Even when mobile internet is becoming a competitive factor, native apps still remains the preferred choice to target mobile users. According to a Localytics, the amount of time people spending in using mobile apps has increased by 21% since last year. It shows in spite of the growth of mobile browsing native apps still holds the largest share in mobile usage. Naturally, publishing your content through mobile apps besides the so called mobile ready website is important for making yourself accessible to majority of mobile users. WordPress is the most popular CMS platform for content rich websites. Now, WordPress is rapidly becoming one of the most popular native app platforms for bloggers and content rich websites as well. There is a gamut of plugins to convert your site quickly into feature rich websites just within minutes.
All the major mobile app UI and UX design trends can be incorporated into your new WordPress app to the advantage of readability, usability and user engagement. Whether you have web magazine or popular blog or a content rich website with regular fresh posts on WordPress platform delivering a native WordPress app for both iOS and Android would add immense possibility as far as reaching mobile traffic is concerned. Through WordPress native apps you can further enhance your focus on contents, readability and user engagement. Let us now discuss here some of the most enduring UI and UX trends across WordPress mobile apps.
1. Parallax Scrolling Design
Parallax scrolling design is a type of interface in which the background moves at a slower pace compared to the foreground and thus creates a 3D effect when you scroll down the page. This UI is incorporated in WordPress apps for telling a story. Using full screen visuals, crisp use of contents and suggestive graphic elements you can hold the attention of the user all through your storyline. Some of the most notable WordPress plugins to create parallax effects include Parallax Scroll, Parallax One, ML Parallax, Aesop Story Engine and Parallax Gravity.
2. Flat UI Design
If we are to name any UI design trend that almost became a convention across web and mobile apps, then it is Flat UI Design. It became so widely popular because it is simple, more focused on content and usability and intuitive. Flat UI offers least device specific challenges for displaying content and WordPress with its characteristic focus on contents is perfect to optimize Flat interface. There is a whole array of diverse plugins to give your mobile app the edge of flat UI.
3. Material Design
Material design is introduced by Google to create a unified user experience across platforms and devices by allowing optimum ease with various device specific inputs including touch, gesture, voice, mouse and keyboard. Besides the consistent focus on content, material design also brings enhanced focused on motion, user interaction and visual. There are too many WordPress blog apps that incorporated this design element successfully. Some of the key attributes of this popular design trend include the following.
- Material design offers bold typography, buttons and icons offering ease of interaction.
- Material design introduces suggestive graphic elements to replace texts.
- Material design is objectively driven.
- Fast paced navigation and movement is a characteristic element of material design.
4. Full screen background
Full screen background images and video are still enjoying lot of popularity across the web and mobile apps and many WordPress apps with robust focus on content are no different in this respect. It is particularly effective in conveying a quick message to the user. Mobile optimized background visuals, video, graphics and photos will continue to be consumed on multiple devices and screens with far greater ease and so there is no sign of stop for this trend in near future. By using full screen images to your WordPress app you can further boost user engagement and interaction.
5. Customized UX Design
Finally, customization of user experience and content is the ultimate competitive ground for most mobile apps. Across websites and mobile apps tailor made user specific content creation has already become an established trend. Customized notification message is a prominent instance of this trend. Now depending on the pattern of usage and interaction user experience has also began to be tailor suited for individual needs. As mobile app analytics, sensors and location technology are becoming more powerful to give feedback on customer location, usage pattern, preferences, etc. app UX can be customized individually for different customers. WordPress mobile apps as the new horizon for bloggers and content rich websites can take the benefit of customized UX design to boost traffic, user engagement, acquisition and retention.
With a wide range of custom themes and WordPress mobile app plugins you can incorporate all the above mentioned design elements to deliver best user experience, interaction, discoverability and engagement for your WordPress mobile app.