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How Minimalist Web Design Can Improve the Customer Experience

“Less is more” – you’ve probably heard this phrase a number of times. Like most of us, you might be thinking of it as a sort of a “minimalist mantra”.

This mantra has certainly imprinted itself into modern design, as minimalism remains one of the most popular design philosophies. From architecture to fashion, “the art of less”, has proven to be a tenacious influence on creators and trends.

When we talk about minimalism in web design, we’re referring to a design approach that seeks to simplify the user interface and website navigation. This is done by using only the elements that have a distinct purpose, whether aesthetic or functional.

We’ve grown used to clean, uncluttered interfaces without necessarily dubbing them minimalist. The principles of minimalism have taken over web design and still dictate key trends, but this is not without good reason. A minimalist design can greatly enhance the user experience, which, in the case of business websites and e-commerce stores, immediately translates to an improved customer experience.

Clarity above all

Minimalism is not about getting rid of elements for the sake of clean-cut aesthetics and a sleek-looking website. Sometimes, you might find designers taking things too far, eliminating to the point that the website either looks unfinished or navigation becomes confusing because too many elements are hidden. That’s the exact opposite of what minimalist design seeks to achieve.

The primary goal of minimalist web design is to improve usability and make navigation effortless. In a survey by Hubspot, 76% of consumers stated that the most important factor in a website’s design is how easy it makes it for them to find what they want.

Clarity is one of the crucial factors for an effortless user experience, and in order to introduce clarity to your design, you’ll first have to get rid of a lot of visual clutter. That’s where the crispy minimalist aesthetics come in.

By avoiding excess details, buttons, and other distractions, you’ll be able to guide the visitor’s focus to help them find what they need within a matter of seconds. In order to emphasize content and guide the visitor’s eye to important elements on the page such as CTA buttons, designers also rely on simplified layouts, whitespace (negative space), and contrast.

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5 Solid Web-Design Tips For Drawing In Clients

Creating a quality website might seem easy, especially with all the platforms available today. You can use a template for guidance and then publish what you think is most important to your brand in some very fun ways. But with all the bells and whistles out there, however, it’s easy for business owners to lose sight of the reason for their site in the first place: to attract and inform potential customers.

Your customers and clients are the roots of your business, and neglecting their needs when designing your site can be detrimental — and different audiences look for different things. Below, five members of Forbes Communications Council shared some fundamental web design tips that will help you draw in, and keep, new clients. Here’s what they said:

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A Quick Primer on Managing Your Web-Development Tasks

Early in the life of your startup, perhaps when that venture is still just a side project, you need to get serious about the design of your website or app(s). And you can expect that task to be a financial drain. Building a great interface isn’t all that different from building a house: It has to be done by a great designer or coders; and those professionals’ labor doesn’t come cheap.

However, there are ways you can reduce costs and the amount of time that designer or coder spends on your project. Here are the typical stages of a web-development project and how you can reduce costs at each step.

The web-design cycle
For those of you less familiar with web development, there is usually a set system for how new pages and features get designed and built. While this might vary from place to place, most larger businesses will have some variation on the following stages for building and improving web properties and apps.

Initial wireframes or mock-ups
First, there is a pre-design phase where any new ideas are mapped out, usually as a “wireframe” or “mock-up” (there is a difference). Those ideas might be for a new web page, a new feature in an app or some other element which might change the overall aesthetics or functions of your web property.

The design of a whole new site or app can be a large undertaking requiring many mock-ups and meetings, but a single page change will often be something an individual can build a wireframe for. This rough sketch of the proposed site can be shown to colleagues at meetings as well as to the company’s go-to or in-house designer. It can be discussed and reworked until everyone is happy.

The design at this point will only be rudimentary and will show where certain features are and where large images might go, and give some indication to the designer of how the overall page/feature should look.

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How AI is reshaping web development

Few technological developments have garnered as much media attention as AI, and for good reason: Few nascent technologies have disrupted as many industries and commanded as much consumer attention as AI has. Despite the fact that AI is drastically upending many predictions about what the future of business looks like, however, too little attention is being paid to the way that it’s radically reshaping web development as we know it.

Savvy web developers around the world are already rushing to embrace the power of AI. Here’s how AI and the offshoot innovations it’s enabling are reshaping web development and giving developers everywhere hope about the future of tech.

A new kind of user experience

The biggest way that AI is reshaping web development is by offering users everywhere a new, more personalized experience unlike anything they’ve ever enjoyed before. Talented developers have understood for years now that in order to consistently lure new users in, you need to engage them and provide them with enticing, interactive web design that reacts to their choices. Now, with a helping hand from some AI companions, developers everywhere are realizing that they can cultivate a new kind of user experience that exploits the power of machine learning (ML) to dynamically adapt more quickly than ever before.

We aren’t quite yet at the point where we can delegate everything to the machines, but anybody involved in web development over the past few years can tell you that ML is rapidly breaking onto the scene and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. The exciting promise of ML as it pertains to web design will only grow in the near-future, too, especially as investment dollars continue to flood in from around the world. Eager investors everywhere understand that AI knows no limits and can be leveraged by businesses anywhere regardless of their size.

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Web development trends 2019 – Ponder on them to make a difference

Today, every business or individual is making a shift to the online world with a website or web app. As per the 2018 Web Server survey by Netcraft, the internet has more than 200 million active websites. The total number of websites is around ten times more than the active ones. Further, the report reveals that more than 200 new websites are launched every minute today.

