The 5 Best Web Design Services in 2016

When you want a website for your business, you always want it to look, feel, and function like other modern websites.

After all, if you have a website from 1994 and your competitors just revamped their design in 2016, your brand will look bad by comparison!

That means you have to stay up to date with the web design world, especially when it comes to modern web design services.

Below, we lay out five different web design services that modern agencies offer to all of their clients. You can see the results of these services throughout the Internet since they’re so common.

And they’re all common because they get results.

1. Responsive design

Responsive design is the ability of a website to automatically fit the screen of a user’s device. It delivers a universal experience to desktop, tablet, and mobile users with one URL.

This principle has been a web design favorite for years, but it gained a lot more steam in 2015 when mobile compatibility became a ranking factor in search engine optimization.

After that, everyone wanted a responsive website. It provides a great user experience, it makes your brand look good, and you can rank better in search engines all from one principle.

That’s why web design agencies throughout the world offer responsive design to their clients. It’s a universal improvement to any website.

Plus, it just looks good. And when you work with a web design agency, you want your website to look objectively good.

At Web Design Rankings, we implemented responsive design for our site right off the bat.

We did that because we wanted to put our best foot forward when it came to search engine rankings, user experience, and the overall appearance of our site.

So whether you access our site from your laptop or your Apple watch, you get the same great experience and information. It just makes life a little bit easier!

2. Parallax / Infinite scrolling

Parallax scrolling (also called “infinite scrolling”) is a web design system that lets you change a page based on how far you scroll.

This web design service is primarily used for brands that want to tell a story. The principle of scrolling allows the user to decide what they see, when they see it, and how long they enjoy it.

Scrolling also allows you to create an engaging, interactive page that holds your users’ attention better than simple text or images. It creates an effect similar to a video, except a user has complete control over its progress.

Besides all of that, parallax scrolling simply looks good. It creates a sense of depth similar to when you look out of a moving car, look at a point on the horizon, and see stationary objects “pass” you based on how far away you are.

With that sense of control, engagement, and travel, parallax scrolling is an excellent way to introduce your brand to someone new.

But unlike responsive design, parallax scrolling isn’t a universal website need.

At Web Design Rankings, we chose not to use parallax scrolling for our site. That’s because we believe it’s a little overkill for our purposes.

We’re not trying to tell a story, and we believe the focus of our site — our lists — can stand alone without the help of parallax scrolling.

Your website may be in a similar position. If you want to present simple, up-front information, you may not need (or want) parallax scrolling.

But then again, if you plan to create a sprawling website that engages users and gives them a sense of wow, parallax scrolling could be the perfect solution.

3. Custom / From-scratch designs

Custom website design is an incredibly important part of branding. It tells your customers that your brand is unique, and you strive to go above and beyond your competitors.

That kind of brand identity goes a long way on the Internet, especially because so many websites look similar to one another.

The down side is that you can pay heavily for that kind of customization. Creating a website from the ground up is significantly more difficult and time-consuming than using a tried-and-true template.

However, the cost is worthwhile for a lot of brands, especially those that already have an established customer base and revenue streams.

_­So if you’re looking to create a one-of-a-kind experience for your website’s users, a customized, from-scratch design can give you the identity that you want.

4. Template designs

In the web design world, website templates are the opposite of custom code.

When you get a templated website, that means there are other websites online that look almost exactly like yours, especially in terms of structure.

While it’s true that you can change a lot of individual elements of a templated site, your overall brand appearance could look like someone else’s — even a competitor in your industry.

Still, templated sites are much more affordable than their customized counterparts, and they’re much easier to fix if something’s gone wrong.

After all, you can just check one templated page against another one to troubleshoot any problems you have.

That means templated sites are also easier to manage, update, and control as a whole.

So if your company doesn’t have a huge budget to spend on templated sites, you can probably still afford a templated site.

It may not deliver that unique sense of individuality for your brand, but it can still establish you as a frontrunner in your industry.

5. Material design

Finally, we have material design.

Material design is a simplified web design system invented by Google. It’s meant to let web designers create sleek, attractive, and functional websites that look good on every device.

The system is called “material” design because it refers to overlapping layers of material, kind of like placing sheets of construction paper on top of one another.

One of your layers could be the background of your site. On top of that could be your introductory paragraph. Below that paragraph, you could have another layer of material with images or interactives.

Ultimately, the choice is up to you — but material design is a brand new way to create user-friendly websites.

Because it’s so new, a lot of web design firms don’t use it except at special request. But because Google created it, material design could become an important part of SEO in the future.

The thinking is that if Google created the world’s best search engine, they could easily reward websites that use material design as a foundation.

That way, more websites use material design, and more users enjoy Google’s proprietary web design methods.

While it’s still not clear whether responsive design is the future of web design as a whole, it’s catching on with developers and designers — especially those focused on the mobile markets.

If you’re looking for a modern-looking and functional website, material design could be your solution!

Do you want a web design agency that can deliver?

Are you looking for a web design agency that can give you all of the above and more? Check out our list of the best web design companies!