Love it or hate it, but you can't deny that it's there. The single page web design is the most noticeable trend of 2016.
When we ask our clients what website designs they like they send us samples of the sites that all have a few things in common:
- Scrolling: One page (i.e. wall) design where the main menu tabs, if present, do not take you to new pages but jump you down on the same page. Scrolling can be quite extensive!
- Flat navigation, i.e. no submenus visible
- Excessive pagination, where one article is spread through multiple pages, making users click "next" multiple times
- Sliding in and out of side navigational panels a la Windows 10
- Zigzagging of on-page information by presenting a chunk of it aligned to the left and then the chunk that follows aligned to the right
- On-page boxes instead of the traditional navigation with the main menu on the top or side bar
- Use of imagery, icons and buttons of huge dimensions; use of huge font sizes; use of contrasting bright colors
- Use of transparent background with overlayed images and buttons
- Stacking links to key information points in the footer area, with no site map
- Limited amount of information presented on a page
Take a look at some of the examples that illustrate this web design trend:
One-page desing with zigzagging of information
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Huge overlayed images with transparency work
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Large images, large buttons, centering small chunks of information
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Oversized images, fonts, buttons, and boxes
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As with everything, there are pluses and minuses of this web design trend.
Flat navigation and the reign of the back button. In our humble opinion, the one-page design with "flat" navigation is a pain to deal with if you are looking for information. Flat navigation does not mean there are no submenus, if you look at the browser bar, you'd see the folder structure of a website is still hierarchical, but this hierarchy is hidden from view and made inaccessible to users via navigation, you are at the mercy of the back button.
Nexting as a patience exercise. Why not combine surfing with character building? Clicking "next" three times to read a 500 word article is going to help you kill two birds with one stone: read and work on your patience at the same time. If you make users scroll down your home page where each element fully deserves a separate page, then why not let them scroll where it is actually appropriate? Making users load a new page every time is rude. Bandwidth is increasingly becoming a scarce commodity. If the idea is to showcase more ads, then why not streamline them on the same page, rotating each for 30 seconds or so? You will achieve the same exposure but without subjecting your website users to "nexting".
Sitemap is no more. The absence of drop-down menus as the permanent point of reference makes it difficult to get a coherent understanding of the overall business represented by a website. A couple of years ago you could find refuge by going to a Site Map link but these days many websites don't even bother to display site maps at all.
Search bars and how not to code. Given that search is one of the most difficult things to code well, the search features are often poorly architected and poorly coded. You often wish you had a compass to find what you need on a large site! Developers, have mercy on your site's users, embed Google's search bar to enable the search feature for your clients, especially if you use flat navigation. Google is renowned for its coding, so use it.
Coloring boxes. Home page with boxes and chunks of information zigzagging from left to right reminds me of my kindergarten times. Use of large boxes of contrasting colors make me miss my coloring books. Sweet nostalgia!
Size matters. Huge images, huge buttons and huge fonts can be useful to highlight certain elements of information and draw users' attention to them but when everything is huge by default it makes you want to consider investing in eyewear and optometrists stock. Is everyone's eyesight that bad? Do you always look at your screen from afar? I am still looking for the practical benefits of this style. Have you found them?
Visually this web design trend can be striking and pleasing. Use of creative imagery showcases marketing and branding efforts putting talents of web and graphic designers ahead of the business objectives, but oh well, the main purpose of life is to be entertained, we all know that, so it's all good.
If you are looking for information, however, this web design trend is going to test your patience more than you'd like to admit. The remedy is to install a site map plugin for your browser or an app for your tablet that would allow you to "grab" the sitemap of the website the way it was designed and have all elements and contents displayed as links in plain view. Much like the traditional site map: http://www.joomlabliss.com/joomla-bliss-site-map-100
Our opinion. If you are building a website for a large corporation or non profit organization where you'd need to provide users with a lot of easily accessible information and materials, the one-page flat zigzagging web design trend is going to make it very difficult to do. If, however, you need to showcase a small consulting business, a doctor's practice, a fashion or haircut salon, a restaurant, a portfolio type of business, then you can take a full advantage of the visual benefits of this web design trend. But have mercy on us: add a sitemap link at the bottom of your site!
Our recommendation: We all want to follow fashion and march in sync with times. It is quite possible to incorporate some of the nice visual elements of this web design trend without sacrificing quality of the onsite search or the amount of information that would be easily accessible to users. Joomla Bliss developed a few web design best practices that help our clients achieve just that. Call us at 613.231.6308 if you'd like to hear more.
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