With the world quickly moving into the second half of 2016, our thoughts are starting to drift towards the next set of emerging web design trends in 2017.

The last few years have seen an abundance of new technologies and ideas, and with all major browsers strongly supporting HTML5 and CCS3 standards, as well as sporting super-fast JavaScript engines, web designers have never had so many options at their creative disposal.

When tasked with designing a new site for our clients, we have a clear approach on how to plan & create their website, and our five core aims consist of:

• build a mobile-friendly site that impresses equally on all devices
• create a clean appearance that allows the right messages to stand out
• leave users with a lasting impression of trust & quality
• blend content with simplicity
• make the site load as fast as possible

With these in mind, we feel always feel confident to embark on the design journey. Every site is different from one another though, and during our project kickoff meetings we try to discuss details that can truly set the website apart from the rest.

Current hot topics include:

• Flat design – is this starting to get tired? Is semi flat the answer?
• Parallax – more or less? Does it still have the same impact it used to have?
• Mobile-first design – are sites becoming too similar – designers becoming lazy?
• Storytelling – how we can we create an enticing story behind each website? Do we even need to?
• Stock photography & illustrations – are we over-using the same types of creative? Are most users savvy to a stock photo?
• Video – are we using it well enough?
• Card & Grid UI’s – are we still waiting for widespread adoption? How can we utilise this design technique well

Many modern websites share similar traits, and most web designers have their opinions on what looks good and works well. So what can we expect to change in future? What new things will every website be doing in 2017, and what can we expect to see disappear as we move forward?

We got in touch with a large group of web design experts and agencies across the country and asked them the following questions:

1. What trends in web design do you expect to see develop in 2017 and the further future?

2. Are there any current regularly used website traits that you think we’ll see less of in 2017?

Here’s what they had to say…

Damian Thomas – Managing Director at Thomas Design

1. What we’ll see more of

The one truth about web design is that it exists in a constant state of evolution, and we’re seeing some strong trends develop at the moment. In the centre of it all, is user experience. What really makes a trend last, is its usability, accessibility and its place in the user journey. It can be easy to think of internet audiences as the peak and pit of analytics statistics and behavioural patterns, and forget that audiences are just people.

People are incredibly visual beings, and the strongest trends are those that consider the human eye, along with our other senses. Hero images will be strong in 2017, with websites boasting high resolution, brand curated images to peak audience interest. Images aren’t the only way to be visual, and typography will become more important next year, as more businesses will try to separate themselves from the competition with strong branding.

Video will continue to dominate trends, and I don’t just mean with content marketing. Video content is already strong on blogs and YouTube, but designers are tinkering with it in other ways. Background video and motion graphics will be enjoying some attention, as long as it is used correctly. It can be easy to fall into the trap of using all the bells and whistles in the toolbox, but the success of good animation depends on subtle gentle movements and simplicity.

2. What we’ll see less of

People are starting to get fed up with the overuse of Stock Photography. Although images are crucial, designers need to be able to source photography elsewhere. I think it’s pretty much accepted to see stock images in blogs and on social media, but to use it in web design can be sloppy – and you run the risk of using the same images as competitors. Stock photography is ultimately someone else’s vision, and no matter how close it comes to your own, nothing can replicate the use of custom photography in design.

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Nick Butler – Digital Marketing Strategist & founder of Ireland Website Design

1. What we’ll see more of

We’re predicting a move towards inspirational, interactive web storytelling that focuses on rich, unique user experiences. A shift from widespread template use (finally!). Think custom-made features and graphics – cookie cutter websites are a thing of the past.

More parallax, browsing the web is to set to evolve into an engaging, interactive, dynamic experience.Split screen layouts are another great alternative to traditional web design – they keep both designers and copywriters happy.

2. What we’ll see less of

We’re expecting carousels to lose popularity – they’re bad for SEO, can slow down load-times and prove unpopular with end users. The end of widespread stock photography use is on the way out as website design and development moves past the cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all approach.

Lucy Jones – Designer at Verve

1. What we’ll see more of

Adopting the mobile-first design approach
Typically, most web design agencies have approached the desktop visual first, with the Mobile visual as a secondary goal that gets completed at a later date. Even with the rise of responsive design, many agencies will begin with the desktop visual and work their way down.

We believe that there is a developing trend to flip this work-flow on its head and begin with mobile visuals (or small screen devices) first and then work up to bigger desktop versions.

This concept isn’t entirely new, but with responsive design becoming more and more relevant as a result of changes to Google’s Algorithm and stats suggesting mobile dominance, it seems to be a natural progression to alter this process.

