- More Page Builders
- Emphasis on Accessibility
- Minimalism
- Handmade Features
- Dark Mode
Page builders are going to become a lot more common this year because of how it is changing the process of web building. This is making it a lot easier for anyone to build a site, hence why it is going to become a lot more popular. There are already different ‘drag & drop’ page builders available as plug-ins that are already certified by WordPress.
To have an accessible site, you must make sure that everything on the site can be easily used for people with disabilities. This includes navigation, readability, understanding & any interactive features on your site. For example, if someone is deaf, a video with captions would be better for web accessibility. Another way that you could make your site more accessible through WordPress is to add the information in the provided ‘Alternative Text’ option. Alternative text is basically a piece of short writing (usually a few words) that simply describe the image. For readability, WordPress has their own system to check if your text is ‘readable’ but another way you can make sure that it is readable is to always keep your background colour and your text colour very different to each other. We would do this because it wouldn’t be easy to read black text on a navy-blue background for anyone!
Minimalism is originally an Avant-Garde movement that started in the 50’s but now, minimalism can be seen everywhere! We see it on all sorts of advertisement, artwork, Home Décor and so much more! Now it is time to take minimalism to your WordPress site. WordPress comes with theme that could help with the minimalism effect you’d like to capture but it is also very easy to design yourself. Applying this to your site would mean to simplify the interface for your viewers. This can include removing unnecessary text & images, fewer objects, and a plain colour scheme. That last point is especially becoming more popular as people are using shades of one colour, as their whole colour scheme.
Moving onto handmade features, this would simply involve personalised graphics and illustrations. Stay away from stock images!! By creating your own graphics, you are increasing your brand awareness & increasing the skill for design. This could also come in handy if you are turning your site to be more of a minimalistic approach as you can illustrate any small graphic to keep the minimalistic feel of the site.
As we spend more and more time looking at screens, our eyes are becoming worse and a lot of us have to wear glasses. Therefore, Night Mode on a screen is becoming more popular. WordPress have their own plugin for this especially so then the option is there for any website visitor who wants to take more care when it comes to their vision. This plugin is also free to download on WordPress so keep this in mind when you’re designing your websites!