10 Design Trends to Incorporate into Your Web Development Efforts

In today’s business environment, it’s crucial for your digital assets to engage your customers. And this certainly is the case when it comes to your website.

It doesn’t matter if you write an awesome article or you sell the very best products or services if they’re only promoted on a website that provides a dissatisfying user experience. With this in mind, it’s essential that you stay on top of the latest trends and consumer preferences and that you incorporate them into your web development.

As is the case every year, the New Year brought some new trends for web design along with its arrival. Keep reading to learn about 10 web design trends you’ll need to pay attention to in 2018 and, quite likely, well beyond.

1. Minimalistic Design

In recent years, developers have been making websites increasingly mobile-friendly with simple designs. With an ever-increasing number of searches being performed on mobile devices and Google adopting a mobile-first approach to search results later this year, having a flat web design is vital for your website to rank well in SERPs.

A flat design doesn’t mean your web development has to be boring or two dimensional. Instead, it simply means your web design has to be free of clutter and quick to load. It also means you need to consider function over form as you’re developing your website. Contrasting bright colors, simple imagery and clean fonts make flat web designs engaging and attractive to users.

2. Google Fonts

Again, it’s important for your site’s pages to load quickly for your website to be truly mobile-friendly and ultimately rank well in SERPs. To improve your website’s load time, you should use Google fonts in your web design. Google fonts are available in more than 135 different language and they’re free to use. Incorporating Google fonts into your design will do more than improve your website’s performance. Google fonts are also a great way for you to express the personality of your brand.

3. Animated Logos

Depending on your age, the notion of animated logos may bring back memories of flying toasters and dancing hamsters on your computer screen. While those images may still bring a smile to your face, older animations typically only served to distract and frustrate users.

Today, technology can handle animated images much better, which presents great opportunities for website designers. More specifically, today’s technology enables you to create animated logos on your website. It can also accommodate scroll-triggered animations. With scroll-triggered animations and animated logos, you can really make your website stand out because your web development will appear much more contemporary than your competitors’ web designs.

4. Smart Websites

Thanks to the Internet of Things, or IoT, many devices are connected to the Internet, such as light bulbs, coffee makers and thermostats. In 2018, a lot of websites will have interfaces that enable users to interact with their connected devices. While a smart website has a more advanced and involved backend, creating a user-friendly IoT interface is still a smart investment for many businesses.

5. Storytelling with Video

Videos are quickly evolving into an increasingly important component in web development. Approximately 65 percent of people learn through visual experiences, which makes videos appealing to the majority of your audience. You can use videos to relay your company’s story in a way that’s compelling and engaging to your website’s visitors.

You can also use video to provide product demonstrations, customer testimonials and behind-the-scenes tours of your company. In 2018, you can expect to see a good number of websites that have immersive, virtual reality-like videos that visitors can actually interact with.

6. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Have you ever wondered how Facebook knows which ads to display in your news feed? It knows because the social media giant uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to track your Internet-based interactions as well as your physical location.

So you can serve your customers better, you should consider incorporating similar technology into your web design. Don’t you think your customers would love it if you already knew what they were looking for when they visit your website? With artificial intelligence and machine learning, you may be able to determine what a customer wants without even communicating with the person directly. If you want to improve your customer service, artificial intelligence and machine learning are must-haves for your website.

7. Voice User Interface

With voice user interfaces like Alexa and Siri being so popular, many web designers are creating voice user interfaces for their websites. When a voice user interface is used along with machine learning, this technology can anticipate a user’s needs before the person even finishes giving a command or making a request. To incorporate a voice user interface into your web design successfully, it’s necessary for your website’s content to be conversational because people often use different language when they use voice commands compared to when they type something in a search bar.

8. Security

With major hacks being reported often in recent years, consumers have started to shy away from websites that don’t seem secure. It’s critical for you to build trust with your visitors by keeping your security certificate updated on each of your website’s pages. It’s also essential that browsers like Google consider your website safe so they don’t mistakenly deter people from visiting your website.

9. Chat Sidebars

Many consumers now assume that a website is going to have a chat box located in the lower right-hand corner. While having a chat interface is important these days, consumers are starting to demand even more. They want to see a record of their previous chats and the names of the people they spoke to on those occasions. If you’re going to incorporate a chat interface, and it’s a good idea for you to do so, make sure it lives up to your visitors’ evolving expectations.

10. Accessible Content

Too many websites ignore the trouble that people with hearing difficulties, vision impairments or other physical challenges may have when they try to access content on the Internet. If you haven’t already done so, make sure your website is in compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to ensure every user can have the best experience possible when they visit your website.

Do you want to incorporate some or all of the trends discussed above into your web design, but don’t know how to go about it? If so, don’t worry! Just contact GoingClear. We provide a full suite of web development services and we offer several web design packages. Contact us to learn about the web design services and packages we provide today.