2015 is fast approaching and, yes, I am quite well aware that it’s just the 2nd of December and that the 2nd of January (the first day of the new year when most of us will be properly ware of) is still a decent while away, but right now everyone is talking about either 2015 or Christmas and I’m not yet prepared to dive into that bucket of ho-ho-ho.
Okay, rounding back to my original point: 2015 is just around the corner and various web design and development trends are already emerging to take their places as the prevailing trends of the year.

There are some serious issues that all web developers and designers have to take into account with the new year. The major trends in the business revolve around moving from large organizations to small, in-house teams, the automation of code and other sobering, sensitive subjects, but we’ll leave such rigid topics for another time.

Here’s what we’ll be discussing as a potential defining trend of 2015: ghost buttons! (boo, sorry, couldn’t help myself). True, I know buttons haven’t been really a thing in web development and design for quite some time now, but they’re staging a comeback with new designs, new functionalities and a new name, i.e. ghost buttons.

Truth be told, you’ve probably already seen them popping up around the Internet, they’re those buttons that aren’t really buttons per-say because they’re kinda just rectangles with no filling and some text inside them that lets you know what their action is. But still, we think of them as buttons because they work like buttons are supposed to, i.e. they fulfil an action when pressed, and they’ve been deemed ‘ghost’…well because they don’t really look like they’re supposed to. Due to their visual aspect they tend to take up a fair amount of display space so they’re only used sparingly on landing pages or About sections.

The biggest benefit they bring to the table is that they’re very good at engaging visitors’ attention and have a very high ‘call to action’ response. Some other benefits we can talk about are: they’re unobtrusive since you can always clearly see whatever is behind them; their overall file size is small, remember they’re just an outline; mobile apps love them because they don’t take up any valuable screen space; visitor ‘mind control’, but really they’re very good at attracting and directing attention towards the areas you want your visitors to concentrate on; they’re generic seeing as they fit a wide variety of designs and they’re pretty unique, giving designers and developers a competitive edge on the market.

Naturally, ghost buttons aren’t just their benefits, they do have their share of downsides. First thing’s first: they are an emerging trend and they might prove to be a short lived one. Then there’s the fact that even though they are, technically, able to blend in with any theme, not all themes need them whether because of the website content or the way other elements appear in the page.

Well, this is about all we’re going to say about ghost buttons and we’ll let you guys decide if they’re going to be useful or not in any of your future projects.