We live in a society that’s dominated by the handheld devices we call Smartphones. There is no denying in why a majority of the e-commerce websites are having a mobile-friendly layout. There was a time when e-commerce websites were designed for big screens, but at present, designers are striving to adapt web designs for all screens sizes.
Despite the designers—who have jumped on the bandwagon of “Less is more” concept for web designs—there exist some minds who are experimenting new practices in order to provide their users what they actually want. To make this possible, they have to stay acquainted with the latest—looming on the horizons of cutting edge.
Without making a fuss, let’s get a sneak peek at what design innovations can provide your e-commerce store with a major upsurge in 2017.
1. Prioritize Your Mobile Design:
The design is king when it comes to magnetizing customers to a website. Not long ago, shoppers were buying different products from their computer; back then, the design of most websites was optimized for desktops. Today, with such a huge number of mobile website users existing today, a mobile-first approach has become the necessity.
Some trends of mobile first approach are:
a) Negate the negative spaces:
We’ve all been a fan of negative space, but now is the time to fill up it up. The desktops will take up all horizontal spaces by applying full width of the screen. This will make the site looks appealing on mobile as well as on desktops.
b) Larger Icons
A tricky part about buttons and menus on mobile and on the desktop is to arrange them judiciously in order to make the navigation easy and intuitive. Larger icons and buttons also look great on the desktops.
2. Google’s Material Design:
The Material Design motif, created in 2014 by Google, has been on the scene for quite some time now. We are anticipating that until the end of 2017, we are going to see some smaller web projects embracing Material Design as-is. Website design with overlapping layers, contrasting, strong colors and strong shadows are repeatedly predicted as a big trend in early years. In this regard, the material design is definitely going to stay.
3. Long Scrolling Layout
Scrolling on mobile is easier than switching between multiple pages. This makes long scrolling layouts useful for mobile websites. Media such as HD images—that are slow to load—will help accelerate the scrolling practice. Moreover, the users will be able to see a plenitude of products that they wouldn’t otherwise see, without loading a new page.
4. Cinemagraph
Cinemagraphs are the still photos comprising of elements demonstrating repeated movements. They have been taking the industry by storm, and rightfully so; a powerful cinemagraph can be visually appealing. It can either be a GIF or video file.
5. Placing hamburger menus to left
For layouts, where you want to save space, using hamburger menus is the best decision. Many designers are now shifting them into the upper left corner considering the fact that left is a more familiar pattern on the phones, and that familiarity would breed user-friendliness. You can place it on the right; the position totally depends on yours site design. All you need to focus is on “consistency”.
https://cdn.dribbble.com/users/87229/screenshots/2269450/solveburger-kojo.gif
To wrap up
The trends, tricks, tips, and hacks for digital designs and development shouldn’t be the matter of concern for the designers only. If you are getting someone does the design work for you or even if you outsource design projects to other companies, considering what’s in and what works is important.
These were some practices that are playing a substantial role in defining the web design trends of 2017. But! The year is not over yet! There may be a bundle of more trends to sprout. So, let’s just keep our fingers crossed and see what’s yet to see in 2017.
If there’s anything that you think we have missed, do share it in your comments!
Author Bio:
David Paul is a tech-geek and a UI architect by profession. He works in a custom logo design company from past 2 years. Alongside designing websites, he loves sharing informative articles and design-oriented blogs to raise awareness among the readers.
