What are the 2011 Web Design Trends? ... so far?

Each and every year new trends emerge within the website design industry and staying on top of these trends and utilizing them in your own business's site design can help to keep your website eye-catching, current and relevant.

It's always important to remember when you are designing or redesigning a website that your website is meant to support your overall business goals. Trends can be a direct reflection of marketing efforts that have worked for one segment of the economy but might actually fail in others. When deciding on possibly adapting a current trend into your website design ensure you review your key performance indicators (KPIs) prior to and after the update.  Make sure any advanced functionality will help you get found more easily, convince your visitors to convert and communicate your message effectively. No matter how beautiful your website is, if your design doesn't support those initiatives, then it's not worth the time or money it takes to create the design. Make sure that when you are thinking about a new website, you are using a firm that will design your website as part of your marketing strategy.

The emerging trends for the first quarter of 2011:

HTML5 and CSS3
We're sure that some of you out there will debate whether this can be called a "trend" or a upcoming standard in web design, but the bottom line is that HTML5 and CSS3 are something to watch out for, and will grow in popularity in 2011 and beyond. If you don't know what they can do for you, then you may fall behind the curve. Basically, HTML5 and CSS3 make it simpler to build modern web elements into your web designs including smarter forms, beautiful typography, new media and social tools like wikis and drag and drop functionality.

Typography. When is typography not just type?
When your brand relies on a constant aesthetic direction. Why is typography so important? Well it's one of the main ways that you communicate with your audience on your website.

In the past getting rich typographic elements meant creating images that were neither search engine or user friendly to replace the "web-safe" library of fonts. Now, using tools like TypeKit or Cufon, web designers can find web-friendly or branded fonts that can help communicate with your audience in a visually appealing way, while still optimizing for search engine rankings. Conveying and using your complete marketing toolkit, as fonts, should be your top priority with website design, and now your design can be balanced with images, colors, content and typography.

Magazine/Editorial Style Layouts
Businesses are finding the advantages of updating content regularly to attract, maintain and convert viewers of this type of content marketing not only is beneficial for search engine optimization (SEO), but also allows businesses to tell their story. Layouts that require a vast amount of information require a great amount of planning when developing the general style or layout of pages. The goal is to make a product that will be functional and smart. By using a 960-grid for the website's design layout, organizations can optimize the space on their website by leaving lots of areas for content. Columns, that seemed to be only available in magazines and newspapers in the past, has made the long journey into the website market. Website designers are freely adopting standards of handling a great amount of content that print designers have been using for years.

Keeping it simple.
Minimalist layouts and color schemes - great for smaller organizations with less content for their website. Not every business has a library of stock images. Minimalist layouts take fewer resources to maintain and manage, they load faster (which is beneficial for SEO) and can often be developed and implemented more quickly than larger, more complex designs. Many organizations are beginning to favor the clean, neat and easy-to-use navigation of these style layouts. Simple is always in style!

Make a splash!
Large and interactive website headers are a good first impression tool for your website and can be essential for convincing your website visitors to stick around long enough to convert. Having a large website header where you look to feature important information like calls-to-action, latest promotions and offers can go a long way towards convincing your visitors to convert and share. Being dramatic in presentation is not enough though, greater functionality is being required with these larger headers...with video, galleries or editorial/news callouts.

Link-rich footers.
Not just for blogs anymore! Usually the after thought in design is coming of age. A well developed footer is an excellent example of website design supporting website usability. Having a website footer that is full of links makes it easier for your users to navigate and, if done correctly, can potentially improve your SEO. Is scrolling an issue? Will be people find information I want them to see? A marketplace trend is to use the footer for interactive elements (twitter feeds, Facebook apps, galleries and dynamic forms) to draw people down. As more sites use this strategy it will become more common place, thus ending the aforementioned questions.

Mobile it!
This is becoming less of a trend and more of a necessity for many organizations. So many internet users are choosing to access websites and online information through mobile devices that it's a very good idea for companies to make sure that they have a website that renders nicely for mobile. Although it may be hard to separate the two, mobile vs. desktop, the design trend is not to build a stripped down version of your main site, but give the mobile site it's own identity. Make the mobile website be a player in your companies branding efforts, not just an add-on.

High Resolution
Make the most out of the space you have available to you! Larger screen sizes, new media devices and faster network connections are the biggest motivators for this trend. This design trend is really a function of technology, and a good designer should also develop a way for the site to still scale nicely for those (few) people who are still using smaller screens. Take into account that the IPAD has actually more pixels than most 19 inch monitors, and the IPAD2 is vastly greater. The visual size of your website shouldn't be confined to just the monitor you are looking at it.

Go Big!
Drama. Do you want a website that immediately grabs your visitors' attention? Having beautiful image(s) as your entire background is a good way to do that. Growing in popularity, especially for organizations with portfolio-friendly work can be directly attributed to the downscale of flash and the rise of javascript functionality. Many websites rely on showing the users visual cues - call to actions, and many get lost with the over saturation of "scenery" images introduced inside the content. Why not just make those images the background instead?