6 Hot Web Design Trends for 2013

2013 is upon us, and with it come some very exciting new developments in web design trends. If you’re looking at having your website redesigned this year, this should be a great starting point for identifying some of the design aspects you should look to incorporate.

1. Responsive Design

This doesn’t just mean a ‘mobile website’, it means a fully responsive website that can adapt its layout and presentation to any screen it appears on – whether smartphone, tablet, laptop, or giant desktop. It means your website should not only be able to go smaller and more compact for mobile, but also larger and fuller to accommodate the ever-growing desktop screen sizes.

A responsive design also means you only have one website, not a separate mobile website as well – which is also good for search engine optimization.

 2. Vertical Scrolling

This is definitely becoming popular. Websites are increasing their vertical length for multiple reasons, but essentially it’s to allow for more content in one place. The issue arises that you then have to scroll all the way back to the top to navigate to other pages. So, vertical scrolling also includes the buttons, menus, and social buttons that scroll with you down the page so that they are always easily accessible.

3. Big & Bright Buttons on Clean Interfaces

We’re seeing websites become very streamlined and ‘clean’ in their overall design, where large and bright calls-to-action and other buttons stand out better. This movement towards very simplistic designs also has very much to do with putting more focus on the ‘content’ of a website as well as shorter website load times, which is something Google is valuing more and more.

4. Fancy Typography

It’s becoming easier to include fancy fonts on your website than ever before. And now especially with HTML5, adding subtle effects to text (like little shadows and such) are creating big impacts.

5. Large & Beautiful Images

As screen resolutions continue to increase, especially with the new iPad retina displays, there are movements towards larger and sharper images.

6. And the Colour of 2013 is…

Emerald green – as recently announced by Pantone. We saw orange (Tangerine Tango) as the colour of 2012, which was used quite widely. With green being the new 2013 colour, we expect to see more cooler and soothing colours added to many websites’ colour schemes.

As you can see, there’s a lot to look forward to and a lot to think about.