Web Design 101: Design And UX Trends You’ll Want to Follow to Keep Your Visitors Happy in 2016

The employment picture has been gloomy in various industry sectors in recent years, but the Internet has been a bright spot, having added 1.2 million jobs to the economy over the past decade. The number of online shoppers has grown to where Internet advertising is currently a 20 billion dollar a year industry.

eCommerce accounts for roughly half of these jobs, which is good news for software applications developers whose employment totals are expected to increase by 25% or more over the next ten years.

It is good news for users as well. Skilled web designers now focus more and more on taking user needs into account, rather than on what looks good to the designers and their clients – a win-win for all concerned.

What is the Average 2016 Internet User Like?

An eCommerce website obviously needs to be created with both the owner’s and user’s business objectives in mind. The average user:

typically has an attention span of about 8 seconds; or 1 second less than that of a goldfish.
is as apt to be using a mobile device as a PC, and can demand your services from anywhere at any time.
is not patient. If your pages take more than 2 seconds to load, he or she will probably go elsewhere.
lives in a fast-paced world, and has an ever-diminishing desire to conduct in-depth analyses. Whatever information he or she needs should be no more than a couple of clicks away.

These are challenges for the web designer, and they are also challenges for those who develop the tools and themes designers use. Let’s look into what the features of such a theme should be.

Modern Look and Flow is Important – But How is It Achieved?

Image source: Uncode WordPress Theme – Blog Metro layout

User interface (UX) design involves more than deciding what information is to be presented to the user. How that information is presented is not only just as important, it is critical.

Out with the Old and in with the New. The traditional way is to scroll down a page until you find what you were looking for, click to another page, and repeat the process. Information presented in a serial fashion serves neither the website owner nor the user well.

You want to capture a user’s attention, help that user navigate to the sought-after information, and lead him or her to a call to action. This is most effectively accomplished with a modern look and feel approach. A modular homepage is at times all that is necessary to get visitors to where they want to go.

Whitespace is another contributor to modern look and feel. Aesthetically, the proper use of whitespace gives web pages a professional, elegant look. Whitespace is easy on the user’s eyes, and makes things easier to find – including those things you would like a user to find.

Image source: Uncode WordPress Theme – Classic Shop Layout

Clean lines and large, sharp images boost sales. It’s critical to provide a mobile shopper with images that are complete, crisp, and clear, since they have such a small viewing area to work with. The technology needed to address this need is here, so it’s up to the web designer to seek out tools that utilize this technology.

Just as is the case with traditional engineering and manufacturing, proper form, fit, and function is also critical for UX purposes. The goal should be a professional looking website that performs the necessary functions across a wide range of platforms and devices, and provides the consumer with rich visual content anytime and at any place.

Trends in UX and a Good Solution to a Tough Problem

Uncode is a good solution for a web designer intent on satisfying both the client, and the end user. While this theme is relatively new, its innovative design has resulted in its acquiring a large and enthusiastic following.

Uncode is Flexible – This WordPress theme features some of the same powerful plugins other premium themes utilize, but that is where the similarity ends.

Rather than using multiple modules that provide many features, Uncode’s developers combined modules and built on them, giving web designers multiple options and tremendous flexibility.

It Offers a Wealth of Layout Possibilities – Uncode’s highly advanced Adaptive Grid System gives the designer the capability to create any imaginable layout. Choose any of a variety of layout types, or mix and match them to get precisely the layout you want.

A Different Approach to Image Management – The Adaptive Images System goes a step or two beyond responsive. It automatically rescales images to optimally fit within any device’s screen size. If you want a square image, the system does the necessary cropping.

Other key features include Masonry/Isotope and Carousel layouts that will give your web pages, blog pages, portfolios, and product pages the modern, modular look mentioned earlier.

Undsgn and Uncode

Unfolds creators didn’t take it on themselves to build a better theme, and let it go at that. Their innovative approach to the theme’s design, and their focus on user options, resulted in a theme that is powerful, clean, and sexy; attributes that are reflected in the websites it is used to create.

Uncode has been nominated for a CSS Design Award. It has already been featured as a CSS Winner as well as having been selected as the ThemeForest Top New File for November, 2015.

Clean, Modern, and Delightful to Use

Uncode offers a strong solution to most of the problems facing web designers today. It performs superbly when used to create websites designed to provide exceptional user experiences; websites that can draw in visitors who are impatient and have the shortest of attention spans, and encourage them to stay.

It is easy to use. There is nothing about Uncode that a novice cannot handle. There is much more to this theme than has been presented here. You are invited to check it out.

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