2018 Website Trends

Website Trends

2018 is here and well underway. With a new year, comes new trends. Chris Yoko strives to keep you ahead of this ever-changing world of marketing. And, he shares website trends we'll be seeing this year through a series of videos. Though some trends (like clothing) change pretty often, these trends are more "best practice" with new technology advancements. Adopting these trends early on will help you stay ahead of the curve and set you apart from others. Also, if you haven't set your website goals for the year yet, you can learn more about doing that here.

Trend: Augmented Reality

You've seen it in your favorite apps. We've all seen it in Pokemon Go and, of course, the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter game that's supposed to be coming out.

While augmented reality has been more and more common in apps, it's something that's going to begin to influence websites. It's predicted to start with more contextual elements, such as interaction with ads. There might be outdoor media buys where by doing something more efficient than scanning a QR code, people will be able to pull up their website and actually match things up in the background with the ad. This will allow users to receive more information about either the place they're at, or the services available. Their location, or the specifics of what's in the background will make this information readily available.

Trend: Video

One of the trends that has been continuing to evolve and catch on is video in websites. It will only continue to grow as 2018 continues. One of the biggest drivers of video content is that it's becoming easier and easier to create.

It's certainly engaging and more ubiquitous in terms of being able to digest that content across multiple devices. One of the bigger drivers that's expected to be a breakthrough in either 2018 or 2019 is the ability to better index video content for search engines. Right now the most people can do is usually transcribe that content and then try to parse that into a search engine. It's expected that in the next couple of years, Google and other search engines are essentially going to be able to search through video just like they search through text. At which point, having a large bank of video content attached to your web presence will be a game changer. It will give you leverage and an advantage over a marketplace that is suddenly going to begin to sprint to try to catch up.

Trend: Voice Interaction

Another trend that's expected to continue to grow in 2018 is voice interaction with a website. We've already seen this begin in 2017 with the rise of Amazon's Alexa and Echo. We're also seeing more of it with Google Assistant. Including, Siri, Cortana, and all of the other voice assistants that are continuing to play in.

Currently they tend to max out at providing search results for you. "Siri, how old is X?" Whatever the case might be, and it says, "I found these listings on the web".

Starting in 2018, it's predicted that we're going to begin to prepare websites in such a way that the voice interaction is going to be all you need to get from the website. It will literally behave more like a screen reader, and this is where a lot of blurring between forward-looking trends and things that had been considered more backwards-looking like accessibility and compliance guidelines, really come together to create a more user-friendly experience, no matter how they're interacting with the website.

Trend: Voice Pt. 2

How is voice going to interact with content? For those of you who have Amazon Alexa, or Cortana, Siri, etc., you've noticed it's not exactly natural. It's not like speaking to another person. You have to say very specific things in very specific ways to get anything close to the result that you want.

As web designers, and especially content authors, we need to be mindful of the fact that people are going to be speaking their queries differently than they type them into Google or their search bar. If we want to be able to show up and rank whenever people are searching or speaking these search terms, we need to make sure that we're adapting our content accordingly. That's going to be a major shift that we see in 2018. Content will shift from a written interface and simply optimizing for typed-in searches, and begin to be optimize for spoken searches as well.

Trend: Responsive Design

One of the fundamental changes we've seen in the web over the last couple of years has been the rise of responsive design. Meaning, design that literally changes based on the size of the container of the device you're viewing the website on.

Whether you're viewing on a big screen or small smartphone, the website begins to adapt and respond to that. And, it aligns all the content accordingly. One of the things that we've only seen touch the surface is responsive content. You've experienced this if you've seen a banner for a mobile app show up on the screen of the mobile version. Whereas, if you're on the desktop, you won't see that banner.

This trend is going to continue to evolve and become more ubiquitous to content in general. For example, if somebody's looking at something on a desktop, we might provide a lot more in-depth content. Whereas, if somebody's looking at it on a mobile device, we may begin to boil things down to a couple of bullet points. Or, lead into the article, and then cap that with a call to action at the beginning. This would allow people to scan through content quickly and move forward in the process. They'll be able to do this even if they are in high-contrast, high-conflict situations or scenarios. Or, if they're in areas where there are lots of distractions competing for their attention other than your website.

Trend: Artificial Intelligence

It's very hyped up - everyone is talking about it everywhere - and it's definitely going to come to bear in websites. One of the frontrunners for artificial intelligence is, of course, chat.

Don't you love whenever you get to call into a business, and you get to talk to the automated machine, and hit prompts over and over again? Now, your favorite form of interaction with a company is going to come to your website.

In the form of chatboxes, a lot of organizations are looking at how they can use artificial intelligence to basically have the conversation with their customers. In some cases it may be a very useful tool to help solve problems or be an easier way to go through. For example, a frequently asked questions lists can get people answers. But, on the other side of things, it may be a very difficult hurdle to overcome for those people that want to begin to talk to an actual person. For both better and worse, I think that's going to be a trend that we continue see evolve in 2018.

