Guide to Web Design Trends 2011

This year, function is more important than design. Web designers are shying away from creating gimmicky tricks, preferring clean, accessible, bug-free coding that works. Simplicity is the key.

Surfers are demanding that they want to use websites, not simply look at them. Of course, design still looks as amazing as ever, but ease of use is the most important aspect.

CSS3 and HTML5 are making 2011 sites beautiful. HTML5 is allowing us to now use form control, semantics, multimedia and more. CSS is becoming increasingly powerful, and we can now create CSS text shadows, transparencies and more. Along with the increasing popularity of jQuery, we can finally start to filter out Flash and create a more accessible, mobile-ready web.

Creative domain extensions are in fashion this year. Designers are buying more of .me, .us, .biz or .mobi. Though it can be asked, is this a trend or a necessity? With the increasing popularity of the average Joe owning a website, the chances are that your business name has already been registered as a .com or .co.uk.

In keeping with the theme of simplicity, web designers are now sticking to around 2 bright, vivid colours, complemented with a couple of pastel shades. Old-school primary colours appear to be on the rise, with yellow, red, blue or green being popular base colours. 2011 is simple and bold. Photography concurs as we see great big text hovering over large photographic layouts. Designers are letting the images speak for themselves.

2011 has discouraged the use of frayed paper effects, wooden backgrounds and other similar generic elements. We have now been seeing more personalised websites, for example, jewellery sites are using gold, silver and gems in their design - rather than a 'nice' looking template.

More recently, depth has been discussed as an important design element. We're not quite on to 3D computer screens yet, but making 3D elements stand out using 3D vector graphics, photographs etc is being used on the most popular of design sites.

Scrollingtons are all the rage (well, that's what we call them). As a great way to showcase content using jQuery and CSS, on a clickable box that automatically scrolls horizontally between banners, we're now seeing them everywhere. See Switchplane's homepage for an example.

Lifestreaming, if a little controversial, is one of 2011's major trends. Streams of Twitter, Facebook feeds and like links, calendars, and so on, have been appearing everywhere - social networking has never been so effective.