Web development has come a long way in just the last few years alone. Responsive design has become the standard and there has been a shift towards simpler designs. Technology has also made it more viable for websites to be more interactive with its users. There are tons of new web development techniques that the web design/development industry is talking about with all the new advancements. If you want to improve your UI and UX, here are some experimental and trendy techniques you should test out.
1. Conditional Loading
Do you have a feature-rich or media-rich site? If so, one of your constant worries is probably if your websites load quickly enough for your users (especially the mobile ones). This problem can be solved with conditional loading. Rather than loading the entirety of a page, you can just load elements when needed. For example, if your social buttons are on the bottom of the page, why not just load them when users go to the bottom? It’s a simple concept that you can really play around with to make a complex site feel seamless.
2. Convert Defined Widths into Percentages
One of the biggest web design issues that keep coming up is making sure that your website is fit to the user’s device. In responsive design, many developers define a certain width for a website and try to work from there. But a better way to make sure that users get a great viewing experience is to define how much of a column or row takes up in terms of percentage of the browser/screen real estate.
3. Eliminating Sidebars Altogether
Suggesting that you eliminate the sidebar can sound shocking to some. However, it’s still possible to give users easily accessible navigation options without the sidebar. This was clearly proven with how navigation options were provided by apps and mobile sites. Users could easily access a pull out navigation menu or drop down menu with a single click or swipe. Since that’s the case, wouldn’t it be worth experimenting how that would perform for desktop/laptop/tablet users?
4. Following Sidebars
On the other hand, if you do want to use sidebars, why not use one that follows the user? Normally, sidebars only extend to a certain point of a page. As the user scrolls down, the side bar disappears which means that if the user wants to use it, he must scroll back up. Having a sidebar that follows the user as he is scrolling is more user friendly and intuitive. The result is that the user will spend more time browsing your site whether you use the sidebar showcase your most popular pages or a simple navigation to other parts of your site.
As technology advances, creating a site through responsive design will be easier, adding interactive design (like parallax) will become commonplace and there will be a mashup of different frameworks and techniques. The rise of HTML5 might possibly replace Flash altogether and make websites even more engaging with interactivity. While it will take quite some time to figure out what works best, what you can do for now is to add small tweaks like the ones laid out in this article to combine small improvements and turn them into large transformations for your website.