How it was like

In the early to mid-2000s, back when I just starting to learn about the web and web technologies, the amount of new and creative websites that I was seeing was at its all-time high. Flash (and Dreamweaver) was all the rage back then, providing website designers a tool that was much less limited compared to using a text editor. Scripting technologies (Js, JSP, PHP, GWT) were also trying to fight for the top position back then that was utilized by web devs to make their websites interact with their visitors. These tools helped web developers and animators translate their ideas to a web page that produced innovative, new, wild, and sometimes weird websites. Non-standard menus, page transitions through wild animations, and hidden interactions were some of the things one can expect if one were browsing the web back then. The prestige of doing creating websites was also heating up. I remember that one of my goals was to at least enter the Webby Awards which was back then more catered to nerds and people doing animation on the web. It was during that time that I developed my love for website designs and development, and much of that is because of the different websites that I was exposed to.

Now, almost 20 years later, the state of the web in the context of website visual designs has dipped in a very noticeable way. The amount of types of different websites has dwindled. Although I can attribute it to how much I expose myself in non-standard website designs, that’s not the point if being “noticeable” or in that it is in trend. Here’s a quick (rhetorical) question: In the last week, how many websites have you visited whose menu wasn’t on the top of the page?

Usability trumped creativity

Website designs in general nowadays have morphed into this homogeneous state where one can expect how a website should look like, or at the very least how its “skeleton” looks like. A header, nav, hero section, content, and footer are some of the “components” we expect a website should have. Some of those components are now even part of the actual HTML elements e.g. <footer> because of how often and expected these types of elements are to be used in a website. Moreover, many website building platforms offer implementations of these elements already baked into their components and templates. Why is that?

The amount of people using the web has increased dramatically year over year in the last 20 years which is related to the increase in the number of websites that we now have. More users, more needs, more use cases, more problems to solve, more websites to solve them. This and the rise of statistics in measuring user website activity and ultimately the growth of UX has shaped the way people use the web and websites specifically. Optimal website design patterns emerged from the short years of website design evolution which are now being used almost as a standard template when someone creates a website. Because of this, the collective “we” (website developers, designers, analysts, marketers, etc.) have built website experiences on existing and expected behaviors.

The people who develop websites didn’t necessarily drive this change. However, it’s clear that they did implement it. The main catalyst was the people who used websites en masse. We would have continued creating quirky, un-tested, creativity-driven websites if people continued visiting them but, over the years, usability and metrics drove the creation of guard rails of how people use websites optimally- or in UX context — how people use websites prefer it to be usable, useful, and beautiful.

“Underlying these design practices is a larger truth about the user-friendly age: The world is not chaotic or random, even if it appears that way at first. People’s behavior and choices follow certain patterns and routes that do not always appear logical when you first encounter them. But if you tune in to their patterns and truly walk in their shoes, you can get at the hidden truths that drive their daily routines”
Cliff Kuang — User Friendly

Now, if you are someone who wants to design and develop a website that isn’t tied to a company that has a goal or a specific “metric” to achieve, you can easily and freely create a website however you want it to be. It’s just if you do have a metric to achieve, it can’t be returning visitors or a low bounce rate. It’s because the majority of the people visiting websites now expect a blueprint when visiting your website. If they don’t experience it and friction is felt, frustration will develop, and a returning visitor is lost. They may appreciate the novelty of it, but unless they visited your website for entertainment they probably will visit another website to solve their problem.

“Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know”
Cliff Kuang — User Friendly

Creativity didn’t go away, it just got contained

While usability (and ultimately the effort to reach the goal of having a “successful website”) prevailed of having more standard website frameworks creativity didn’t go away. Creatives, their creativity, and ultimately the content they produce just shifted in being published within those boundaries and within ecosystems or platforms (which each have their boundaries).

It is also important to note that websites that don’t necessarily conform to the current website blueprint standards didn’t go away, there are many of them, and likely much more than what we had before. Many creative-driven websites are alive. For example, the websites of photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris-Webb: www.webbnorriswebb.co or www.covidoscope.org which is a website developed by Yunus Emre Enstitüsü to showcase developed artwork by artists all over the world during the pandemic. But these kinds of websites are way less compared to the number of websites following the standard framework. It’s a numbers game at this point. If the majority of website visitors don’t look for it, they won’t necessarily see it which further strengthens their expectations of what a website should look like.

I also believe that the containment of creativity within these boundaries and micro-boundaries didn’t suffer, it actually thrived and flourished in this environment and many times even helped the environment’s meteoric rise to become essentially a household name. Instagram and Youtube are two of the best examples. If content from creatives stopped using these platforms the platforms themselves will stop instantaneously. Creativity also learned how to adapt to the current standard website frameworks, taking advantage of the constant improvement in (web) technology and processing power of machines and web browsers. Hero banner videos, CSS3 animations, and smart & integrated scripting libraries and APIs, and many new tools are all being utilized now as part of a web designer’s toolset in creating cool (but constrained) websites. Here’s Jerome Bergamaschi’s website that’s showcased in Webflow’s Popular Website section: parallax-bgsprod.webflow.io — a great example of what a website can be using some of the newer CSS technologies.

Will it change again?

At least in the context of websites, yes I think that it will definitely change. When and how? Major shifts occur if the majority accepts, adapts, and thrives in using it. I think precisely but slowly when a new medium and form of how a website is presented and consumed is when we’ll start to see a related change. Regardless of the type of change though, UX and metrics will never go away, and it will stand similar to this change as everyone’s guard rails to what the general public sees as useful, usable, and desirable.