Electrician websites of today are more modern than one might think. You might be surprised to see so many electrician websites up to date. Congratulations electrical contractors! As a web design company, we are proud to see this! There were several trends reoccurring through the electrician websites that struck out at me. These 8 trends are listed below with details on what the trend entails and how to incorporate it into your own website.
Trend 1 – Horizontal Scrolling Layout
A horizontal scrolling layout seems to be a popular design option amongst all websites, not just electrician ones. It’s distinguished by large chunks of horizontal sections, requiring visitors to scroll in order to see everything on the page. Unlike in the past where the goal was to get the entire page to be viewed at once without scrolling, which often left designs feeling cramped and overwhelming.
Trend 2 – Professional-Looking Photography
More and more websites are straying away from stock photos and leaning towards original professional looking photography. However, in many cases, a professional may not have taken the photos but instead, an amateur photographer or a staff member.
For instance, here at MayeCeate Design, we have our own photographer we hire to take photographs of the clients we are working with. If we are building a website that needs photos of the office staff and employees at work, we will send our photographer to get them. But, sometimes our clients take it in their own hands and take their own photos.
Trend 3 – Modern, Contemporary Fonts
You need a modern, contemporary font to go along with your hip, up-to-date website design. The font is just as important as the layout, content and photos. It can have an overall negative or positive impact depending on the font you choose. Furthermore, if you use only one font treatment throughout your website, it doesn’t add emphasis to key areas and becomes redundant and at times difficult to follow.
Some great fonts include: Roboto, Slabo 27px, Lato and Oswald. However, the most popular font is Open Sans, which was served by the Google Font API 23,425,997,041 times over the week of July 3-10, 2016. All of these fonts will make your website stand out with their clean, easy to read style.
Trend 4 – Color Pallets
Common color pallet trends among electrical contractor websites are bright colors paired with black/grey (neutral) colors. A lot of the bright colors came from the primary color palette.
Color pallets play an essential role in designing a website. If you choose more than one color, they should really “go together.” Most electrician websites are already following this rule of thumb. The best way to explain which colors get along with each other is with the color wheel.
There are three categories of colors:
- Primary colors consist of red, yellow and blue. These are the 3 pigment colors that can not be mixed or formed by any combination of other colors.
- Secondary colors consist of green, orange and purple. These are the colors formed by mixing the primary colors.
- Tertiary colors consist of yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green and yellow-green. These are the colors formed by mixing a primary and a secondary color.
Trend 5 – Background Designs
Background designs add a nice flare to any website. They can give an extra pop of design to really catch the attention of visitors. Background designs can also make a website possess a polished look.
WordPress is now allowing themes to be compatible with full screen, parallax, and multiple backgrounds support. What this means is that people can create custom backgrounds a lot easier than before. Textures, colors and patterns can be implemented to most WordPress themes to create a finished page design.
Trend 6 – Specific Service Pages
Electrician websites in particular seem to subdivide their service pages into specific subcategories of service, such as commercial, industrial and residential. Some electrical contractor websites even go a step further and list their specialties under each type of service. Visitors really like this feature when they come across it because it allows them to explore deeper into the electrician company and learn what exactly they are cable of doing.
An example comes from Hardt Electric inc., under Commercial Electric, they list Building Maintenance, Interior Renovation, New Construction and Design-Build, which all link to their own individual page.
Trend 7 – Galleries and Slideshows
To go along with the specific service pages, most electrician websites display their completed projects in either a gallery or slideshow. People want to see examples of an electrical contractor’s work to get a better feel of the company’s capabilities and past experience.
The difference between a gallery and a slideshow is the way pictures are displayed for viewing. Galleries clump photos together in a particular style, just like the image above, and the photos can be clicked on to enlarge. Slideshows automatically move from one photo to another in a matter of seconds. Most of the websites we reviewed tended to use galleries over slideshows to display completed work in their completed projects section and slideshows on the home page.
Trend 8 – Logo Placement
Unique logos have always been popular, nothing has changed. You have heard the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words” and it’s true! A logo tells a visitor so much more than a simple, plain title with only words. The trend for logo placement seems to gravitate towards the upper left-hand corner of the website and it usually remains there throughout all of the pages.
Logos are important because it’s easier for people to remember something if they tie it to an image in their head. You want people to be able to identify you amongst a slew of other companies. Therefore, make your logo visible.