Color plays a vital role when it comes to design, especially “web design.” Today, you can play around even with different formats of black and white color combination in terms of balance, contrast, hue, brightness, or more. Flat design has still maintained its prominence, and rainbow colors are in trend, with brighter tones coming up. Even the minimalist design is still popular as ever. With 2015 about to end, you can expect even more web design trends to show up in 2016.

• Unique UI patterns

Hamburger menu encompasses all the menu tabs within a hamburger like icon. When you click on that, you get to know all the hidden tabs present. The design looks clean with such type of menu and besides you can see only what you need to see.

You can use long scrolling to place most important elements above fold, while rest present beneath to give a storytelling feel to the users. When users see the critical things present above, they are intrigued to know the details present beneath the fold.

Discovered by Pinterest, card layout let you present the content present on your website in form of cards. This type of layout has a strong visual appeal that connects with users greatly, and they are attracted to see more present on other site pages. Such type of layout provides easy visual scanning, going through important or relevant content in just minutes. They can be rearranged easily due to their square or rectangular shapes.

Killer images present on homepage, give a heroic appeal to the entire website. First page that a user lands upon is homepage. If there is a strong image present above fold, the user will be intrigued to see what the website has to offer in particular. With advances in data compression as well as internet bandwidth, HD images can be used with ease without compromising on loading time and performance. After scroll, you can find a zig zag, card based, or other kinds of content arrangement.

• Rich interactive animations

Animations give rise to storytelling then can make the overall experience, entertaining, interactive, and with a storytelling approach. It can be diversified largely into two groups:

1. Large Scale Animation Pop-up notifications, parallax scrolling, and other types of primary animations require user action to perform.
2. Small Scale Animation Loading bars, hovering tools, and other types of secondary animations do not require user action to perform.

• Micro interactions

Liking, sharing, commenting, or following something is what micro interactions is all about. Even small actions such as turning off mobile alarm, setting reminders, and such other things comprise of micro interactions. They might look small; however, they play an important role in giving a human touch to the entire conversation rather than having things automated. However, keeping micro interactions as simple as possible is wise. Each micro interaction gives rise to a design that is highly human centered.

• Materialistic design “an enhanced alternative to flat design”

Last year, Google switched itself to Material Design. This type of design has the ability to present things in a more realistic manner by using the concepts of depth, movement, and shadow effects. The goal of such a design is to provide a modernized and clean appearance to flat design. Since material design is free of any particular frameworks, it can be easily implemented using various front-end tools, and it is lightweight when it comes to integrating with the code.

• Responsive design “an answer to all sizes working theme”

Responsive design is probably the evergreen trend in web design that is here to stay for quite a long time. A relatively cheap and simple way for all kinds of businesses to have a mobile friendly website applicable to all screen sizes, no matter seen on desktops, laptops, tablets, or smartphones. By looking at the current trends in web design, responsive design appears to be more of a practice now rather than just another trend. It seems to be almost mandatory for businesses planning to switch to a responsive design website. There is no doubt in regards to the versatility and usefulness that responsive design tends to offer.

• Flat design “most common web design theme of all”

Probably the most used design pattern by major businesses. It is so because it is highly compatible with other design patterns such as minimalist design, material design, or even responsive design. We do see some hot favorite trends in flat design and we can expect the same to continue even in 2016.

Long shadows give a tremendous amount of depth to the current flat designs.

Vibrant color schemes when used with varied templates and frameworks deliver a fresh look to user eyeballs. Hence, expect to see a potential rise even in the next year.

Use of extremely simple and legible typography make things clear, clean, and transparent ensuring that user reads them comfortably with great ease.

Ghost buttons serve purpose of delivering simple to use and easy to understand interface. They usually appear as outlined working as clickable links. As soon as user hovers over them, their appearance changes giving a stylized look, which you personally expect from a design.

Minimalist approach is making use of as few elements or components possible for letting users access only things that are useful without getting to know useless features or Call To Actions (CTAs). Such a design helps to keep things uncluttered without much cumbersome functionalities.

Would you like to expect more with 2016?

Do not follow trends thinking that they are in trend and needs to be in your design anyhow. Try to encompass only those ones that compliment your website and business objectives comfortably. Integrating trends is definitely worth giving a shot. However, what is more important to remember is how your users will perceive your website once things incorporated. If they are having a tough time dealing with things or are not able to comprehend things, then all your pain will go in vain. Make a right choice by being in users seat for a while when making a decision.

Carl asks: Is it worth it for me to have a mobile app (or should I just have a responsive site)? How do I know whether I’m getting bang for my buck?

If Carl had asked this question back in 2009 or 2010, it would have been phrased, “Do I need a native app or is a mobile-optimized website enough?” In 2011 and 2012, the question again would have shifted to “native app or mobile web app?” Today, “responsive” is the buzzword du jour.

As a result, it’s an increasingly popular option for companies that are looking to move into mobile, but that lack the budgets to support separate apps for each mobile platform and without the needs of something more complex such as a mobile web app.

The first thing you need to do is forget about buzzwords and lingo and focus on the actual needs of your business.

