If you are due for a refresh or a complete redesign for your site, it's a great idea to have an idea not only what's considered new and exciting in website design, but also what simply works better technologically.

For 2015 there are some holdovers, and also a lot of evolvers, as what we are able to do technologically catches up with the ideas. An example would be how the concept of Flat Design evolved into Material Design.

Let's take a look at what's trending for website design in 2015.

Related: Know What’s Trending in Website Design for Small Business

5 Hottest website design trends for 2015

1. Responsive design

While this may be viewed as an old trend, the truth is that it's now become the norm, and what's more, with Google announcing that on April 21st, 2105 they will begin penalizing sites that aren't mobile optimized in the search results there is a great incentive.

2. Huge images

Having large, evocative images adorn our pages has never been easier to do. With better bandwidth availability and image compression it doesn't have to slow your pages loads down. This is making the visual component of your pages so much more interesting!

3. Choose scrolling over clicking

The trend toward longer pages, especially in mobile, continues to make inroads. Eliminating the need for the user to constantly click away to find the content they want makes for a better experience, decreases page load time, and encourages interaction.

Related: Why You Need to Optimize Your Web Page Images

4. Creative typography

The availability and usefulness of fonts for web design is ever expanding, and will lead to a richer, more vibrant feel to your pages. Where you once had to shell out the big bucks for a custom font, the advent of resources like Google Fonts (free) are making this a reality.

5. Semi-flat design

While flat design has been around for a few years, it looks as if it has now evolved into what Google is calling “material design”. It's a blending of flat design with subtle gradients, layers and even animation to achieve an “almost” flat design with flair.

There's no doubt that page load speeds have a major impact on how, or even if, we do business online. Three major facts about this will give any webmaster pause:

• Google uses this as a ranking factor for your page.
• Humans currently have an attention span of 8 seconds, one second less than a goldfish.
• The average retail web page can take over 7 seconds to load. It's been documented that a delay as small as one second can cost you a huge 7% hit in your conversion rates.

With these reasons and many others, it's high time we take this seriously. Let's take a look at 5 ways you can get your pages to come up faster.

5 Tips for reducing your page load time

Google PageSpeed Insights – Google provides a free solution for locating a lot of the issues you might be facing with regards to slow loading pages. It's called PageSpeed Insights, and it's free. It will see why your pages aren't arriving quickly and suggest ways to fix that.

Not too many redirects – Too many redirects on your pages can cause the server to make extra http requests it doesn't need to. Make sure you don't have any faulty, old, or otherwise unneeded redirects clogging up the arteries.

Unplug some plugins – You might have far too many plugins, and some of them may be gumming up the works when it comes to having your pages load quickly. Eliminate any you aren't using, and test the ones you are to determine if they are optimized well. (Are they making your pages slow down)

Be sure to optimize your images – Images can have a large effect on your page load speeds, and to make the best of this try not to have too many on a single page, use JPEGs if at all possible, and compress them as small as is feasible.

Compress your pages – Enabling compression on your pages can help them load an amazing 70% faster. If you aren't handy with code, there is a tool named Gzip which will do the work for you. This alone can make a big difference in how fast your page loads.

As 2015 is now fully upon us, we thought it beneficial to examine several web design trends taking hold for small business sites. Many of these you may have seen before, but were unaware of the reason behind them or the usefulness they may provide. Others may not be right for you.

Some have come around due to advances in technology, and others are only cosmetic or related to user experience. Nonetheless, judge each with an eye open as to their best uses for your particular site, and not necessarily for any hype or good press. Even though infinite scrolling may work for Facebook doesn't mean it's suitable for your site.

So without further delay, the following are five website design trends small businesses are implementing in 2015.

5 Trends in website design for small business

Employing Infinite scrolling – Infinite scrolling has become all the rage over the last year or so. The ability to keep the reader engaged over one long stream of content can work for some, like Facebook for example, and not for others. Make sure it serves your ultimate visitor goals before you use this.

Responsive design – A responsive site is no longer an option for 2015. With more than half the Web traffic originating from a mobile device, it's imperative that your site show up well on all platforms.

