Web Design, Marketing Trends 2005

With 2006 only a couple months away, its a good time to review some trends in web design and marketing over the past year that have made their mark. Here are just a few of the trends in 2005:

• Google Everywhere - Seems like everyone these days is trying to emulate the search engine leader.
• Blogs - Blogs continue to evolve as a marketing medium, but have created problems of their own. (splogs)
  
• Rich Media Ads - Go from WOW to, "Arrrrgh! Not another one." Video becomes more of a player in this area. Still some very impressive click through numbers for this relatively new method of advertising.
  
• Text Ads - Text ads take over as the preferred method of advertising. Not much creativity here, but very cheap to produce and easy to manage.
  
• Big Images and Big Flash - Images and flash in letterbox format seem to dominate many websites home pages and marketing realestate. This trend will probably continue due to broadband adoption being over the 50% mark in 05.

AJAX... not the kind you use on your bathroom walls!

AJAX is the interactive web technology behind Google Maps. Whats most interesting about this technology is the possibilities for web designers looking to get more from web applications. Building intuitive user interfaces will be the key aspect of this techology, since it requires less load on a server while allowing applications to become more animated and functional. As this becomes more widely used, there may be a shift in time from the old way of creating applications, to the new AJAX method.

Too much to click on... too little time.

One of my more recent observations in reviewing web sites in recent years, is the tendency to give web users too many options on a web page. Not only does adding too many links on your site confuse your visitors and reduce conversion rates, it may actually hurt your search engine rank. Having a high link to content ratio, especially for new sites, can present a problem.

From what I've read recently, Google tends to prefer links that slowly progress with content over time. This presents a challenge to new sites that may want to link everything within an article, hoping for the best search engine results. I guess slow and steady wins the SEO race as well.

How to spot a Splog and report it!

Blogs are a great tool to get personal with your web site visitors, but lately there has been a rash of Splog (spam blogs) infecting the internet. Here is a little site I found that may help in decreasing the number of splogs out there. http://www.splogspot.com What's even better, this site provides an API you can use to query it's database of internet spam. Email spam has only gone from bad to worse... so I expect splog to follow the same path.

RSS... right under your nose!

An October article in Clickz suggests that most internet users are unaware of the technology used to provide them with content in regards to RSS syndication. As much as 27% of Yahoo users are taking advantage of the rapid content and news feeds generated by MyYahoo with only about 4% realizing it's RSS that brings them their daily news.

This brings up a great point:

People do not have to understand what technology does, just it's outcome. Most consumers really only care about the technology when something doesn't work. They ask, "Why is my web site, the radio in my car or my tv not working? Must be the technology or the method used to create the technology." As long as technology is doing it's job, they focus more on the benefit or outcome that technology can provide.