Can we predict the future? Let’s see. If recent history has taught us anything, it’s that web design is moving forward at the speed of light. Over the past few years, we have seen some ground breaking trends rise quickly, and soon become popular standard.
Web designers’ relationship with coding has changed, radically. Not long ago, we used to depend on it to export designs, and now there are myriads of themes and platforms that facilitate streamlined design, by generating clean code, and allowing you to devote your entire attention to the creative part of your work. Shortcodes have emerged to help you easily implement any functionality, and the front office is now designers’ territory.
Must-Haves of this Year
The websites created this year are supposed to be, above all, responsive. Furthermore, wide backgrounds with videos and images are highly appealing. So, at some point in 2015, better techniques for fast image loading and responsive re-sizing are bound to appear. In addition, WordPress users with a small budget are more likely to use type kits in their projects, since they’ve gone cheap and even free (i.e. Google Fonts).
As for WordPress themes, the more they have to offer, the better.
X Theme: A Powerful Sidekick
Do you want to design websites like a champion? Then, you should consider using X Theme from Themeco. You’ll find it on ThemeForest, where is the fastest-selling product in history. While you’re there, throw a glance at user comments. Literally everyone has rated it with five stars, and there isn’t a single bad testimony in sight – only praise about high design quality, fantastic customer support, detailed documentation, and so on, and so forth.
X Theme distinguished itself by virtue of complete designs, or Stacks. Four so far, Integrity, Icon, Renew, and Ethos are attached to 30+ demos that illustrate their versatility: you could go for flat, or minimal and modern design, create business, or photography websites, etc. Page layout and styling come easy with X, since there is no admin panel to speak of, and you also have a live preview function.
Aside from the flexible navigation options, users can draw on 40 shortcodes, 600 Google Fonts of various styles and weights, and the latest news – Extensions.
Extensions: The Enhanced WordPress Plugins
Of course, you’re familiar with popular-by-demand plugins for WordPress like Visual Composer, or Slider Revolution. However, nothing could have prepared you for the extensions that were created specifically for X Theme. Whenever the owner validates a unique purchase, she/he unlocks all the available extensions for that copy. They are accompanied by lifetime updates that go into effect as soon as they appear, and don’t require manual installation.
In any other setting, premium WordPress plugins would cost $50 to $200 a piece, yet X Theme offers 1000$ worth of added functionality without overcharging you for it. Even more importantly, these extensions cannot be found anywhere else on the web, and they are meant to improve the performance of your sites, not hinder it – which is why we think that X Theme will go viral in 2015. MailChimp Integration, Smooth Scroll, Content Dock, Facebook Comments, and Custom 404 are a few examples of Themeco’s extended creations.
A Good-Looking Front Door
What can you do to convince more users to cross the threshold and step onto your website as members? We’d suggest you were more careful when you’re designing your sign-up forms. You never know who might be swayed to register with your site by something as simple as a well-designed form.
If you’re basing your website on X Theme, you won’t even have to look any further to take care of that. A solid MailChimp integration permits you to customize a fancy opt-in form in a matter of seconds, and then you are free to use a widget, template, or shortcode function to place it somewhere on your site.
Another Kind of Scrolling
Parallax background animations are known to enhance user experience by a great degree. If your website relies on this technique, and most of your users access it over desktop devices, then you could alter the mechanics of your scroll bar to transform how the audience use mouse wheels.
Smooth scrolling is a simple X Theme-generated extension, and it has the potential to level up the user experience associated with your parallax WordPress website.
Enticing Content or Marketing Offers
We are forever trying to get our public’s attention with interesting sales offers, but they don’t always seem to work. The extension named Content Dock from X Theme helps you give those offers a complete make-over, so they draw in more customers. Step one is to activate Content Dock, and then you have to go to ‘Appearance’ and choose a widget.
The text widget enables shortcodes. Content Dock is meant to be displayed on wide screens, the limit being 767px. Otherwise, it would overshadow the primary content on your site, or make the closing button unavailable. Keep that in mind, and you’ll be fine.
Maximum User Engagement
You want your website users to ignite conversations, because they would give you the chance to gather precious feedback, and even address some user concerns. Moreover, comments tend to engage more users in response, and perpetuate a sense of community.
X Theme has an extension that lets you set up and administer Facebook comments with unprecedented ease. Comments, because Likes are never enough to get users involved in a topic. Whenever a user places a comment on your page, it shows up on their social profile, and raises awareness about your product/service/topic and website in general.
Minimum 404-generated Frustration
What happens when someone clicks on a random broken link? They are immediately transported to ‘no man’s land’, a 404 error page that lets them know just how far they are from whatever they’ve been expecting to see. Your website users are also exposed to this risk, but there is something you can do to appease them.
Take Custom 404 from X Theme, for instance. You can easily display a cheerful message, insert a particular background image, and use shortcodes (for example, insert a search box so your lost users can find their way back to what interests them).
Stay Tuned for More Surprises
So far, we’ve only shed some light on a small part of X Theme’s attempt at integrating powerful functionality. We judge Extensions to be a highly successful attempt, and X – the go-to solution for web designers who wish to create beautiful websites faster in 2015. Themeco plans to introduce more extensions and other superior advancements in the near future, so you may want to start creating WP websites with this excellent theme – as soon as you can.
Predicting the evolution of design is complicated, but innovate and experiment is always positive.