Get your Website Design ready for the 2018 New Year
At the end of every year, digital marketing professionals look back at the most popular design trends for the current year, and look forward to emerging trends for the upcoming year. As a business owner or entrepreneur, you should be paying attention, too. It’s just as important to look back on old and existing trends as it is to experiment with new and innovative design trends.
Refreshing Your Website Design
If you’re like most businesses, the end of the year is a great time to start thinking about how you can improve in the new year. If refreshing your website design is your main target area for improvement, it’s important to do some research before you begin.
You may want to answer the following before you begin researching website design trends:
- Identify 2-3 top business goals for the coming year.
- What additional functionality does your website need to help you achieve these goals?
- What improvements can be made to your website design?
- Is your audience being served relevant and useful information?
- Has your brand message changed?
Once you’ve answered these questions, and you have a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish from a redesign, you can then begin evaluating the pros and cons of several design techniques that catch your eye. It’s important to understand the functionality and/or limits of each design type, so you can choose the right design based on your business needs and goals.
4 of the top website design trends for the upcoming year include:
Geometric Designs
This isn’t exactly a new trend, but we’re seeing more of it now, and it doesn’t appear to be going away in the near future. It appears to work best when combined with other modern design trends such as using bold colors and appropriate typography. Awwwards.com has some great examples of this trend, here.
Illustrations
Graphic illustrations are a unique way to catch the eye of potential customers. When done well, each illustration tells a story, and viewers can’t help but spend time analyzing the intricate details of each drawing. The artist, Margarita Mar, offers a great example of using illustration in website design.
Microinteractions
Microinteractions are both useful and fun for your website viewers. They are simple animations that provide users with a visual display of their actions. You will see these often in mobile applications, but they are also starting to become more popular in every day website design.
Emphasis on Landing Page
With our attention spans at about 8.25 seconds (or less), landing page style websites are becoming more and more popular. Instead of having to click on multiple pages within a site, viewers can scroll through the content (which is often light and surrounded by adequate white space) and read only what they choose. This design trend is easily made responsive, which is a key element in any website being built today.
Choosing the Right Design
In addition to these website design trends, existing trends, such as using bold colors, unique typography, 360 videos, complex animations, and less use of stock photography are still being used with great success. If you’re considering a website redesign, either right now or in the coming year, the above trends may be worth experimenting with. If you’re not sure what type of design is best for your business, SMILE media can help.
SMILE media's Boston website design company has extensive experience in all areas of website design and development, in addition to a variety of other digital marketing services.
Contact us today to learn how we can help your business grow.
