With the countless website design options being offered today, it is hard to figure out what you need in order to create a website that looks great and, more importantly, creates revenue for your business.

Many articles state what to avoid when designing a website while few highlight what your site needs to increase engagement and drive revenue.

Choosing the correct website design for your company is vital, with 46.1% of people saying a website’s design is the number one criterion for discerning the credibility of the company.

Within the next few weeks we will discuss the top 5 website design trends to create a great user experience and increase the most important element �" revenue!

Trend #1 �" Longer Scrolling Sites

What is a Longer Scrolling Site? It is defined as a web interaction design that allows users to visually see website content with longer pages and more imagery.

Typically this feature is shown on the home page of the website and acts as a “visual table of contents” that users can scroll through and see a summary of the entire website.

Simply scrolling through a page to get information is preferred over the continuous clicking to find information.

Long scrolling sites have been popular for a while but, the benefits of scrolling have multiplied and found themselves in places other than the home page. They can now be found in such places as “About” pages and even “Product” pages as a means to elegantly display a wide variety of content. Example: www.pbsurfinn.com

Differences from Other Similar Trends: There are many design trends similar to longer scrolling sites, some of which are “continuous scrolling” or “parallax scrolling”. But don’t be fooled, there are several major differences between them such as SEO ranking factors and mobile compatibility. 

We find that continuous and parallax scrolling designs are very heavy websites due to download time and animation which slows down website load speed and effects visibility on search engines. We also find that most sites with parallax scrolling don’t work on mobile devices.

Key Benefits of Longer Scrolling Sites: It hasn’t gone unnoticed that most new site designs published today tend to be longer in length when scrolling through the page. We are seeing success with our clients due to these key longer scrolling elements:

• Perfect For Today’s Multi-Device World �" As mobile devices become more popular, it’s becoming more commonplace for sites to opt for scrolling instead of linking as a means to display content, especially on home pages. This trend offers less clicks to get the information consumers want, which increases usability for large and small screens. With the mobile search rate already surpassing desktop search in 2015, having your website design being user-friendly for all devices is critical.
• Marketing Messaging Summary �" Visually capture the user’s attention by telling a story on the home page through a combination of imagery and content. This allows you to highlight and focus on all important areas of the website in a visually appealing way, while also giving the user a summary of the website and a way for them to learn more. This combination gives the “wow” factor to the website, increases the engagement of the users, and can lead to improved conversion rate.
• Visually Focused Content �" Longer scrolling design is ideal when showcasing image-heavy content to the consumer. This allows you to showcase beautiful business images that will impress your audience. According toZabisco, “40% of people will respond better to visual information than plain text.”

Stay tuned for our next top revenue generating design trend, “Sticky Navigation and Fixed Elements” coming soon!

To learn more about the “Top Revenue Generating Design Trends,” attend Milestone’s Digital Marketing Conference in Santa Clara, CA on September 14th-15th. For more information about this conference, please click Milestone Digital Marketing Conference.

Contributed by: Han Nguyen, Director of Design & Website Development and Lauren Adams, Product Marketing Specialist

Milestone Internet Marketing - www.milestoneinternet.com