It's a new year and with it comes new opportunities for design evolution on the web.

Looking forward, there are three trends I think we can expect to see more of this year.

1. Mobile no longer an after-thought.
There has been and will continue to be an increased and hyper-focus on mobile. There is still a lot of upside growth in the mobile web space to be had. Consequently, it can't be ignored and what we can expect to see is more inclusion and integration of mobile in website planning. There will be less of sites being thought of in silos based on desktop or mobile. Instead, there will be more of a holistic approach to web presences where desktop, smartphone, and tablet instances will be thought of collectively. This will manifest itself in more sites being...

Last week, we launched a cross-site navigation enhancement to the Symantec.com Enterprise site.

We’ve added links to each of our four main sites – i.e. Norton, Small & Medium Business, Enterprise, and Partners – across the top of the site thereby, creating a funnel effect readily exposing our site choices by default and enabling users to more easily navigate to the destination that best fits their needs.

We’ve also added a site identifier adjacent to the logo to help users better identify the site they are on i.e. Symantec | Enterprise. This, is in addition to bolding the link label of the site the user is on e.g. “Enterprise” in the site navigation bar at the top of the page.

Hope this helps to better cross-navigate our sites.

The way we communicate with each other is changing. I use social media like forums and Twitter to connect and learn from others. It seems that I am not alone. Over one billion people, that’s one out of every seven people in the world, are connecting via some form of social media.

As designers, we try to learn about people and their needs, design for them, and then refine the design. Along the way, we connect and engage with people through things like usability tests and focus groups. But people are describing their experiences in a much broader way including things like how they became aware of a product, purchased it, how they are configuring it and what they do when something goes wrong. We have the opportunity to engage people about every part of their experience.

One way we can engage is through social media. By listening and offering help, we can begin to build a relationship with the people who use our products. It helps to reach out to people where they...

Phase one of our brand new website which we recently told you about has been launched, providing a new and improved Corporate and Enterprise user experience on Symantec.com worldwide.

The first phase of the rollout includes the new home page, products and solutions landing page, security response landing page, and global navigation.

The new Enterprise site provides a more engaging experience, more dynamic content (integrated social media, video, podcasts, etc), and a simplified display of information. There is a more prioritized global navigation, a better browsing experience with fewer clicks to key pages, and a more seamless user experience.

Using the interstitial overlay from the home page, visitors can easily gain access...