2018 is going to be a competitive year for businesses, and website design plays a key role in determining who stands out as a victor.
As a web design company in India, we focus on new ideas, concepts, and trends surrounding our trade. It is imperative to be modern and to be in touch with contemporary best practices in the industry. When it comes to design, it becomes all the more necessary. Why? Because human beings are highly visual, and visual appeal is one of the most important aspects of successful customer engagement. Design needs to be fresh and different to make an impact, and what was popular yesterday is cliche today. So, here are 10 Ways In Which Web Design Is Going To Change In 2018:
Bye Bye Flash
Adobe has announced that the Flash Player is going to retire after 2020. Open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly now provide many of the capabilities and functionalities that plugins like the Flash once pioneered and have now become a viable alternative for content on the web. One of the major disadvantages of Flash is that it is largely mobile incompatible. In a world that is going mobile, this is a severe handicap. Flash was an interesting component for years allowing motion and animation, but now it is time to bid adieu and Adobe now encourage content creators to move to the open platforms like HTML5.
Scrolling Experience Changes
Parallax scrolling made quite a few waves in 2017 since it offered an interesting alternative way to navigate websites. However, the more orthodox methods have stood the test of time since speed is of the essence and a parallax scrolling experience slows-down loading speeds. A more hybrid approach towards scrolling is the future, where static background images that don’t scroll with the pages would make more appearances on contemporary websites. Making visually appealing scrolling experience is going to be key, but designers need to figure out ways to do it without making websites cluttered and interrupting UX.
Static Is Back
Simplistic and minimalistic design has captured the fancy of the present day web user. Websites that offer fixed or static content may seem like a step backwards, but a static design is extremely lightweight, efficient, and cost-effective. Static designing has come a long way since the early days of the internet, and many businesses would find the cheap yet effective static design as a very lucrative alternative. A cost-conscious project would benefit a lot from investing in a simple HTML based design for their website. If crafted smartly, it could be a real game changer.
Mobile Responsiveness Crucial
Your visitors are viewing your content on their mobile devices increasingly. Dependence on mobile has increased for users across the globe and this trend doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Mobile is actually a great connectivity tool if leveraged properly. This makes mobile responsiveness extremely important for any serious website. Many businesses invest separately in making their websites mobile responsive if they prefer to sticking with their old design, but a complete revamp focussed on developing responsiveness to all devices is an equally preferred solution. Mobile devices offer a host of native features that can improve user experience and a good responsive website needs to be built keeping that in mind.
Differential Typography
The trend of keeping a single unique typography pan website is slowly fading, which has paved the way for differential typography to come up as the future of website designing. Using separate typography can help provide greater visibility to certain web elements, taking user engagement a step further. It is now an industry best practice to use a unique and different style for specific elements to make them stand out on your website.
Fixed Headers
Fixed headers are not new, not by a long shot. The idea of keeping a hanging header that sticks even as visitors scroll down has been here for a long time. However, the use of fixed headers has grown in popularity of late. It is a good idea to use fixed headers on websites that have long pages filled with lots of information. This could save a lot of time and frustration for users who scroll to the bottom of a page and then have to scroll all the way to the top to access the header. The “Back to Top” option was quite popular for some time, but fixed headers are the more visually appealing solution.
Single Page Websites
A single page website is simply one long page full of content which can be navigated with the help of scrolling or links that are linked to header locations within the same page. A single page website is quite interesting since it is a lot easier to host, design, and manage. Besides, a single page website is easy to develop keeping complete mobile responsiveness in mind. Error discovery and quality assurance are similarly a lot easier. Definitely an option worth considering.
Video Content
While video content may seem like a separate element from design to many, it is actually a key asset to website design and could make or break the user experience. Incorporated smartly, video content complements overall theme and design of a website. Incorporated poorly, it can actually hamper user navigation and make a website ugly. Love it or hate it, however, video content is an ever-increasing trend that is here to stay.
Animated Background
Video background may produce performance issues, so use is limited. But javascript animations make the movement a part of the natural background without slowing loading speed, creating a beautiful website design element that engages users through pictures that move. Animated backgrounds are impressive, and they leave a memory imprint about your brand on the visitors. Animated backgrounds are becoming popular on social media content as well, providing catchy hooks to bring users to landing pages.
Asymmetry
What better way to end a post about design trends than to mention the most insightful trend of late, asymmetry. The appeal of the asymmetrical layout is that it is unique, distinctive and sometimes experimental. Although large-scale brands with a lot of content still use traditional grid-based structures, we expect a strong growth in the use of creative layouts across the web, as brands create unique experiences to set themselves apart.
So these were our picks for the top 10 Ways In Which Web Design Is Going To Change In 2018.