The first thing you need to do is forget about buzzwords and lingo and focus on the actual needs of your business.

App or Website

The basic question any business owner needs to ask himself is, “Do I need an app at all?” If you’re a law firm who primarily interacts via in-person consultations or over the phone, then no, you probably do not need a mobile app. The same is true for a restaurant owner with one or two locations.

Conversely, if you offer an existing web service for users logins and account management, a native mobile app is probably going to be a worthwhile investment, as it will provide tremendous performance benefits over using the mobile web.

Mobile Commerce as an Edge Case

There are, however, some edge cases in the app-versus-website debate. The most common to my mind is the area of commerce. Mobile commerce (mcommerce) is absolutely exploding, with more and more transactions taking place on tablets and smartphones every single day. In April, eMarketer predicted that by 2017, 25% of online retail transactions will take place on mobile.

Commerce is a tricky area for the mobile versus app debate

Commerce is a tricky area for the mobile versus app debate because the answer can really vary depending on the type of products being sold and the audience for the products.

I explored the mobile versus native debate in regards to ecommerce apps back in 2011. Although the shift to mobile shopping has greatly increased, the considerations for choosing mobile web (or in today’s parlance, “responsive”) over a native app are largely still the same.

I wrote then:

It isn’t just about choosing native apps or choosing the mobile web — it’s also about looking at who your customers are and what devices they use. For retailers that have lots of iPhone users, the fact that 50% of users can come from a native app and the conversion rate can be 30% higher makes a strong argument for creating a native app. Meanwhile, if conversion rates for native BlackBerry apps are subpar, it might make more sense to focus on optimizing the mobile commerce site to work with the BlackBerry browser.

This is all still true. Mcommerce companies should look at who their users are — what platforms they use, the average transaction price (studies continue to show that users feel more comfortable making large dollar purchases using a native app rather than the mobile web) and how well their current web solutions work with features such as shopping carts, time outs and more.

For mcommerce, you should absolutely start with a mobile friendly site and make sure that it is frequently updated to be fast, efficient and work well on multiple devices. Then, factor out how many sales will need to take place each month through a native app to pay for its development. If that seems feasible, building a native app to offer alongside the responsive experience is a great idea.

Responsive Is Not a Shortcut

On the surface, it’s easy to say that creating a responsive site will be less expensive than developing an app. Still, it’s important to consider the costs, especially if your existing site is not responsive.

These costs include not just the design itself, but also any upgrades that need to take place with your existing websites backend or infrastructure.

Responsive design is not just about fitting on a mobile screen

Responsive design is not just about fitting on a mobile screen, it’s also about making sure that functionality works in contexts and scenarios ideal for mobile.

That means that if you are a restaurant, your responsive site can hook into geolocation APIs to offer easy access to directions. It means that phone numbers are dial-able. It means that buttons and text entry fields are touch-friendly.

As the iPhone, Android phones, and iPad became bestselling consumer gadgets, businesses realized their Web presence needed to translate to those smaller screens. Otherwise, their websites would bear tell-tale signs of a business clueless to mobile: tiny text, tinier links, and a jumbled layout. They risked lost traffic and sales.

These days, responsive design is recommended as the gold standard. But as with most technologies in a multi-device world, it has disadvantages, and it’s not right for every business, or every application.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we describe what responsive design is and compare it to other mobile optimization tools, analyze responsive designs pros and cons, examine data and statistics that track responsive design adoption and performance across mobile, and evaluate whether dedicated mobile websites have their place, and detail the ramifications for HTML5 development.

To access the full report, sign up for a free trial of BI Intelligence today >>>

Here’s an overview of the main mobile optimization tools:

• Mobile apps: Particularly at the beginning of the mobile boom, when some believed apps would channel virtually all mobile activity, businesses rushed to create apps. Apps may be dominant in some mobile markets like the U.S., but consumers use their mobile browsers too — and not just for casual browsing, searching and information look-ups. A great deal of e-commerce happens in the mobile Web browser, not in native apps. Not to mention: Apps are expensive. Apps are not the be-all, end-all for mobile.
• Dedicated mobile websites: Some usability gurus advocate for separate mobile sites that offer a stripped-down version of its content and carry their own Web address (often with the URL that looks something like this: m.website). These mobile-only sites tend to perform very well in terms of load speeds.
• Responsive design: In responsive design, the same Web code or HTML is delivered to every device, but tweaks to CSS code — which determines the layout of Web pages — allow it to determine the device size and adjust layout accordingly. The website maintains the same Web address or URL regardless of what device it’s seen on. In sum: The fluid layout means that content adapts to all form factors, even smart TVs — a fast-growing source of Web traffic.
• Responsive Design With Server-Side Support. This is a variant of responsive design. The difference is that the computer server that hosts the website will deliver different batches of HTML and CSS Web code depending on what device the user is on. This method solves some of responsive design’s performance issues, but requires device detection. It means a company can use responsive design and enjoy its advantages where it wants, but deploy more customized components too. It may deploy responsive elements across mobile, while keeping a more traditional fixed layout for the PC. It may even deliver customized experiences for certain device models (like a feature that only works on retina screens, etc.).