Is Web Design Getting Monotonous due to Growing Popularity of Bootstraps?

The design has always been one of the key criteria for the product being sold. Nowadays the importance of good design is such that if a product is designed well, it will sell; irrespective of its performance.

Just look around you; everything from that coffee mug, pen, mobile, watch, car, building, etc. once existed as ideas in the minds of the designers. This is the importance of good design with regard to current state of trade in the world. The same holds true in the digital world too. There is constant evolution going online with a range of trends changing in the blink of an eye.

Website design styles are the most apt example of going through a huge evolutionary change over the years. Even though our websites have matured a lot aesthetically, most of them have just become analogous.

Nowadays, when we talk about web design, a predictable equation arises, which usually contains a hero block with CTA (call to action) at the top. A navigation bar, followed by feature blocks and footer, accompanies this. From small businesses to large enterprises, everyone is just following the same pattern and similar layouts. Frankly, overall it has become plain boring.

When Website Design Becomes Boring!!

The fact of the matter is that the creativity in web designing is shrinking day by day as prospective website owners focus more on just having a website rather than having an engaging/unique website. On average, custom website development has the following work cycle:

• 5 pages static responsive website – 15 working days
• 5 pages responsive CMS website – 30 working days

However, nowadays there is a constant decline in the time taken to design a website and the biggest reason behind it is the use of Bootstraps. It is estimated that nearly 10 million websites use bootstraps and this number is increasing at an astonishing rate.

Bootstraps are basically frameworks, which make it easy to get an attractive website up and running with minimal effort. By using out of the box components, developers easily get new website projects off the ground. However, as the web designers have got more dependent upon these bootstraps, our creativity is spiraling downwards and most of the websites that are being created in current times turn out to be overly similar.

Most of the developers these days do not bother about custom website solutions or even customizing bootstraps to make it unique. According to them, reinventing the wheel is unnecessary, when you just have to assemble the basic building blocks being used everywhere. Although HTML5 and CSS3 have expanded the scope of development and developers can easily stretch their imagination to build a highly intuitive website, most of them prefer not to. This often requires extensive knowledge of coding and out of the box thinking. When you ignore the trends, start tinkering and stop building websites that look the same, it is then, where you come up with a fresh take on web designs.

Also Read: Frequently Ignored Web Design Practices- Adopt to Look Great & Convert More

Many would argue that one usually visits a website not to get stunned by its visual appeal but for gaining information. Additionally, by using similar patterns, visitors find that information easily and get accustomed to the website without in no time.

But…………. It still does not justify why 90% of web designs nowadays lack creativity.

What’s the reason behind lacking creativity of web designs we see these days?

Has web designing become completely boring now?

No. It is the designers, who behave indolently…

It is easy to say that this is the right way forward because bootstrap makes the process of website designing efficient, cheap and quick. But in reality, it is the designers who do not want to use imagination and spend extra time tinkering with the code to give websites a unique identity.

So where are web designs headed?

As mobile apps are gaining ground, very less focus is being given to traditional website designing. We are seeing more creativity when it comes to designing a mobile app than a website. However, the importance of a website design cannot be undermined. Before we come to some conclusion let us again take a look at what we have gained and what we have lost due to these bootstraps.

What have we gained with these design frameworks?

• One cannot deny the fact that these frameworks have made the overall process of the web designing a walk in the park.
• As more and more websites use the same pattern and similar layout, there is a familiarity quotient, which comes to the forefront, making it easy for visitors to easily get accustomed with the websites.
• The cost of developing a website has gradually come down and it takes lesser time to build a website using bootstrap frameworks.

What have we lost?

One cannot deny the fact that we have come a long way in website designing. Just look at any average looking professional website today and compare it with any top design agency website a decade ago. A feeling that comes straightaway is that the current crop of websites has matured and become more user engaging. But, that’s not all. Spare five more minutes,  sneak a quick look of a few more and you will find that bulk of them actually look the same.

This issue might not seem big currently, but in the near future, the overall web will start to look a lot similar and it will get difficult for a new website to stand out of the competition. See below how important it is for websites to have a unique identity.

• The average user per website has dropped from 13 to less than 3 within a decade
• The number of websites has surpassed the billion mark.

This is why it is critical for designers to not lose hold of their creativity. In addition to that, website owners who opt for custom web solutions should ensure that their website is built from scratch and not from a bootstrap.

We lately redesigned our own website and the result evidently highlights how crucial it is to go for custom solution to build a unique design rather than choosing a bootstrap.

Businesses and designers heavily rely on bootstraps these days mainly for speed and economical pricing. Taking up an example of a small and medium business website, it is a bit reasonable to witness resistance for custom design but for a business that largely depends on online transactions, like a marketplace, bootstraps can never be a better option to replace custom despite all sorts of ease that comes with it.

Our focus on custom solutions to offer each website a unique identity has been appreciated worldwide. View portfolio to have a better view of our custom design projects delivered globally.