We’ve previously seen large restrictions on content and ability to perform basic functionality on mobile. However this is now largely detrimental to all companies functioning this way. A well thought out mobile design, putting the small screen user high up in your list of considerations should be key to producing successful results and we expect to see this trend grow and continue into 2017.

Custom-made Illustrations
Illustration can turn a plain website into something really special, something that identifies and communicates the brand message with the power to seduce.

Illustrations as a whole covers a huge variety of possibilities, injecting personality and capturing the attention of the viewer. You have but a matter of seconds to show the user how your website will do for them what they require; this makes the initial page load above the fold one of the key areas to any website and custom illustrations are a great way to communicate with your audience.

Not only will illustrations help you convey key information about the type of company you are, unlike stock photography, they are unique to your brand and when tailored to match the appropriate tone of your company, will help you stand out in a marketplace that continues to expand.

2. What we’ll see less of

Parallax Scrolling
Over recent years, more and more websites have been making the use of parallax scrolling. This allows the foreground and background to scroll at different speeds, giving the viewer the illusion of depth and is used in website storytelling and product demonstration.

Whilst aesthetically pleasing (mostly) it is questionable if the use of parallax does in fact create a good user experience.

Potential issues with parallax include the effect on SEO. Most websites that feature heavy use of parallax scrolling tend to be one page sites. Any content, tends to be embedded in graphics, giving very little to be crawled effectively by search engines.

A focus on parallax can also cause reductions in site performance. For those working from a desktop computer with excellent internet connection the website will look great. However many others will come away with a bad user experience, especially mobile users where load times are significantly lengthened by the increased use of Javascript.

Splash Pages

A splash page is typically an animation or graphic the user sees before reaching the actual content on the website. Generally annoying and slightly pointless, splash pages date back to early websites, however it is still fairly common to see them in use.

Firstly splash pages are bad for search engines. When your site is crawled, it is looking for text content to index your site. Whilst a large graphic might be visually appealing, it will not have any benefit to your website- and after all- if users can’t find your website, they won’t see your lovely graphic anyway!

Statistics also suggest that a splash page is likely to significantly increase bounce rate. If a flash animation is used and the viewer does not have flash, a loading or error message will appear instantly.

In 2017 we expect the use of splash pages will continue to decrease with the importance of content and easy user experience continuing to rise with the ever increasing use of mobile devices.

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Steven Sefton – Digital Director at Think Zap

I do believe we will see a lot of those one page websites turn back to multiple page websites for organic search. As cost of PPC ads will continue to increase, the many-page website will make a comeback.

And why did we ever use sliders? Does anyone have any evidence that sliders improved the homepage? I can’t find any. That’s why I think more websites will get rid of the slider and go for a one message or video approach.

Paul Lambden – Forest Design

Flat Design
We think that flat design will continue to become more popular, but as jQuery and advanced CSS coding become more prevalent, we will start to see a lot more layering of elements to create a more 3D / immersive design. We have noticed over the last year that the flat design drafts we provide to new clients are usually always the ones chosen as the final design, with the only exception being very traditional business such as hotels and solicitors, who tend to go for something much more low key.

Parallax
This is something that nobody has asked us for in over a year. I think the problem stems from the fact that there are so many websites running from the same premium themes that have the same parallax styles in the same locations, coupled with the fact that the more specifically you design a parallax, the less responsive it becomes.

Mobile-first design
We never build mobile first here, we always build the desktop site first so that the client can see that it matches their design draft. As all our websites are bespoke, we build for desktop first so that we have the full list of elements (such as header, banner, call to action etc) for which we need to write our rules. As we now have moved on to mainly full width websites, these can easily be translated over to tablet and mobile by tweaking the percentages involved.

Storytelling
This is something we usually only hear from marketing people who are involved in joint projects. The truth is most companies in most industries don’t need to tell a story, they just need to feature their products and / or services in a clear and simple way. By removing ‘fluffy’ marketing speak from the websites, products and services can be featured high up the page, and when we check the user flow on Google Analytics, we see that website users home in on these sections and get funnelled through the site very quickly which results in a higher enquiry / purchase rate.

Typography
I personally think that as time goes on, more and more websites will use the fonts available from Google Fonts. I love Google Fonts, especially the fact that new fonts are regularly added. However due to the fact that by default Google shows the trending and popular fonts first, I think that the most popular fonts (Open Sans, Roboto) will soon become the next Calibri and will then become less popular due to over saturation.

