Paradigm Shifts For Your Web Design

By Seneca | Tips and Tricks

Jan 16

Web surfing is happening much differently than it did when we first got started with our dial up internet and our trying to hit the scroll bar on the side of the screen with our cursor.

Back in the day, a good webpage didn’t make you scroll too much and you had lots of links embedded in content to click around on. You needed to put your important stuff “above the fold” which is actually a newspaper term I think.

Now, we are increasingly moving toward mobile. All most no one still has dial up – although it’s still vital to make your site load fast. Our attention span has decreased and Google won’t give slow sites the time of day.

We are also transitioning to wearable devices.

What all of this means, is that the old “don’t make people scroll” adage is obsolete. It’s now easier to scroll than it is to click. Especially on mobile, trying to click a text link. Forget it!

What this means to you:

  • Your newsletter sign up does not have to be “above the fold.” In fact, it will be easier to convert people once they understand what your site is about and want to stay connected.
  • For your important links, make them buttons. If you really want a text link, give plenty of space around the link for people’s fat fingers.
  • Large images and lots of white space will make your site look fresher and easy to scan as people scroll
  • Think minimalistic and uncluttered for mobile users
  • Vector images will be where it’s at, since they scale up or down with no loss of crispness.
  • Long pages are no problem, don’t feel pressure to break it down to multiple pages.
  • Simple simple simple.
  • Consider not having a sidebar at all