The rapid rise in the number of websites brings a lot of new resources to users, but it also increases competition and the need for new skills for web developers.

The world of web development experiences demand constant transformation every year, whether it is related to tools, services, coding, languages, or designs. And with every year, new trends and technologies emerge out to evolve the way developers work. While one year is dominated by static websites, the next by mobile responsiveness, then another by chatbots.

Web development trends in 2019
To make the best out of web development and stand apart from the competition, developers will need to keep track of these web development trends in 2019 and use the same into their work.

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is one of the hottest technology today and is used as a core component in most of the digital transformation strategies. More and more enterprises are implementing AI to automate business processes, reduce costs and accelerate time to market.

As per the leading analyst firm Gartner, the business value from AI will reach $1.2 trillion in 2018, up 70 per cent from 2017. Further, it is predicted that AI-derived business value will total $3.9 trillion by 2022.

In 2019, the role of AI will increase significantly in web development arena like never before. Companies will leverage the power of AI in web development to improve productivity and customer satisfaction.

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WEB DEVELOPMENT: WHAT’S BIG IN 2019?

A technology or framework doesn’t have to be brand new to be on our list here, it just needs to be growing rapidly or evolving in an interesting way. Let’s take a look!

LOOKING BACK ON 2018: SPA,  CSS GRID, AND SPEED

Single Page Applications (SPAs) saw a leap in popularity in 2018. A simple concept made possible by the power of modern Javascript, a SPA loads a page once then never reloads it or navigates to another page; instead, Javascript is used to manipulate the DOM and render new layouts in the browser. JSON data can be sent between the client and server, but the page behaves more like a desktop application than a “conventional” website. (Visit the websites of Gmail, Facebook, Apple and many more to see a SPA in action). It can provide a much snappier experience to the user and really transform the responsiveness of a site, but usually requires a sizeable chunk of code shipped to the browser. It’s an idea that’s been popular for a while but really saw a lot of developer engagement last year.

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How will AI change the web development in future?

AI is present everywhere – from chatbots to virtual assistants, AI is used in day to day activities. Virtual assistants like Siri and Cortana are helping the users by processing their queries on the internet via voice. They are capable of performing the simple task like playing music, setting the alarm, and providing weather reports. Home assistants like Google home and Amazon Echo are also offering the users simple activation of home appliances. AI is slowly but certainly creeping in our daily lives.

The goals of AI are (“Artificial Intelligence Overview”, 2018) to create expert systems and to implement Human intelligence in machines. Machine learning a branch of AI which allows the web applications to adapt by observing and learning from users’ habits, idiosyncrasies and preferences.

Web development is a highly popular field as users are always looking for a rich and personalized content. Nothing is better than hyper-customized user experience. The web development companies are facing challenges to move away from the traditional approaches in web development. Therefore, the need for AI and the related tools is felt. Automating the web development put less stress on the web developers. With the involvement of AI in the process, web developers can leave the cumbersome task on the AI and focus on the value-adding aspects of the web application development like planning rich user experience, formulating the design strategies and other related activities. In-fact Human-machine collaboration can revolutionize the field of web development

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Trends You can Expect in Web Development for 2019

The current generation of website developers is ideal employees in consideration of web development spectrum. Most of the modern people respond quickly to various changes along with growth in the professional environment. They can study, improvise their qualification and also change as well as get into the trend quite easily. The different trends in web development can evolve rapidly. Every industry is getting revolutionized in various aspects. Website development services are swiftly adopting various technologies like blockchain, augmented and virtual reality and even user behavior tracking, and we have seen the rise of chatbots.

Let’s have a look at the recent trends that you can expect in web development in 2019:

  1. Emergence of Progressive Web Apps

Progressive web apps, or popularly known as PWAs have appeared a couple of years ago and have gained immense popularity owing to the user behavior study. Web development has stepped in a certain direction in a forward sense. Progressive web applications are essentially based on CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. They are actually designed to simplify the complete interaction of the website users with the website and hence stimulate the loyalty and conversion of customers.

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Top 6 Web Development Trends that will Dominate 2019

When it comes to web development you are bound to experience constant changes and updates in the designs every year. In fact, the updates and trends are constantly changing and it is going to be the same for the upcoming year of 2019.

With constant growth and development, more and more people are realizing how important it is to stay ahead of the competition through web development. Creating valuable content, engaging the audience and good web experience is something web development creates for the audience.

Having a responsive website increases the chances of conversion; people who are visiting your website must find a reason to turn into your regular customers. This is where web development comes into action, web developers constantly keep themselves updated with the ongoing trends and algorithms in order to engage the audiences.

However, with constant changes and improvements in the world of web development, it becomes quite tough for businesses to keep up with the trends in order to have a steady conversion rate. Thereby, it is important for web developers to constantly stay updated keeping in mind the trends and the requirements of their customers.

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Done Role of IoT in Web Development

With the increasing advent of technology and the ever-changing demands of people as well as businesses, there has been a rise in technologies which have merged to make the lives of people easier. One of the latest technology hacks which has revolutionized the whole world is the proliferation of IoT solutions. Web Development company Canada has contributed a lot to IoT.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is worldwide network of interconnected objects, uniquely addressable and based on standard communication protocols. It is about the integration of traditional technologies such as radio frequency identifiers (RFID), sensors, microcontrollers, actuators, bar codes, global positioning system (GPS), satellite technology, internet protocols, etc into applications.

Read more: Done Role of IoT in Web Development