Stock photography & illustrations
You only have to do a reverse image search on a stock image to see how many hundreds of other sites are using the same images! This does bother me, but at the same time there are so many towns and cities in so many countries that it’s still unlikely you will have the same imagery as your competitors. It’s easier than ever to take good quality photos on your mobile, so over the next few years I think it’s more likely that people will have their own photos they want featured on the site, for certain industries anyway. Solicitors and other professional service companies will likely continue using stock images of people shaking hands.

Video
I personally hate videos on websites, especially ones that auto play with sound. However I see more and more video backgrounds, which I think are getting very very popular. Coupled with the easy availability of slider and transition plugins, I see these becoming more and more popular via premium themes available to purchase – at least for people in an industry where it’s easy to take a video yourself – as stock videos are quite expensive.

What general trends can people expect to see on future websites?
I think existing trends will continue for quite some time, people are used to seeing certain elements in certain places on the screen, for example the contact us button, phone number, and on mobile the hamburger menu. I think until a new shape / style of device comes out that needs a different perspective, this will continue.

Will any typically used ideas in web design start to die out?
I think modal pop up windows will begin to die out, as most of them don’t translate to mobile very well. I also think that CSS animations and transitions will begin to phase out a lot of jQuery, as it’s more lightweight and more.

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Chris Williams – Independent Design Consultant at Williams Graphics

1. What we’ll see more of

I’m hoping (and expect) to see the web become less superfluous – basically less use of unnecessary animations, transitions, page-to-page loading screens and silly large images that serve no purpose. If there was going to be a trend, I think in the future, developers and designers will be wanting to make websites ‘feel’ fast by optimising code, stripping back plugins, implementing clever usage and optimisation of images, and maybe on the design-side using thinner typefaces (like Raleway Light or Lato Light) to emphasise that. Everything will hopefully become faster, cleaner, more utilitarian (so we’re not hiding useful information in menus and silly slideshows), and use a colourset of saturated ‘neon’ colours (such as #ef4066, for example), at least moving into 2017.

2. What we’ll see less of

I think we’ll see less “web for the sake of web”. By that I mean visiting a website where we’re presented with a very pretty and technically impressive grid of images and text with no clear navigation, no call-to-action, and a long load-screen at the beginning. With the explosion of web frameworks that’s been happening recently, every design/development team has been basically given free-reign to do what they want and create technical marvels previously thought impossible to achieve within a browser – this has been great for breaking out of the typical website structure but has ultimately forsaken the most important thing of all – the user experience. I’m also hoping to see less use of “scroll-jacking”, parallax scroll that can ruin your day.

Jenny Hadfield – Designer at Evoluted

1. What we’ll see more of

Moving forward, there are a number of trends that I would expect to develop. One that has now become expected is responsive design. This is helping to provide better UX across all devices.

As ever, user experience as a whole will also remain of paramount importance. One way in which it could evolve is through the integration of larger videos and animations, both of which can be used to assist with storytelling.

Rather than there being more or less flat design habits, I would suggest that it’s far more important that every website is designed with its ultimate purpose in mind. By placing focus on this, rather than trends, a site is far more likely to stand the test of time.

I would also note that typography has come an awfully long way with the addition of Google fonts.

Overall, I’d like to think we’ll keep seeing features introduced that are difficult for web developers to implement. After all, we need to keep them on their toes!

2. What we’ll see less of

I would certainly like to think pop-ups will be phased out to an extent, particularly given the ongoing annoyance they cause.

Image carousels are another thing that get users confused. I think they can end up associating them with adverts. As a whole, this ends up distracting from the content itself.

Other traits that I would expect us to see less off would include:

• Parallax
• Effects
• A reduction in the amount of animation overload and too much happening on one page

Finally, I’d like to think that we’ll see less use of poor quality stock photography. There really is no need to use dated and cringeworthy shots when there are so many high quality images available.

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Paul Brown – Better Call Paul

1. What we’ll see more of

I think there will be a lot of exciting new css trends and opportunities across new devices and unique layouts but much more importantly I think web is ready to transform in to something completely new, something we have not seen before and something we did not see coming. With virtual reality, machine learning, artificial intelligence, neural networks, physical websites and big data apis I think web is set to transform to a much more immersive and fundamental part of our lives, we are right in the middle of an exciting digital revolution and there are no signs of innovation slowing down. I think we are set to start to experience more unconscious interactions with the web, we will be moving away from finding and asking a website to do something and instead web will just be there when we need it, more seamlessly incorporated in the physical world we live in.

2. What we’ll see less of

In 2017 I think web developers are going to start using new technology which will create a lot of exciting new opportunities. 2017 will be the year the semantic web truly comes of age and so websites and user experience will become more intuitive in suggesting based not only on the meaning but also the intent behind a user’s interaction with a website. I think we will see more websites offering an unique experience to the user and we will see fewer websites with layouts and features we have become familiar with over the past 5 years.