Trend: Artificial Intelligence Algorithms

Let's look more at artificial intelligence. We previously talked about voice and chat, and now we're going to talk about the content itself. In terms of the web and the evolution of the web, it's become much more focused on you as an individual.

Users get to log into news sources that show a dashboard with the news that is most pertinent to you. Obviously, your social feeds are catered and customized exactly for you. And, websites in general are going to begin to do more of this.

In order to understand what kind of content is going to be most appropriate to share with each and every single person, people are going to begin to rely more and more on machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms. This will allow a more personal experience serving up the most engaging and appropriate content for each user. This is one of those things that we're going to begin to see really come into the limelight throughout 2018. And, it will continue to advance in 2019 and the years that follow.

Trend: Animation

Another trend that's going to continue to grow in 2018 as far as web design is concerned, is animation. The web has always been heralded as a form of interactive media, but for far too long that interaction has basically consisted of pointing and clicking.

As animation becomes easier and easier to implement in websites, as well as internet speeds becoming faster and faster, the time will come where true interaction with your website will also be easier.

You'll begin to see things that maybe you've only seen in the New York Times or Medium (as far as interactive infographics) become more commonplace with the standard small business websites you may interact with on a day-to-day basis.

Trend: Flat Design & Throwback Color Scheme

Another trend - and this one's a bit of a gamble - but something we'll likely begin to see more of in 2018 is the combination of flat design remaining popular, but being tied to older, more throwback color schemes. We've already seen a couple players begin to make moves like this with the new and updated color palettes from Subway.

Dropbox has also recently rebranded, and the theme is much older school, very flat colors. I think we're going to see that continue. We've begun to see some indication that that's catching on, especially with larger organizations that tend to help drive design trends. Some of Uber's new branding materials certainly go in that direction as well, and I think we're going to see that continue to grow.

Trend: Paywalls

This trend is not necessarily a design trend, but more of a business response in the world of web. It's predicted that we're going to see more paywalls in 2018 than we ever have before.

The reason being, more information inherently has content, and over the course of the last year, we've seen a number of publishers struggle to figure out how to monetize their content. 90% of the digital ad growth has come from just two companies - Google and Facebook. And, they are curating this information into search results and social feeds.

As these publishers realize that they don't necessarily want their content to be free, it's expected that we're going to see more people putting up paywalls. In the beginning of the year, it's going to happen more and more amongst the larger organizations. Those will include journalists and publishers. Then, the trend will trickle down to more independents and companies that may not want to compete at an SEO level with companies that still have a PPC campaign budget. They may choose to either keep their content more private by providing it to members or their exclusive group, or they will paywall it.

While overall, it may not be something general users will appreciate, it does need to happen. Especially as budgets become tighter and tighter and organizations do what they need to do to survive.

Trend: API (Application Programming Interface) Web Development

This is more of a web development trend, but we felt it was still important to touch on. This is something that used to stand more for software platforms.

You'd hear about, "we're going to tie into their API and we're going to use x,y, and z." As more organizations use their website as the central hub of their web presence, more and more are going to require the build out and execution of an API - Being able to use your hub and honing it while integrating and pushing information to different third party systems, be it your video host, your AMS, your marketing automation system, or your CRM.

There's a slew of organizations and platforms that need to integrate with your website and if you're truly going to own that ecosystem and be the one to drive it, I think we're going to see more and more organizations creating and sustaining their own APIs to act as the hub rather than relying on third parties.

Trend: User Shaming

User shaming started in 2016 and became very popular throughout 2017. If you're not familiar with the term, it's those pesky pop-ups that would say "download my ebook," and then the only option if you don't want to download it is to click something that...

says the equivalent of, "No, thank you, I'm dumb and I don't want a free offer," or something along those lines.

There has been a meteoric rise in the number of sites that have been using this, and it's because for a small time it was effective when it was original concept and it stood out from the crowd. Now, it has just become a brow-beating new version of a pop-up that people are using. Hopefully this plateaus in 2018, and we see more users being treated more like peers.

Trend: Modal Windows

We've seen an increasing proliferation of modal windows across websites through the last couple of years, and especially whenever they serve as essentially the replacement for pop-ups - something you could do in-frame that was equally abrasive and annoying, but not as easy to block without outside pop-up blockers.

The modal window has most likely seen its time. They do have a certain level of efficacy when use appropriately, but a level of overkill has been reached, especially when it comes to mobile. Very few people take the modal mobile experience to heart, and you've likely seen this in use if you've ever pulled up a website and then suddenly a modal window has popped up, and now you can't even scroll up or down to get to the exit button because they've hidden it, and it's too big to actually see the whole thing in the frame on your phone.

This behavior will fade away as more and more users are moving towards mobile and they want to have a very clean, elegant experience. People are much more likely to "pogo stick" out of a website if they see a modal window that they can't close the pop up on. It's a lot easier to hit the back button that it is to try to scroll up and navigate your way to that 'x' or closeout, and there are a lot of other sources for information. So, if you're not treating your users with respect, you just may lose them.

Have any questions or want to know how you can apply these trends to your own web presence?

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