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Reactive Predictions : Web Trends for 2018

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It’s that time of year again, when we at Reactive Graphics take stock and look back at the year we have had, seeing which trends have been top notch and which have been a flop. Below you will find our top 5 predicted web design trends for 2018.

Striking video content and fabulous photography

The world is full of outrageously brilliant photography and video content these days. Not only are top of the range DSLR cameras absolutely cheap as chips at the moment, but if you are the owner of a smart phone, then the chances are, you are also a pretty awesome smart phone photographer. We are a society obsessed with selfies, Instapics, filters etc. and our collective eye for detail is growing more and more fixated on the perfect pic, whether it be for your Facebook profile pic, snapchat story or Pinterest pin.

Photography

So, if your website is lacking perfection when it comes to imagery, then it’s probably time to shut up shop and move yourself back to the 20th Century. Back to a simpler time, when pixellated pics were considered arty and the fear of falling victim to ‘false internet advertising’ was less real and more humorous. Like when you ordered cowboy boots for your autumn winter wardrobe and they arrived in a match-box instead of a shoebox and looked just perfect on your nephew’s Woody doll.

So, striking video content and photography is not only about aesthetically pleasing imagery, but it’s about accuracy and being true to the service(s) and product(s) you are providing. This is vital for building a trusting customer base and providing a service that people would be happy to recommend. Being transparent online is an extremely useful business tactic, as if consumers know what to expect from you, then the likelihood of them being let down or misunderstanding what is on offer is dramatically reduced.

Amazing content not ontray does wonders for your customer base but it also helps significantly with marketing your business. This can be through unrelated ‘sharing’ of your content, or people reusing your imagery for other purposes, either way you are getting YOUR brand, YOUR info out there, potentially into a different demographic of potential customers.

Back to the 20th Century

The hamburger and other delicious icons

The hamburger menu icon is one of those very simple symbols, which will go down in history as one of the most effective. Consisting of three straight horizontal lines stacked one on top of the other – the top and bottom lines being the bun and the middle line being the burger- the hamburger takes up little space and is not restricted by language and can be rendered on all web enabled devices.

The hamburger really is an icon of our generation, something that has gone from ‘What is the deal with those three lines in the corner of that website and where the heck is the menu?’ to ‘……….’ That’s right, silence. Because everyone now, knows exactly what the function of that simple little icon is. I don’t know how these sorts of transitions take place, from something being completely new and ineffectual, to them being a full on part of our digital lives. Social media icons for example, or the search magnifying glass or the microphone icon, all of these tiny images are now part of a digital language that we all recognise, despite for the most part being less than a decade old. Awesome, effective icons are set to stay and this brings us straight onto our next point about intuitive design…

Hamburger Menu

Intuitive User centred design

Website design should always consider the, user/customer as the most important person in the whole process. If the interface for your website is not user focused, then is it unlikely that your customer base will be able to interact with your online business without hiccup, if at all. A glitchy website that doesn’t do what it says on the tin, is the most annoying thing ever. Equally annoying is a super stylish website that is completely dysfunctional and totally style over substance.

As a website user, you want to feel that your web browsing experience has been developed with you in mind. A slick, easy experience that allows you to do whatever you need in about 4 clicks. Maximum.

Intuitive design, makes it so that the customer doesn’t have to do too much leg work in order to get what they want. YOU as the business owner are supplying THEM a service and by making their experience easier, you are doing yourselves justice.

2018 is the year when slow load page times are just unacceptable. Websites that require flash or any other random plugin to work are completely obsolete and low quality design, will simply not be tolerated. So there you have it, it’s the intuitive way or the high way!

Card design ala pinterest

Card design has been around for many moons and is set to be here for quite some time yet. With its simple, yet effective layout and structure, card design offers a clean, off-beat style of web design that is very ‘Skandi’ and very on trend. Paired with simple sans serif typography and muted colour palettes, card design can take your website from tired to contemporary, without having to reshape or redesign the whole concept of your site.

Think cool mood boards, retro colours and clean typography, card design is a minimalist’s dream and set to be a favourite amongst web designers and developers in 2018. Not only does the simplistic design of a card designed website make it easily navigable, but it also allows your content the space to shine.

Card design

Long form content

For years, businesses have refined their content into snappy, short form focused nuggets of information that are easily digestible and can fit, above the fold. But the times are a changin’!

Well, not completely, but this trend of making content so short and focused that it could essentially fit into a tweet, is something businesses are now reconsidering when they design content for their websites. I think for many, the long form text approach is, naively, something they do because they think it will get them more organic web traffic. Unfortunately this isn’t always the case, sometimes the best way to approach content is simply quality rather than quantity.

Content quality over quantity

So, here we are, our top 5 web design trend predictions for 2018. If you want to be ahead of the curve and redesign your website or create a site from scratch then please do get in touch! We’d be happy to help!

The post Reactive Predictions : Web Trends for 2018 appeared first on Reactive Graphics - Web Design London.


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