Andy Murphy – Director at Calm Digital

I think one trait we might see less of is the use of stock photography. Stock photos can make a website look very similar to other ones, especially if an off the shelf theme is used. Designers are now opting for more originality using custom photos, videos or animations.

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Elyse Lawrence – Designer at Sleeky Web Design & Print

1. What we’ll see more of

It seems like stating the obvious, but mobile views really are getting better. I think what we’ll see now – after the last few years of designers finding their feet in the land of variable screen sizes – is a lot more bold experimentation in that area and a shift towards a much more fluid experience on smaller screens.

2. What we’ll see less of

I think horizontal nav bars will soon go the way of the vertical nav bar. Maybe not next year but certainly in the near future we’ll see a total shift towards the now ubiquitous ‘hamburger’, it’s just a case of when people are finally willing to let go. Additionally, the traditional page structure of a website is already evolving into a flowing, single page experience and I see that becoming a huge step in a new direction.

April Hodge – Design Director at LittleBigBox

1. What we’ll see more of

The parallax scrolling feature has been a very popular feature through 2015 / 2016 and I have seen an increase over the latest several months of the number of websites using this feature. I think it offers a nice little extra touch on a website to give the website a bit of movement and interaction, it adds a modern touch. I believe the parallax scrolling will be developed further in 2017 so it works seamlessly in responsive design, allowing the feature to move as it should on all mobile devices.

Minimalistic design is also popping up more and more. It looks great on all devices, loads quickly and offers great user experience with little fuss. As they say less is more.

2. What we’ll see less of

The pop up that appears when you attempt to view many websites really needs to stop, it can be quite annoying when trying to visit a website coupled with the fact is is not responsive. You try to view a website on a mobile device and a pop up appears, for example, ‘sign up to our newsletter’, you will find when you try to close it down it is easier said than done! The cross provision to close the pop up is usually not easily accessible on mobile devices or is simply fails to work. This is a trait that I sincerely hope becomes a thing of the past in 2017.

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Simon Fell – Lead Designer at Pedalo

1. What we’ll see more of

Designing the Content

I am going to stick my neck out to suggest that as web designers our job has changed considerably to the extent that we are now largely styling content containers. With the establishment of responsive design our page designs have to fit into simple re-configurable panels – there is less and less customization we can do. At first glance this sounds like we are making ourselves redundant but I think the changes in technology will bring a new aspect of the job into focus.

I notice that a lot of clients tend to think the design work is over when the site is built and don’t really consider designing their content. It is so easy to mess up a homepage with an ill-cropped image or with a headline and image that do not really work together. This is where I think small business, charities and membership organisations will need our support in future. Web users have grown to expect a professional look and feel to websites and organizations that can’t maintain that will lose out.

Infographics could be part of this picture. Using data to identify the areas in which a designer’s touch will make a difference and tying that in with your website’s user experience is the key. This will be a transformative year in the integration of user experience, design and digital marketing.

Flat Design, Animation & Other Subtle Trends

Flat design is a trend that we expect to, design will continue being influenced by the simplicity and clarity of App design.

Animations and transitions which aid user experience will continue to grow, such as animated buttons and small interactive elements that signal their importance by animating into place.

Large moving images such as video backgrounds, Cinemagraphs and Animated gifs are another trend which is still yet to hit its peak.

UI (User Interface) patterns will continue to develop, as behaviour patterns that occur frequently in checkouts, logins, registrations etc are likely to become more constrained due to changes and developments in browsing security.

2. What we’ll see less of

There are several regularly used website traits which we believe we’ll see less of in 2017:

Slideshows in the homepage hero area. Newer websites are adopting a different approach to stand out from the crowd.

We also expect to see less homepages with a bedazzling number of choices that overwhelm users with unnecessary complexity. These usually hinder site performance and have a negative impact on user engagement.

Non-Responsive websites is the most obvious area of rapid change. As the use of mobile platforms and multiple devices continues to grow, and Google continues to favour mobile-friendly sites in search results, those who haven’t already will update their website to avoid losing potential users and to provide a better user experience.

