In the 25 years of the web, it has changed significantly in appearance and in the way we interact with it. Once upon a time, web pages were crammed with text and solely designed to communicate information to the user. But those days are long over.
Because a picture is worth a thousand words, web design is shifting towards a more visual sphere rather than a rigid bulk of text. We’ve seen this transformation sweep over many famous websites over the past few years. For instance look at Facebook’s cover photo addition, followed later by a similar design approach in Twitter and Google+.
Many other corporate websites made a similar shift. This trend was most notable in 2014. As Forbes contributor Ilya Pozin explains in Let It Go: Say Farewell To These 5 Web Design Trends , “Instead of telling your story in a paragraph or block of text, the trend now is to invest in more visual storytelling. Text has been cut down to the essentials, while visuals are increasingly employed to impart important information.”
And now, it has gone beyond images. No matter what you’re trying to sell or promote, a video will always get you more engaged, and that’s why the latest rising trend is Ambient Video Backgrounds . Seen in various websites such as todoist.com and buildacity.org, you can easily tell that this a trend that will either make it...or break it.
And yet design isn’t simply a bunch of cool visuals. It’s about a bunch of cool visuals that actually communicate something. If they don’t add to the story, they don’t count, and your website is better off without them. Sadly, web designers seem to sometimes forget that.
Unlike regular videos which require your full attention, ambient video backgrounds are expected to add a subtle mood to the website without being a distraction (which is basically what ‘ambient’ suggests). But ambient video backgrounds should not stop at setting a mood. Like any communication platform, you need to know beforehand the exact focus point you’re trying to convey to the viewer, and that should be the video’s hero. If the website visitor feels lost after dedicating whatever brief time to watching your video and still finds it hard to understand what this website is about, there’s a drastic issue which requires your attention.
As engaging and attention grabbing as ambient videos may be, they lose a great deal of appeal if the user doesn't enjoy a fast download speed (and let's face it, the Middle East doesn't boast the best internet on the planet). While a viewer can opt to leave a regular video to buffer, it becomes trickier with ambient videos since having an uninterrupted experience may sometimes be hindered with video backgrounds.
But like any other trend, some people love it while others utterly hate it. Only time will tell whether this trend is here to stay or is just passing through briefly. Until then, we’ll keep our eyes on how creative designers will use this trend.