The World Wide Web is changing all the time – just take a look at those garish sites from the 1990s. For small businesses this means adapting their websites to meet technological and social trends. If you want to stay ahead the game, here are some website trends that you should be aware of.

Image credit: Pixabay

Cutting down on text

Many websites are finding that visitors just aren’t responding to large chunks of text in the same ways that they used to. This doesn’t mean that blogging is dead – there’s still a place for full-length articles and good quality written content. Rather, it means that text just doesn’t capture the attention in the same way that other forms of content do.

On their homepages, businesses are instead turning to video and picture content to make a powerful first impression. If you’re not sure what content is right for your site, then perhaps a web design agency, such as CandidSky, could help? External agencies generate insights about your audience backed up by data to determine which content will draw them in and which will put them off.

Catering to a new crowd

Another significant website trend that small businesses must be aware of is the rise of new online devices. The most obvious example here is mobile, with more and more individuals accessing the web via their smartphones.

Small businesses, therefore, must ensure that their website is not only suitable for visitors using a desktop computer, but smaller screens too. This is commonly achieved through a responsive website design that adapts to whatever device it is being displayed on. If businesses are not already taking this approach, then they shouldn’t wait much longer. The development of the Internet of Things promises to let us go online from all manner of different devices, from wearables to home appliances. If your website can’t cope with the range of devices available now then things are only going to get more complicated in the future.

Custom photographs

If you’re displaying images on your site, try to move away from stock pictures and towards custom, bespoke photographs. A professional photographer will cost more than a subscription to one of the many online image hosting portals, but it will help to differentiate your site from the countless others on the World Wide Web.

What’s more, image content is very engaging for your audience, so a good quality picture could bring in more visitors and can be easily shared across your company’s social media accounts. Also, if you are looking to do something a little different, why not look at introducing cinemagraphs, which combine still images and video content, into your site?

Parallax Scrolling

Small businesses are always be looking for ways to modernise and their websites should be no exception. One relatively recent trend in web design is the use of parallax scrolling, whereby different elements in the background and foreground move as you scroll down a page.  This creates an interesting effect, but make sure you test this feature against multiple web browsers before you introduce it.