Russell Bishop – Lead Designer at Lighthouse London

I’m very excited about the amount of animation we’re about to abuse in 2017, and hopefully for the rest of time. Some timely books on their purpose may save us, however. (http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/designing-interface-animation/)

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Chan Dhillon – Client Services Manager at Kalexiko

1. What we’ll see more of

The grid has been ever present in design and when looking at the web it has been a key part of the process for the majority of sites big or small. But Lately I have been noticing an increase in design that derives from the original and evolves it to a new intuitive system. The ability to escape a grid allows for you to place content freely on the page in a structured way, yet break the boundaries we have been placing on ourselves when trying to be different and original. I’m by no means saying the grid will disappear into the history books as I still see the grid being an integral part of a sites building blocks, but designs will begin to take advantage of the ability to veer from the grid to express opinion or highlight certain aspects of a site.

2. What we’ll see less of

Burgers are in decline – The much coveted hamburger menu is already in decline and we’ll likely see less of it in a traditional sense in 2017. When it first hit our screens due to the explosion of mobile devices, designer’s loved the idea of cleaning up their UI’s with an elegant set of lines, allowing for a more scaleable navigation system with minimal impact to screen real estate. Now however designer’s are realising that sometimes it just isn’t necessary to hide navigation behind a burger. With a burger a user might say ‘Where’s that thing I’m looking for?’, with written navigation they might say ‘There’s what I’m looking for’. Just goes to show that some things benefit more from a functionality than aesthetics.

The Fold – For years clients have been obsessed by the fold, they wanted everything above it so the user can see everything all at once – information overload and a nightmare for designers who yearned not to be boxed in. Enter the age of touch devices and instinctual scrolling, finally people realised the potential of a user journey. But, as with a lot of new things designers got a little carried away and a trend developed where essentially nothing was above the fold, just a big sexy image. While this looks cool, it doesn’t always help the user, especially with no hint as where to go next or what the site is about.

Luke Turner – Head of Digital at Jask Creative

Alternative navigation options

The revolution of Responsive Web Design (RWD) in recent years has meant that web developers far and wide have had to adapt their thinking into how to best utilise RWD into websites, combining design with functionality.

Inevitably, this revolution caused a rush from web designers to sell in RWD to companies, and likewise companies wanted RWD incorporated into their websites. To keep up with the trend and as an easy workaround, web designers gave birth to the menu icon affectionately known as the ‘hamburger menu’ (it looks like a hamburger, see?). All navigation options were neatly tucked into this hamburger menu as screen real estate dropped down in size.

Nowadays, we’ve become more familiar with what we can do with RWD capabilities, and as we give more consideration to the users’ needs, we are seeing much smarter ways of designing a responsive website to give a better user experience and incorporating more intuitive menu systems. 

Video will continue to grow

Within the creative marketing industry, there is the sense that video has become more available and less prohibitive in terms of cost to clients. Adding to the fact that internet connection speeds are ever improving, it means that we will see more and more use of video on websites.

As well as lowered barriers to entry, videos will be seen as high value content as well to search engine crawlers and for social media, so expect to see more and more brands using video as a means to boost engagement and search engine rankings.

Flash will (finally) be no more

No surprises here, but we will probably see the end of Flash in 2017. Google Chrome was one of the last remaining members of all the major browsers to support Flash ‘out of the box’, but even they are now dropping it from their browsers by the end of 2016. There will no doubt still be a small collection of sites that use Flash and some sites will be whitelisted by Chrome to allow these to run but it’ll certainly help to reduce the use of flash massively.

Encryption everywhere

Website encryption has carried a common misconception, whereby the layman often associated encryption purely for the banking/financial sector. Whilst it is a must for banks to establish a secure session with their users online for obvious reasons, we should be applying the same security measures to all our websites.

High profile hacks and data theft have become almost an everyday talking point, and it is now relatively easy to build a picture of a user through their browsing habits and then take that data to commit the aforementioned crimes.

We should now see encryption becoming more of a norm to website development criteria so as to deter would be criminals and keep browsing data and customer details safe. With the introduction of Let’s Encrypt, which allows websites to install standard SSL certificates for free, there is no longer a cost barrier involved.

Optimise all the things

Adding videos, supporting high resolution screens and introducing animations and interactions has typically had a negative impact on website load speed and overall performance and whilst internet connection speeds may be going up in general, not everyone has access to these speeds, and certainly users on mobile devices are not guaranteed high speeds all the time, even with the proliferation of 4G connectivity.

I would hope to see developers taking a ‘less is more’ approach when it comes to including assets and media on websites and taking more time to compress and combine as many files as possible to reduce the number of requests required to load a page.

What does the team at Pixel Kicks think?

Rofikul Shahin – Web Designer, Pixel Kicks

In most cases the next web design trends rely heavily on what people are currently familiar with and what people want rather than need.

This is one of the reasons there are thousands of roughly similar themes available, all trying to create a one-for-all solu