At a time when online noise is louder than ever, it’s never been more important to keep your website updated using current best practices. If your website looks good and functions optimally, visitors will stay longer and interact with your content more extensively — leading to a higher ROI (return on investment). As you work with your designer, it’s crucial that you keep several aspects in mind when building and maintaining your site. Here are seven important elements of up-to-date, modern design. 

Each year, new web development trends surge in popularity leading to drastic changes in user interfaces and back-end operations. But no matter what the newest trend may be, they all have a shared goal: optimize the user experience to boost engagement and sales.

Now that the online sphere is so saturated, there is no such thing as a unique product or service anymore. Brand loyalty is a thing of the past and so the way to capture market share is to offer the best experience on your website.

To do that, it’s crucial to stay ahead of the latest trends and know how to successfully implement them on your own website. (Read the full article at Codester).

1. Mobile Responsiveness

Usability is one of the key factors affecting user satisfaction when it comes to websites. That means that the site needs to be just as attractive and functional when viewed on a smartphone. If a potential customer on a mobile device gets frustrated when interacting with your site, they’ll likely not return. Fortunately, the opposite is true, as well. Most website platforms have straightforward methods for making sites responsive; the important thing is that the mobile view is taken into account at every stage of the development and maintenance process.

2. Comprehensive Footers

One of the distinctive features of modern web design is a large, comprehensive footer that acts as a sort of “mini-site” for in-depth content that is important but would make the top menu too complex. Also, along with necessary legal material (terms of service and privacy policy), footers can contain social media feeds, images, and your logo. Take a look at similar, successful businesses for inspiration! 

3. Infrastructure

If you have a business that’s comprehensive, having a solid data infrastructure is not an option — it’s vital. Code software tools such as terraform can streamline and organize the work for your IT department, saving time and energy. Make sure that your infrastructure software supports a number of cloud providers such as Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, IBM Cloud, and others. 

4. Professional SEO

SEO is one of the most important aspects of website development in terms of ROI. It connects your potential clients to your website, so they can easily find what they’re looking for. Effective, professionally managed SEO will add context that will help delineate how search engine results will appear. SEO has become a broad field of knowledge as Google is continuously making changes in the way is processes keywords and content. It takes a great deal of expertise (or access to that expertise) to stay ahead of SEO trends and best practices. 

5. Animations

Remember the complex Flash animations that bogged down websites and made load times interminable? Thankfully, those days are over. Subtle, interactive animations are now possible using CSS. Sliding menus, rotating icons, hover effects and other animations will catch a visitor’s eye and make your design stand out. There’s no need to go overboard on animations; make sure they’re a good fit with your content, and explore other websites to get examples of how it can be tastefully done. 

6. Whitespace

The room between elements on your website is called whitespace — and these days, the more whitespace, the better. Modern site design is simple. Mobile users appreciate a clean look and readability. If pages are too complex and overcrowded, visitors will tend to click away. Also, more whitespace will decrease loading time and enhance the general aesthetic of your site — and, as a bonus, make it easier and more pleasant for your web designer to maintain and update. 

7. Material Design

Remember when flat design became popular around 2013 or so? Its minimal look and focus on functionality was a departure from skeuomorphism, in which design imitated the physical world. We’ve now moved into the era of material design; it basically retains the flat look but adds subtle shadows to make buttons and images stand out. That tends to improve click-through rates.

Knowledge of fundamental principles, latest trends, and software are all necessary to build a modern website. Consider these elements as you make your plan.