As it is quickly becoming the standard, if you don’t comply, it will negatively affect your Google ranking, also.
So, if you are planning new web site project, responsive layout must be 1st on the list – find pros who will know what will work best on a smartphone, tablet, or desktop-size screen and let your business and number of visitors grow.
2. Simplicity in design

So achieve more by using less as 2014 is the best year to do it!
3. Higher quality images

4. Typography gets serious

The era of Georgia, Times New Roman, Arial or Helvetica as major website typefaces is behind us. The era of print like typography is here to stay, giving us impressive results on final products.
5. One page parallax websites continue to rock n roll

In 2014, parallax design will evolve into more exciting and interactive way including integration of full width videos, native animations etc.
6. (Simplified) content is the king

Simplified content means short bursts of content, a la Twitter. Over the years, our attention spans have become shorter, so it has been compensated for that by putting content in short bursts instead of long narratives.
Not many areas on websites these days (except blog posts) have more than about 250 characters.
7. Storytelling

Let users discover who you/your company are by letting it unfold before their eyes. Let them start where you did and fast-track them to how you arrived at a solution.
Imagine scrolling down to the bottom of a website page, where the process unfolds like a fairy tale, or an evolution of sorts. Set a goal/challenge when creating a site, with something like this: “I want new visitors to be able to move down from the top of the page to the bottom in 30 seconds and to have a crystal clear idea of who we are and what we do. And for repeat visitors, I want them to easily identify where to go to make a purchase, or visit our blog, virtually without having to look.”
Sure, an effective “storytelling” website is easier said than done. But it’s a worthwhile challenge – and if it’s done well, you’re pretty much assured of a website that will be the belle of the ball.
8. Watching instead of reading

Videos are becoming easier to produce, and easier to share not on your website, but on social media as well. While some may argue that videos don’t belong on a website home page due to the large amount of data they take to load and run (especially on mobile devices and internet with data caps), videos are an effective way to communicate something technical or new when words just don’t cut it.
Plus, many video services such as YouTube allow you to track how many views it got, allowing you to better plan your content for your website.
9. Native animations

10. Wordpress as (all in one) CMS

Weather you work on your corporate website, web media, e-shop or new start-up driven by great idea, free and open source, WordPress as CMS will be your great ally on the road to success. Easy to use and with thousands of plugins and themes available across the web, it has become a Swiss knife for making your beautifully designed site front-end dynamic and driven by extremely powerful back end.
Thanks a lot, very handy – we are in proces of redesigning the existing intranet (at work).
Btw – is there an option to forward the article to a specific email address which is not part of social media? (Copying http line content is not always feasible)
Looking forward to more of your articles – and perhaps few examples of the above, in particular re storytelling.
Hi Tijana, we are super glad you like this post and we do hope you will find it useful (at work) 🙂 In relation to forward via mail option – we activated social media share options only, but we will definitely activate forward via mail option also. New articles will we published very soon – so stay tuned 🙂
Today user has became smart and so website designers & marketing team too…
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