It’s obvious how important a modern, beautiful website is for a photographer. You should review your website every 6 months or so and its capability to attract new clients and make them want to return. But what makes a website work these days?

The following list of 8 photography website design trends will help you find the answer you’re looking for. Read on to learn what techniques and styles will rule the Web this year. Use this information to update your online portfolio and blog so they can empower your photography marketing and brand strategy.

1. Focus on Video

Placing full-screen videos in your website background has become a popular practice since 2014. This technique will fortify its position in 2015 for a number of reasons.

Large background videos help create a more engaging experience for your site visitors. By displaying your showreel or backstage scenes on your website’s home page, you can provide a better insight into your working process, creative manner, and business values.

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Jasmine Star Website

Web technologies have become more advanced facilitating media streaming. Internet users tend to read less and watch more. By implementing video background on your photography site, you can leverage these trends and present your brand in a way that leaves a lasting impact.

2. Flat Design is Growing Up

As you probably know, flat design is a special technique of the interface design that focuses on simplicity and minimalism.  While flat design is not a new kid in town, it’s likely to keep its popularity in 2015.

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Heather Lynn Website

However, we will probably see it evolving and transforming into something new, for instance, material design.

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Material Design

The concept of material design was presented by Google not so long ago as their new direction for mobile and web design. In fact, material design is a more sophisticated version of flat design with subtle gradients, animation, and layering that are intended to induce a sense of physical space and objects.

[REWIND: 10 MISTAKES TO AVOID WHEN BUILDING YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE]

3. Image-Centered Design

Design themes prominently displaying images have emerged a couple of years ago, and fortunately for photographers, this approach is not going anywhere. Web developers come up with more effective techniques to optimize images for better responsiveness and minimal server load, which means greater opportunities to use hi-res photography in web design.

In 2015, using images as a background will become a big trend. And with the use of CSS color filters over images and blur effects, placing information on top of the photos without compromising usability is no longer an issue.

4. Mobile Websites Will Be Faster

Mobile Internet use keeps growing at a fast-paced trajectory. This means that everyone, from global giants like Google to small businesses like yours, should adopt their online presence to mobile. Making your website work on any mobile device is a must these days, and new techniques providing faster mobile sites, better performance and an improved user experience will emerge.

5. Interactive Storytelling

The art of storytelling means a lot for photography brands, as they’re addressing our visual perception by default. Combining the principles of storytelling with some interactive elements on your website you can create a truly original, engaging experience for your audience.

In particular, such techniques as parallax scrolling, creative page transition effects and sliding interactions work well for creating a memorable impression on a user. Interactivity can be a powerful emotional trigger, so it will be a major driver of web design in the next months.

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Black Negative

6. Minimalism

Minimalistic design is trendy, as it has been for a few years already. It means large-scale, dramatic imagery and bold typography. We’ll see more linear shapes, simple menu bars and so-called “ghost buttons” (clickable elements that are fully or almost fully transparent).

Adopting the “less is more” philosophy can be a great way to practice your storytelling skills, both in creative and marketing perspectives: whenever you go for a photo shoot or update your About Me page, imagine you have just one picture or just a paragraph of words to express your message.

7. Custom Client Galleries

When it comes to delivering photos to customers, personalized client photo galleries will continue to conquer the market. While online galleries are not a novelty, they still have a long way to come in terms of replacing DVDs and USB drives completely.

It’s quite possible that this year will bring us the next version of customizable client galleries. For instance, customizable event websites that offer more functionality besides photo galleries like Defrozo.

8. Next Wave of “Pinterest Style”

Card design, also known as Pinterest-style design, has been around for a while. It’s a great way to keep elements organized and modular on responsive websites encouraging users to scroll down and see more.

Selecting an asymmetrical grid layout for your photography website may be a great solution if you need to display a large amount of content. Cards, or tiles, can come with a brief description and the page will still retain a clean, easy-to-scan look. Over to You

These photo website design trends can come in handy while updating your site this year. However, make sure you adapt these general styles to your own business strategy, only making changes that make sense to your own brand.

What updates would you like to make on your photo website? What things would you like web developers to bring to photographers? Share your ideas and experience with us in the comments.