A clean spare look – Lots of white space and lean blocks of text are what readers want these days, and the extra space gives your pages an uncluttered, relaxed feel. This works with the mantra of keeping things simple and direct, and leaving your visitors with fewer distractions and choices.

Play with fonts and color – Don't feel totally constrained in regards to fonts and color. Make a statement and paint your web canvas with the look and feel of the message you want to convey. This doesn't mean making large textual sections in a stylish, hard to read font, but selective use of creative fonts and colors can jazz things up quite nicely.

Don't neglect social media – Make sure your readers are able to share your content easily to their followers across the Web. Who knows if the person who wants to tweet about your post has a few hundred thousand followers who might like what you have to offer too!

When's the last time you thought about optimizing your web images? That's what I believed. Nevertheless, flippancy aside, leaving them un-optimized can substantially injure your site in numerous ways.

It might have a genuine influence on your site's SEO performance, as well as the variety of advantages that optimized images can bring your way.

For these reasons alone, it's due time to look at making certain your images are optimized. Here's 5 easy methods to assist with that!

5 Tips to assist with enhancing your images

Strive to keep your image files little – Amazon has calculated that every second lost while their images load costs them a cool $1.6 billion a year ?! If you have big image files that take a very long time to load, simply understand that your visitors are going out the door.

Use keywords in your image filenames – This is an easy one to accomplish, yet lots of do not think of it. Not only is this a significant on-page SEO product, it can help Google find out where and for what keyword to rank your pages. Enough said?

Optimize your ALT tags – Taking care to enhance your image ALT tags, in some cases called ALT text, is another “make sure you do” item. This can be the distinction in whether or not your images even show up in Google images or for that matter search, and it is a simple fix. Do not disregard this one.

Employ JPEGs if at all possible – There are a number of different types of image types out there, but for the most part, JPEGs have actually been and continue to be the de-facto image type utilized on the Web. They are quickly compressed, and have a small footprint, helping them to pack quickly and efficiently. If you cannot make use of a JPEG, then go with a PNG files next, and GIFs last.

Employ a Google Image Sitemap – Located in Google Webmaster Tools, you can deploy an Image Sitemap to assist Google search, index and otherwise categorize your images, therefore improving your opportunities of having actually those images discovered in Google images and search. A useful and Google-friendly way to optimize!

Making a stunning landing page is no loner a task for the dark arts of the web designers. Nowadays making use of one of the easy readily available landing page developers, that occur to be drop dead easy to use, you could have a professional-looking page performed in a matter of minutes.

However developing a highly-converting landing page: that's a horse of a different color. There's a lot of approach that enters into making your landing page convert well, so let's jump into that a bit by having a look at these aspects of a highly-converting landing page.

6 Ways to convert site visitors to your landing pages

#1 A killer headline – You will certainly never ever get a second opportunity to make a first impression, and this is the aspect that your visitor sees initially. You need to make this headline not just get them to continue reading, but also to understand that they have to take action on this offer.

#2 Use convincing images and videos – There's no doubt about it: videos on your landing pages transform MUCH much better than those without, so don't neglect this!

#3 Stress the benefits – People have to understand what it will certainly do for them, not what it will do. See the difference? Make liberal use of bullet points to mention this, rather than a long block of text.

#4 Use a clear call to action – If you inform individuals in no uncertain terms precisely what you desire them to do next, you'll discover that much more of the time they will do so. Do not be shy about this. Likewise make your buy or download buttons attract attention from the rest of the page, using color and persuasive text.

#5 Use consumer testimonials – Using fantastic testimonials from previous consumers is a fantastic method to utilize social evidence to make it much easier for individuals to click that button. You do not require a great deal of them either; a couple of will do.

#6 Utilize scarcity – Like it or not, scarcity strategies work, and folks will certainly click on your offer versus losing out, if you have actually done an excellent job telling them precisely why they require this now! Word of care nevertheless: be sincere. If you make use of false scarcity, they won't trust you the next time around.