According to Sally Hogshead, a renowned brand consultant and speaker, a hundred years ago our attention span averaged up to 20 minutes! That’s one minute for ever single year of our age, until we reached twenty. But now, according to BBC News, web browsing can affect our attention span unbelievably, leaving it to become merely nine seconds!
This is a scary reminder of how the world is changing but it is also a valuable piece of information to be remembered by web developers all around the world. This means that to feed the curious minds of your users, you must keep hitting them back with a more compelling web front to grasp their attention.
Parallax Scrolling is a web design technique which shows huge potential to be considered as an essential web design element. It is one of the techniques which is sure to make your website compatible with the year 2014.
How it works?
When several parts of an image are moving at different rates to give a 3D look to a web page, the effect is called Parallax Scrolling. The page consists of a variety of elements containing images or other content, assigned to a fixed position by employing CSS and z-index values.
In this manner, layers begin to appear in the foreground or the background. To create the parallax effect while scrolling down, Javascript keeps a track when the viewer is scrolling down the page to move the suitable elements to a varying amount to get the accurate effect.
Let’s see how parallax scrolling can change the look of your website. Parallax Scrolling can be used to add these elements into a web design.
Motion and Depth to a Page
Many famous brands and companies have showcased their products and services in a dynamic manner by using parallax scrolling. By making the foreground look as if it’s somewhat popping out gives a depth to the web design. The effect also adds motion to the displayed objects. To the user, the foreground items would move more quickly than the objects placed in the background. Such effects are a treat for the website viewer.
The Visual Element
Quite naturally, parallax scrolling gives a visual effect to your website. The whole design of the website makes the viewer feel as if he’s watching a sort of a visual rather than surfing a company website. This adds the frequently ignored visual element to your web design which ultimately means endless creativity and broadened horizons for web designers to implement any idea into their web design.
Whether your web front incorporates flying or falling objects into its design or displays motion by using parallax scrolling, the user is sure to enjoy the visual effect which is created in the outcome.
Guaranteed Scrolling
Probably the best use of parallax scrolling is that it encourages and compels the users to scroll down a website. This is very useful if we take a look at the short attention span statistics discussed above. As the user scrolls down the website, he gets to review and analyze all the information being displayed on the website. This means the user is bound to go through your web page as long as the effect created by parallax scrolling is breath taking enough to hold his attention.
Why you should use Parallax Scrolling?
Experts believe that parallax illusion is one of the freshest effects to emerge on the world of web design. It gives an impressive look to your website, adds novelty and originality to it and can be the edge you have over your competitors. Use Parallax Scrolling to add that ‘wow’ factor your website has been missing.
