Websites are not static. They are dynamic, ever present and live. They must always be considered in the current cultural climate. This way, as a business provider or a content generator, you will develop a much more refined and better strategy for appealing to your clients, customers or visitors.
2018 is very much making its presence felt already, meaning that we need to develop methods of preparing for the new year, and the trends that are sure to take place. It’s always best to be on the cutting edge of your website design. This will help the image of your business presence to a very pronounced degree.
Using insight into upcoming trends, this following article should help you adapt for and maintain a strong web presence in the coming year. No matter the challenges which surface in your day to day business operations, you will stay secure in the knowledge that your website is reliable, updated, and continually being improved at the source.
VR
VR headsets are becoming more and more popular. While we haven’t made the full transition to them being universally utilized, you can be sure that this aim is set to become a closer possibility in the next year. Even a cheap pair of VR goggles with Android compatibility now costs less than $50. For this reason, developing VR-friendly website design allows for you to present the best of your experience for all, even those looking to experience the web in a very novel way.
Mobile
Most people interact with the internet through a smartphone device these days. With the prevalence of 4g networking, and the commonly accessible public wifi around the country, mobile compatibility for your website is more of a need, rather than a want. A mobile user should never be limited to minimal utility, despite the design challenges this might bring you. For the most part, businesses thrive when their website is accessible to all, so why should your business be any different?
Take your web development team to task, continually having them revise their smartphone strategies. Your website should look fantastic in portrait and landscape modes, should be completely touch screen interactive, and light on resources for the limited (but improving) processing power featured in these devices.
This might mean creating a new site, or it might mean optimizing your old. If it means a full, less resource intensive redesign, the rewards far outweigh the investment. This could be a great time to update the simplified aesthetic you might find superior in current design trends.
Social Media Compatibility
This is something which has already taken hold to a large extent, but it’s job is surely not over. We haven’t seen the last of social media in our websites in the least. While social media integration is a core component of most websites, this is the most obvious and least impressive compatibility you can utilize. Let’s take Facebook as an example. Facebook are currently offering a wide array of sponsored post-marketing tools, as well as complete support solutions for businesses unable to fully fund or staff their support network.
Live chat and email functionalities, post responses and general verification procedures will all be conducted through social media from now on. You might have seen the ‘login with Facebook, Twitter or Gmail’ offerings in many website account creation procedures as of late. This is looking to be the norm more inclusively than not, meaning that users will often keep their social media profile as the de facto method for longing in and managing all of their accounts.
It’s very likely that social media giants such as Facebook will be looking to allow for a uniform suit for businesses to manage customer accounts from. Through a form of dashboard on the social media user interface of the standard user, they will be able to give credit card information, address and details, as well as even order straight from your website as opposed to your business store.
While this won’t render your business obsolete as not all use Facebook or will be inclined to use this system, it’s looking more and more like this is a real and daily possibility.
Typography
We’ve promoted the positive benefits of keeping a clean and uniform design regarding your website, but one thing we haven’t truly explored is creative expression. Creative expression seems to be going the way of the dinosaurs on many websites, outside of the standard graphic design and logo application.
Thanks to the uniform and minimal UI needed for a website to load quickly and work well on multiple platforms, many design flourishes are being restricted. One big trend set to occur in 2018 is typography, and the expressive ability that enables a website to hold. Of course, fonts with too much flair will always be difficult to read, but a high def font set with a little personality can improve how your site looks, reads and feels, setting itself apart from the other websites near your industry.
IoT
The internet of things is something which has slowly begun to take over the modern ‘smart market.’ This term is a fairly clunky one, but it describes the idea adequately enough to make sense. Let’s take smart homes into consideration. Smart security services will often keep cameras, smart locks, smart detection systems and smart contacts for those in the neighborhood or the police department. To centralize this and to keep this software updated, your main website or a derivative of it must be designed to form well with these products. It must be uniform across controlling hubs, and account management areas. It must be intuitive to use, especially when people are using more and more services such as this.
You might not feel that your website will be included in the internet of things, but it could very well be. Smart fridges now offer the potential for main and specialist groceries to be ordered from the terminal to use a more pressing and daily example. Examples like this could mean that your business is the next website which could really stand to profit from the internet of things, but only if you’re wise enough to plan for it and assess how your website could come into play here.
AI
AI is also becoming an ever-present reality in our technological understanding. We see AI programs across platforms now, from Siri on iPhone to Cortana in Windows 10. These are chatbots you are able to have surface conversations with, and convince to narrate and organize a large percentage of your daily responsibilities.
How can this change things for your website? Well, for the most part compatibility will be a large factor. Instead of saying ‘Siri, please search for local coffee shops,’ a user in the next year will most likely change that to ‘Siri, please pre-book an espresso at Tim’s Coffee Shop.’ Adapting the utility of your website to act compatibly and reliably with these programs will take a good amount of foresight and following the development of more and more complex AI programs.
Also, consider support. Soon the human touch will be rendered away with. Soon almost every customer query will be able to logically proceed down charted AI paths, with only humans entering the process as things really ratchet in complexity, or do deal with the personal touch of a client. This process of automation can feel strange to behold, but you should become familiar with it, because it eases up plenty of both money and time spent attending to your daily support responsibilities.
Security
More and more threats are occurring online, thanks to the ease of access for which new hackers are able to learn computer programs. The ability to weaponize yourself with programming tools is easier than ever, and this means people with negative intentions are likely to become more powerful. Just like microbiologists fight to craft solutions to diseases and other issues, your internet security team will soon be required to fight on the battlefield of cybersecurity often.
With the recent net neutrality vote, it’s looking as if (but is not confirmed) VPN’s will begin to be throttled out of the market, leaving a window for a more complex and secure encryption potential. It’s important to find even more inclusive and complete security solutions, ones which streamline protecting your website. With the amount of mounting security threats, and the competence of those who try to enact them, this is one of the main ways to have a good fighting chance.
In Conclusion
While developing a website that works for you and your firm is the most important, staying on top of cultural and design trends (preferably informing each other,) is crucial. The online marketplace is more competitive than ever, and if you’re left on the periphery, it’s very hard to reinstate your relevance. With the best eye, the best digital team at your back and solid web hosting services, the trends of 2018 should become more of a blessing than a curse.
We wish you the best of luck for the new online year.
