Web Design Evolves: Goodbye Columns. Long Live Rows!

Emerging digital trends have fundamentally altered my approach to Design for the Web. In highly complex, content-heavy experiences, for example, my new focus is to conceptualize and design content modules that can be measured, optimized, re-ordered, and replaced with different modules. Modular Design enables businesses to quickly deploy, test, and optimize new functionality, without destroying the template structure upon which the modules sit.  Pages can be designed to have greater flexibility when the Design concept includes full-width content modules, stacked as rows on the page, enabling module re-ordering, stacking, and replacement in a “non-destructive” template architecture.

The decision to utilize full-width, content modules, stacked in rows, led me to decide to eliminate columns; which was a decision based on emerging trends and technologies. The following are just a few examples of the trends that have led me to adopt a Modular approach to Web Design:

1. Increase in Volume of Content – Marketing, entertainment, ecommerce, and corporate web sites are increasingly becoming content portals, due to evolving marketing/content strategies. This increase in content volume has resulted in a shift of focus with respect to the user experience, from the aesthetic presentation of the content, to its findability and utility. The ability to “merchandise” content in specialized and “personalized” content modules gives marketers the ability to create greater content relevance and improve findability of content.
2. Wider Adoption of Mobile Web – As connected, mobile devices become more widely adopted, web sites must be designed to scale to many different mobile platforms, in order to deliver the same content (in some cases) to users, via a variety of mobile browsers. This is especially true when a business cannot, for typically economic reasons, develop mobile applications that consumers can download from “App Stores.” Having a “mobile browser-optimized” web site, then, requires a modular content design that is flexible enough to render in a wide variety of mobile form factors, screen resolutions, and browser specifications.
3. Changes in User Browse Behavior – Usability testing has proven to me, that users increasingly place their focus on the center of the “page” (in most cases), resulting in blind spots around the periphery of that “sweet spot.” Users were also conditioned to avoid the right column of web sites because of their likelihood to contain advertisements, such as on a Google search results page. Why then, have a periphery? It was a tough pill for me to swallow, but Usability Testing revealed that content placed in a “right column” was getting less attention than content found in the center of the page.
4. Increased Demand for Content Syndication – To increase content engagement and findability, marketers often develop strategies to make their content discoverable on partner web sites and digital platforms. When implementing a content syndication strategy, in order to maintain the integrity of content branding as well as consistency in content interaction, content presentment is often the same, on a partner web site, as on the originating platform.  Content syndication is most effective when it is planned for from the beginning, including early conceptualization of Content Modules that live on the originating platform and are “transportable widgets” that can live on any platform that is beneficial to attract engagement from a relevant audience.  
5. Content Sponsorship – Display advertisements are a necessary evil to drive revenue, however, content sponsorships can prove more effective, relevant, and create a higher degree of engagement with the advertiser brand. A sponsorship can simply be a curated list of content assets that live within an advertiser-branded (“skinned”) module that is contained within the page stack.

There is a valid Design argument and challenge to the decision to commit to a "column-less" Design...It is the issue of "visual interest." Brand is important to the user experience. Emotional impact is important to drive engagement. An unanswered question remains, "How does an additional constraint to Design impact the Designer's ability to create an emotionally impactful Design?"