Web site design trends are constantly evolving, and in today’s digital age new trends that are both desktop and mobile adaptive are appearing. This combination, known as responsive web design, allows your desktop web site design to shrink and adapt to your mobile or tablet device. Responsive design is quickly gaining in popularity and could be considered the industry standard in web site design. Along with responsive websites two design trends have sprung up surrounding modern web design – scrolling websites and flat design.
A scrolling website, also called a “continuous” or “infinite scrolling site,” is where the user has the ability to scroll down on their website in one continuous flow. The site loads more feed as you continuously scroll down whatever page you are. A sample of a continuous scrolling website design can be seen within user-generated content sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. Check out the website awwwards.com for great examples of scrolling websites that aren’t user-generated content sites.
In order to use continuous scrolling on your site effectively, you have to make sure your content is simple to understand and organized on your site well. Because the scrolling websites are only a series of a few continuous pages they are ideal for a high number of mobile visitors.
How do you design your website to have continuous scrolling?
A variation of a scrolling website is a parallax scrolling website. These types of sites create 2D illusion by moving two or more objects simultaneously at different speeds as the user scrolls down. Another new and modern web design trend that is becoming more and more popular is using flat design. The first use of the flat design was a tile design that appeared on the Windows 8 operating system. The most recent use of this type of design is Apple’s iOS7 operating system.
With a flat design, there are no color gradients, shadows shading, or 3D effects. This type of design gives a modern look to the design with an emphasis on solid colors, typography, and simplicity. Flat design requires very little images, which makes it translate easier to mobile devices. Flat design can be used in website design to create a more modern, simple look.