Plan for a Modern Website Free From Trends

Trends are tricky. Especially for web professionals. Yes you want to stand out from the crowd but you also want to implement common trends—to a certain degree—because it shows activity in your business.

With that being said, is it really necessary to redevelop your website every year to fit into the trends? Currently, one-page responsive layouts are the leader and for good reason: it caters to mobile device users. Fewer people use laptop or desktops to browse the internet, so your website really should be user friendly on a tablet or a smartphone… and the one page layout makes sense because it is more user friendly. The information is more concise and to-the-point.

Remember a few years ago, the biggest trend was to fill every web page with as much information as possible, and stuff that with anchor text hyperlinks for “better SEO” and “user friendly navigation”. How funny it all sounds now… and it’s a pain to have to clean that up to fit the simpler, one-page responsive layout.

In short, following trends leads to excessive clean-ups when the next trend comes out.

The only 3 things you need to prioritize is:

• A fast loading website, because nobody will wait 20 seconds for everything to load.
• A responsive (tablet & smartphone compatible) design, and information that caters to smaller device users.
• Clear, easy navigation. Because nobody wants to have to look for information on your website.

As for everything else, don’t get sucked into the latest trend. If you find a design you like that fits your brand and follows the above 3 priorities, then the only updates you will need to worry about are on your blog, if applicable.