Last month, we called attention to one third-party website’s article about “responsive web design” and the fact that this will be a major buzzword for web design and development companies throughout the coming year. In so doing, we also urged you to take a look at the various other New Year’s posts looking back on 2015 and ahead to 2016 and assessing the major trends, opportunities, and challenges facing both providers and recipients of web design services.

If you didn’t catch that advice or you didn’t have a chance to follow up on it before it was time to change the calendar, don’t worry. With just one week of 2016 behind us, there are still likely to be a variety of articles looking at broad trends in the web design, internet marketing, and search engine optimization industries. There are still abundant opportunities for you to use expert observations in a January assessment of the effectiveness and long-term viability of your business’s website.

To bring just one other example to your attention, here is a PR Newswire article from one California media company, which names a handful of trends currently being represented among web design and development companies in their region and across the internet landscape. Notably, that list aligns closely with the previous observations about responsive web design, which is mentioned in the article.

But GreatLike Media goes further by specifying some of the related aspects of website redesign and development, which either help to make a webpage viewable on multiple devices or else are generally popular at a time when people are viewing the same websites in a multitude of different ways.

The article suggests that responsive web design correlates with a return to “simplicity” in web design and development, as defined in part by “flat design,” “ghost buttons,” and a single-page scrolling interface that eliminates the need for repetitive clicking.

But if you’re looking to make a mark on the internet landscape with your professional website, don’t mistake the concept of a simple aesthetic for the idea of effortless design. It can take hard work for a web design and development company to make a website both visually minimalist and maximally functional, especially if it’s going to stand out from the massive crowd.

This should be illustrated by the specific elements of modern web design mentioned in articles like the one linked above. You might know what “simplicity” means in theory, but it is only your local web design and development company that knows how to build ghost buttons into your website, to make it scroll smoothly and reveal information effectively without leaving your visitors lost on a single page.

As we indicated last month, there is tremendous benefit to be had from reading about the latest developments in the web design industry. But that benefit is necessarily the ability to go it alone in absence of a web design and development agency. Rather, it is in being able to competently discuss with that company the prospects for your website, and to make informed decisions when a web design professional presents you with a range of options for the year ahead.