It’s a new year, it’s a new playground for web designers who are inventing the digital art signature of the year. Web design trends have been elevated to a whole new level, with countless signature styles emerging all around the world.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Web design is a perfect blend of art trends and digital innovation, so in a way, you have to keep up with both the worlds.[/perfectpullquote]
The challenge now is to handle the technological innovations and evolving trends to create a web design that’s appealing, adaptable to devices, user-friendly, and concise.
How do you do all of this without going crazy? That’s what we’re here for! We’ve compiled together the best trends in website design- the ones that will define how successful your site gets in 2018. After all, you don’t want to be found using last season’s designs, do you?
1. Geometric Design
Whether you geeked out over geometry as a kid or not, it’s time for you to embrace the shapes now. Geometric design is all the rage, and we’re not just talking about tossing some triangles into the mix. Add some hatch lines or tessellation or a hexagonal icon: it’s a minimalist statement, one that will definitely appeal to your customers.
2. Videos & Animated Graphics
Static websites are out: what grabs people’s attention is movement, it’s what keeps them actively engaged with the page. A picture can speak a thousand words (and let’s face it, nobody has the attention span to read a thousand words any more), and by using videos, animated gifs or cinemagraphs, you’ll draw and maintain attention with a lot more ease.
3. Personalized Chat Bots
Another way of making your website less static is by allowing users to have micro-interactions, which personalizes the experience for them. The ideal way of doing this? Bots! Smart bots add a ‘human’ touch to the process, and can provide personalized advice and inputs to your customers, by tracking the most basic information.
4. Virtual Reality Integration
It’s 2018, and virtual reality has broken out of its video game shell. Of course- it will always be closely linked to the video game industry, but many websites can benefit from a virtual reality integration as well. Give your customers an immersive experience of your products and service- it will be new, it will be quirky, and it will definitely leave an impression!
5. Bold Typography
The bigger the better: 2018 is definitely the year of big and bold typography everywhere- from product design to websites. It’s a simple and elegant way of making important text stand out in your page. Play around the font sizes, keep the rest of the design minimal, and decide what you want highlighted! Expert tip: Try and keep the largest font size restrained to the home page.
6. Cross Words: Mix Text Direction
We’re unidirectional readers: so having text that goes in a different direction would definitely stand out, and attract a lot more attention. Have horizontal text on your page? Make the title text vertical! This works better for punch statements and headlines (entire sentences, on the other hand? Bad idea: might overwhelm the readers).
7. Arty websites
Aspect ratios are not meant to be standard: so play around with the layout of your site itself. Whether it is through split page design with separate text and image; use bright gradients as the background; create an ultra minimal studio-shot background with focus on only one thing/concept; focusing on the artistic parameters of your site will take you far.
Expert tip: Asymmetric or broken layouts have been a breakthrough trend in 2018, and will give your site an experimental touch.
8. Illustrations
Hand-drawn illustrations are the future: they make your website more uniquely you. This is a trend that’s definitely here to stay: it is a time consuming task at first, but stick with the process. It’ll give your website a more friendly, and human feel. Expert tip: If you don’t want to illustrate the entire site, you can always start off with illustrating only the icons.
9. Storytelling as a medium
People want to engage with other people: not just a product/service. Want to set your brand apart from your competition? Tell a story, and put the people first: no matter how much data or information you put in your website, a story is what will hold all of it together and connect to the user, at the end of the day.
10. Mobile Integration
Smartphones have overtaken desktops and tablets as the predominant tool to access the internet: with an average user spending at least 2 hours a day browsing on their phone. This is where most of the sales and user engagement takes place, and if your website is clunky and non-responsive, you’re going to lose customers quicker than you can say ‘iPhone’. Convert your design and adapt it to a mobile format: might mean changing font sizes and ditching some backgrounds, but it is worth the effort.
Let us know your thoughts over the game-changing website trends in 2018. Write to us contact@contentninja.in.
