Parallax scrolling website designing is getting more popular day by day, enhancing the user experience by taking it to a new interactive level. As web designers and developers are constantly researching to find new ways to make their online presence more attractive to their websites’ visitors through new and engaging visuals and features, parallax scrolling seems a promising solution.

Parallax Design
The term parallax first came into being from the visual effects of 2D side-scrolling video games which used different speeds for background image movement to create an illusion of depth during gameplay. It was generally achieved by making the background move slower as compared to the foreground so that it seems further away. The same concept applies to the parallax website design whereby the background of the website is made to move at a different speed as compared to the rest of the page to create an impressive visual effect. It is especially suitable for online storytelling.

Parallax design gives websites an opportunity to surprise viewers with page depth and animation. The feature encourages users to scroll through the complete webpage making the site visits last longer. It provokes curiosity and direct users to call to action. Also, it reinforces website credibility with creative and interactive viewing.

Snags of Parallax Web Design
Given all the above mentioned benefits of parallax site designing, there are many downsides to this trend as well. Majority of these drawbacks come from the fact that most of the parallax websites have a single long webpage that is extremely harmful to the website’s SEO as well as page loading speed. Here are few of the negatives points to using parallax scrolling:

• Websites having a single webpage can implement one set of Meta information, one h1 tag, and URL. Hence, problematic from the SEO point of view.

• Lot of images and other content on a single page can cause slow loading, leading to frustrated visitors leaving the page before even viewing it.

• Not compatible with responsive web design

Tips for developing a great parallax website
Here are a few tips to design a successful parallax website:

• Use it reasonably and don’t overdo. It can make your site complicated.

• Use it to create an amazing storytelling experience.

• Create a fun and engaging UX with depth using layering

• Highlight calls to action

As such, the parallax scrolling effect is taking the internet world by storm as one of the most popular web design trends of 2014. We can see it popping up on almost every type of website across the web. Whether it’s Business to Business or Business to Consumer, this design trend provides a great platform to websites to tell stories and keep their visitors engaged.

Parallax web design can be used by your brand in a variety of different ways. So, if you want to update your website, or do a complete website redesigning, this trend definitely needs considering.