What Is Website Design Tips 2017 and Why It Matters for Agencies

"Website Design Tips 2017" represents a collection of best practices and design standards that emerged during that year when responsive design was becoming standard, mobile traffic was overtaking desktop, and user experience optimization was shifting from nice-to-have to essential. The trend captured principles like mobile-first design methodology, faster load times, cleaner minimalist layouts, improved navigation patterns, and the increasing importance of page speed as both a user experience factor and a ranking signal. While the label includes a year, these principles remain foundational today because they addressed problems that never went away—users still need fast, mobile-friendly sites with intuitive navigation and clear conversion paths.

For agencies, understanding this design era matters because it established the baseline expectations clients still hold, even if they don't articulate them. When you quote a web design project, clients inherently expect the site to work flawlessly on mobile devices, load quickly, and guide visitors toward taking action. These weren't universal expectations in 2016, but by 2017-2018, they became table stakes. If your agency is still designing desktop-first or treating mobile as an afterthought, you're delivering below what clients now consider standard. More importantly, Google's mobile-first indexing (which rolled out during this period) made these practices directly tied to search rankings. A site that isn't responsive or has poor mobile performance will rank lower, meaning your clients' SEO results suffer and their ability to compete diminishes.

Practically, you should audit your current project delivery against 2017 best practices as a baseline, then build forward from there. This means ensuring every project includes mobile-first design from wireframes onward, not responsive retrofitting. Page speed should be measured and optimized during development, not after launch—your designers should understand how their image choices and animation decisions affect load times. Navigation structures should be tested with actual users, particularly on mobile where screen real estate is limited. These aren't trendy additions; they're functional requirements that directly impact whether a site converts visitors into customers.

For client conversations, framing these practices as foundational improves positioning. Instead of selling "modern design," explain that you're building sites optimized for how people actually use the web today—primarily on mobile devices, often in distracted environments, expecting instant responses. When you can show how design decisions connect to business outcomes (faster load times mean more conversions, better mobile experience means lower bounce rates), clients understand the value beyond aesthetics. Your proposals should explicitly address these elements and explain how they serve the client's goals, not just demonstrate them in the final deliverable. This approach differentiates agencies that understand user-centered design from those simply following visual trends, and it justifies your fees because the work directly impacts client revenue.