As 2018 kicks off with a bang, web designers like KMO are gearing up to take advantage of the latest digital trends, with a few distinct ones emerging over the last few years.
The latest trends that’ll help you stand out from competitors, better engage visitors, and be prepared for the future of Aussie digital marketing. Sounds good right! So let’s get into, starting with our favourites:
1. More Bright Colours
Bright colours have been emerging over the last few years, and look to be sticking around. Big, bold and beautiful with eye-catching colours to help draw people into the design.
Even if you want to be subtle, bright and bold colours are perfect for highlighting buttons or critical information and providing a fresh feel to make your business feel current, not stuck in a bygone era.
2. Focus On White Space
Web and print designers love white space, and plenty of us love minimalism. Clear, simple and effective is a lethal combo when it comes to effective website design, especially on mobile devices.
The key to effective white space is making it seem natural to the user, allowing your corporate or desired colour scheme to be showcased properly.
White space should not take away from your brand. White space must add to your brand.
3. Sticky Footer Elements
Chat boxes and pop-ups can be rather distracting for users, and you’ve undoubtedly been on a website reading when a pop-up rears its ugly head and distracts you. Not ideal.
To counter this in 2018, you’ll start to see ‘tiny banners’ like those at the bottom of mobile apps making their way to desktop and tablet designs as well. This is to cater for the chat boxes and pop-up notifications in a nicer, less intrusive way.
4. Voice Search Functionality
One of the most exciting developments over the next 5-years will be the growth in voice searches in our home and office environments, not just our personal mobiles like Siri or OK Google.
To ensure a website is voice search friendly, it needs to be designed with SEO that incorporates natural language, not just typed searches.
For example, where you typed “best web designers in Brisbane“, with a voice search, you might say “OK Google, who’s the best website design agency in Brissy”.
Spoken language is significantly different to typed, and so is its SEO. Smart businesses now are gearing up for our voice activated future!
5. Subtle Website Animations
Small, simple animations can lift a website and provide information that leads the user through your more active areas of your website, like a product catalogue.
The subtle animation does not mean tacky animated gifs, but more movement within the design itself, from “hover over” buttons to movement as you scroll down a page like parallax designs.
To get the subtle animation right, you need to pick just one “animation type” and stick to it through your entire site so it feels natural. The results can be astounding.
Do You Need To Follow These 2018 Design Trends?
With any trend, it’s necessary to pick with care. What seems impressive and new now can quickly be dated. It’s always best to design with “timeless” in mind.
SEO however like voice search, should be high on every serious business’s to-do list and not overlooked.
We hope you have a great 2018 lined up, and if you would like to chat further about your web design or SEO, please just give the team at KMO a call on 1300 965 232 or contact us.
