Function Over Fashion
Even more important than the way a site looks is the way it performs. Sites with too high a load speed will never be seen in the SERPs, and will face even lower rankings by social media platforms like Facebook. Designers should partner with front-end developers to make sure that as many scripts as possible are bundled to improve site speed. Take the time to make your web pages Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) certified by Google.
Bigger Screen Resolutions
Not only should you be designing sites from a mobile-first approach as they work their way to standard desktop dimensions, but you also should be focusing on how the designs look on much bigger screens. It’s important that when audiences are looking at the site on a huge monitor—in a boardroom, for example—that there isn’t too much forced border on the left and right side of the screen, and that the font size is big enough for people to read at the far side of the table.
The Use of Iconography
Audiences don’t like the thrill of the hunt as much as they used to. Because of this, designers should focus on being as clear as possible about what audiences will find when clicking on digital elements. Icons should clearly relay that clicking here leads to a video, an article, an infographic, a slideshow or gallery, etc. We have also seen some strong metrics indicating that displaying estimations of how many minutes it’ll take to read an article has increased click-through rate.