The internet has enhanced the way we think and communicate; it is vast and complex. But somewhere over the years, websites began looking the same, and it feels like we’ve hit a peak of creativity in website design. The modern layout with which you experience it is inherently the same in theory. Look at your browser history: You’ll think every site you’ve visited is very different from one another, but you are really just viewing different content. More often than not, you are consuming different content in the same way over and over again. So is creativity dead on the internet for website design?
The gut reaction here for many is that creativity in website design is indeed dead. Reddit, Craigslist and a handful of other sites have largely kept a very basic raw design theme over time and are still considered very useful utilities in our lives. And there are numerous world-class websites designed that do not attract the traffic of those sites. Obviously, the amount of time the larger, older sites have been active, combined with their content, plays a very large factor in the amount of traffic they receive, but is everyone else is just wasting time on design and aesthetic?
Creativity in Real Estate Brokerage Website Design
There are numerous modern websites being made that have a sameness to them, which allows us to navigate the internet so quickly and freely, while being able to understand widespread concepts like “hamburger menus” and dropdown navigation no matter what site we are on. And in the real estate arena it is very obvious. Logo. Navigation at the top. Really big image. Listings. Agents. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that layout — it’s a highly effective one that pushes leads toward searching for listings and, eventually, bringing business for your brokerage. We use it all the time, particularly for our semi-custom Ashland theme for real estate brokerage websites (see an example, from one such client site LoveHawaiiRealty.com, below). You’ve seen it all before and it will probably never go away in your lifetime as long as the psychology of what attracts us and keeps us engaged in content stays the same.
Learn About Our New Ads and Leads Program - TRIBUS Engage
Another large factor is the widespread global transition to mobile devices and convenient design frameworks within the website building community. For content to be consumed efficiently and properly on a mobile device, there is a limited amount of options, and venturing outside of them can be a gamble of time and money, especially at the real estate brokerage level. Most, then, follow common patterns, which is indicative of the thousands of website themes sold at online theme marketplaces. While many websites look the same, there are only a select amount of options that relate well to a mobile platform and ultimately produce the same result of how you consume information.
Creativity in Website Design Is Not Dead
I’m optimistic creativity is not dead, as many designers are finding new ways to weave together themes and telling stories as the medium changes. With the birth of web VR, designers are finding more flexibility to produce imagery that tells a story by not just flat text, color and imagery, but now with the layered depth and interactivity that VR can provide. And although the experience is more immersive with a headset, the results on a desktop device is still dramatic. Take some of these examples.:
- YouTube’s recent year-end recap project, Rewind 2017
- This interactive 50-year retrospective of the Swiss music charts
They both use lines to illustrate movement as if you are actually traveling with the information and making literal forward progress towards consuming their content. It’s this immersive combination of interactivity and immersion that will become the standard for great custom real estate brokerage websites, which we have only scratched the surface of — we will see creativity stretched farther than we could have imagined. Finding a way to metaphorically get your message across will be an invaluable stage in the planning process in order to produce engaging websites and captivate your audience, which should always be the No. 1 goal.
