Will there be any major changes in 2015?
There are different fields of interest with regards to this question. We can talk about design trends, or development trends, search trends or devices trends. All subjects have a relation with you as a business owner who depend heavily on his website for doing business.
In this article I will try to give you a small list with a few of the trends (or expectations) for 2015 that might be of interest to you and your business.
Design
With regards to design one of the most important trends is the single page web site that got a lot of leverage in 2014 and will continue to develop in 2015. A development within this single page web design is to have a long, single page like home page. Apart from that you can develop a normal menu structure to go with it. The advantage of this is that you have a good home page with a lot of interesting content and links. This attracts more visitors and is good for your Google ranking.
Development
Besides that we need to be aware of the fact that if you consider having a new site developed (or an upgrade on your current site) you should take into consideration that your site should at least be responsive. This means your site scales up or down, depending on the device used by your visitors (desktop, tablet, smartphone). Try opening this site (www.studiolabrame.com) on your mobile phone, or re-size your browser to see what happens with the design. It should scale up on down fluidly.
Having a responsive site gives your visitors a much better user experience. This should translate in lower bounce rates and higher time on site in your Google Analytics. These numbers are expected to become more important for Google SERPs (search engine result page). You can read more about this in an earlier blog.
Just a note: responsive design is not the same as adaptive design. An explanation on the difference between those two will follow in the next blog. Responsive is easier to design and develop than adaptive, and for a lot of small business it is (not yet) necessary in the next few years to have an adaptive site.
Devices
More and more websites are visited through a mobile device, whether it is a smartphone or a tablet. For some businesses and countries more than 40% of visitors come through a mobile device. Therefor our appeal to think about the responsiveness of your site in 2015.
With the introduction of the Hummingbird algorithm Google shifted from basic keyword search to semantic search. Hummingbird is paying more attention to the whole search query rather than only looking at a specific keyword. Googles goal is to show pages that match the meaning of your search better.
More people are using long-tail keywords nowadays, so as to better describe what they are looking for in Google, hoping to get a result that better matches their search. Read some more about Google’s Hummingbird algorithm here.
For 2015 it is expected that this is not going to change. Google wants to show results that are highly likely to answer your questions or your searches. This is best achieved by developing a website that is user friendly and where still (seems old fashioned, but no it is not) content is king.
Conclusion
I think there are no big changes to expect in 2015, although we will need to stay on top of important developments.
Our advice for 2015: develop and maintain your site with the visitor in mind. This is being said for a couple of years already and remains one of the most important advices we can give you. So let's try to give your visitor the best user experience on your site by designing it for different devices, with an easy to navigate structure and good, easy to read and understand content. Update regularly and if you haven’t integrated at least one social media account or a blog or a newsletter, than 2015 is definitely the time to do so!
Try to be in real contact with your client and you will be successful in 2015 and beyond. We will keep you informed about anything that might be important or interesting for your website.
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