Design Heaps

For no one is a secret that nowadays trade, politics, the entertainment industry, among other sectors, rely on web pages and social network to inform about their products and services and also interact dynamically with their customers and consumers. Thinking about communications is thinking about the Internet, as simple as that.

But what about the trends in web design that will mark the next year and beyond? We explore this situation in the present post.

1) Web design based on mobile devices such as phones and tablets

This is not a novelty but it is a trend that is consolidated: most web designs will be based on the characteristics of navigation of phones and other mobile devices. Website designers now focus on how to create more efficient and impactful content in smaller spaces.

2) Professional photography

The Internet is the realm of the images and videos. The owners of companies recognize that. Internet users value the use of high-quality images, which have striking designs and are coherent with the brand of the company. Web design teams must necessarily think about hiring professional photographers and stop using images that they find for free through the internet.

3) Buttons in the bottom

Do you know some cell phone apps where the interactions don’t occur at the top but at the bottom of the screen? Sure you do. This is strongly influencing the design of websites. Now the programmers and creators are not limited to the traditional design that always placed the menu at the top.

4) Voice interaction

Already some of the most popular social networks like YouTube include this option in its mobile version. Will this become important in the design of websites? Yes, definitely. Although this type of search system is still limited, we should remember that most people browse internet on their mobile devices and this facilitates the use of engines that include voice interactions. Systems like Siri and Cortana, for example, show us that many people are interested in “talking” with their computers!

5) Progressive web apps

How many applications do you have on your phone? We imagine that more than a few. Most internet users are constantly downloading new applications that are released to market. What is important about this? Some companies are changing their focus: instead of having traditional websites, they have sites that include features of an application: instant upload, attractive and easy to use. This is what they call progressive we apps. Now, a lot of changes in web design will be done by the integration of traditional websites with plugins that can generate new functions similar to the ones of modern apps.

6) Virtual reality

We already see it constantly on social networks: 360 videos, interactive cameras in virtual spaces, and so on. Now most websites have videos to introduce their products and services, to give news and to expand the information they offer to the public. What’s next? Virtual reality, of course.

7) Beautiful typography

The identity of brands is constructed in many ways, including by the selection of typography of their texts. It is usual that in the presentations of products and services on websites, designers integrate letters of different sizes and colors, but what is also emerging is that some companies generate their own typographic style that distinguishes them from the others.

8) Subtle animations

Do you remember when a few years ago many websites had large flash animations, which sometimes took a long time to load and made it difficult to read the content on the website? This is over. What is used now? Small animations, subtle touches that give identity to the website but that facilitate the user’s navigation.

9) Smart Bots

Smart bots used in web design is not necessarily something new but its use surely is expanding. What can they be used for? It is easy to imagine a question and answer section that uses a bot to develop conversations with visitors. This type of virtual assistant can save resources to a company and resolve the doubts of any client.

10) Data visualization

Many managers before may not have cared to know the behavior of their visitors on websites, however, today almost everyone wants to receive statistics on visits, reading time, clicks and other interactions. Necessarily, any web design in the future must incorporate a system that allows its administrators to know various data of the people who visit the website.

In the official blog of WooCommerce, the developers of this plugin for WordPress have revealed information, during this month of October of 2017, about updates that had been requested by the users of this digital marketing system.

Among the elements that have been added to the recent 3.2 version of WooCommerce is the application of coupons in product orders. Now this option is available and allows you to do automatic calculations if you use a discount coupon in an order.

Another interesting update has been the incorporation of alerts in the WooCommerce administration table to draw attention to extensions that have not been tested with the latest update. Once the user identifies these alerts, he can search for the most recent version of the extension and run compatibility tests. “Our hope is that this will improve general compatibility and incentivise plugin authors to keep things up to date with new releases,” says the official WooCommerce blog.

This 3.2 version  of WooCommerce also incorporated a new filter in the table of extensions that allows you to easily identify those that are active on the web. On the other hand, once the user’s website is connected to the WooCommerce.com account, notifications will be made to inform about any updates available for extensions.

In constant growth

WooCommerce, an open source e-commerce plugin for WordPress, was launched in September of 2011 and, since then, its popularity has grown around the world to become one of the most used e-commerce systems for its simplicity and efficiency when managing product data.

Since its creation, WooCommerce has exceeded 32 million downloads and today it has positioned itself as the most important e-commerce platform on the Internet. Its success has been such that nowdays 28% of virtual stores use this system.

Start your business with WooCommerce

Working with WooCommerce can be an ideal option for you if you are looking to develop a virtual store. One of the possibilities is to work with Storefront theme, a web page model that allows you to edit with flexibility and efficiency the information you want to include in it. The guarantee offered by this system is that it is maintained by the WooCommerce developer team, so it will always have good compatibility with all the extensions and updates of this plugin.

Do you want to know more about this and start your e-commerce project? Fill out our form here and you can access the contents and information of WooCommerce.

If you don’t have training in web design and, in general, computer software, you probably have not heard or read about UX design, however, if you are an entrepreneur or intend to promote products and services with a virtual store, it is essential that you know the branch of software creation that is focused on improving navigation, access and interaction between a website or a program and its user.

This discipline is known as UX design (user experience design), and it is specifically the branch of software design, also applied to the creation of websites, which is responsible for planning, researching and developing the way the user or visitor can interact with the program. It is governed, mainly, by the principle of offering users a simple and pleasant experience.

Elements of UX design

The design of user experiences in the world of websites always incorporates some elements that we will explore below. Among them we find:

Visual design: It is the combination of all elements of shapes, colors, lines and their arrangement in the space that the user will experience. Always the designer is trying tosend a message to the user that is clear and pleasant.

Availability of information: One of the central points of the UX design is to provide people with a natural route to search and find information on the website. If a person can’t do it without the need for another to assist, something has failed in the design.

Interactions: What can you do when you enter website? Click, drag elements, explore menus, use search engines and activate audios and videos? Surely there are many more actions that you can perform. Well, UX designers have to consider how to implement each of these possible interactions so that they are consistent throughout the program, that they are intuitive and that they satisfy the needs of all types of users

Accessibility: Do you think the design of the websites is arbitrary? Not at all. The reality is that when a professional team is focused on UX design, they perform constant tests to adapt their proposals to the tastes and capabilities of their audience

Recent trends in UX design

It is clear that when we talk about design and the tastes of audiences, everything is constantly changing. Nowadays, the fact that most people use the internet on their mobile devices has modified how design teams face the challenges of creating websites.

What are the designers doing now? Here are some of the ideas that are common today: time saving, designs that are simple and quickly offer the necessary information; personalization of informative offer according to the tastes and needs of the user; specific functionalities, so the designers remove those that are superficial or unnecessary and keep only those that are essential to the experience; interactions by voice commands, etcetera.