New trends: What to expect from web design in 2018?
Nowadays online media are overloaded with various designs and visuals. With more brands, publishers, and people trying to go after the same audience on the same market, it can be a real challenge to be better than your competition and sell your products.
As design and graphic trends are constantly changing, designers have to push themselves so they can be more innovative and creative. That means that everything they do has to leave a „wow effect“ on visitors of their website – not only does the website have to work brilliant, it has to look astonishing.
Here’s what you can change in 2018 in the design of your website to get the most of it:
Typography
Typography is the unavoidable element in building your brand identity. Choosing the right style, font size, color scheme and other can make a huge difference in the looks of your design.
In 2018 typography will be used both as a text and as an image. What we can expect from it is more serif fonts mixed up with sans-serif fonts, large and bold fonts featuring huge headlines, but also lots of creativity. According to that, we will see more creative, cropped and chaotic typography, as well as typography with real-life elements or negative space.
Even if unique and stylish fonts look nice, designers should keep in mind that their font style should be simple enough so visitors can read it easily. For example, creative or chaotic typography can be used for headlines, but if it’s overused in the paragraphs where readability is necessary, visitors won’t be able to get the information they wanted and they will leave your website.
Use of colors and gradients
Along with typography, color has an important role in building your brand’s visual identity. Colors can attract or refuse your visitors, as they are essential for understanding the context and have an impact on how we feel, think and behave.
It can be challenging to choose the right colors, but what could make any designers job easier, is a knowledge that 2018 will be full of vivid and bright colors. Black and white will still be fashionable, but we will see more colors from the wide range of pastel, vibrant or even gradient/transition colors which were neglected in recent years.
When creating your perfect color mix for your website, don’t forget that oversaturating bright and bold colors might not always be a good idea as you will get an opposite effect and slightly „burn“ your eyes. With a decent mix of colors, you will stand out your content among the others and attract more visitors.
Custom artwork and illustrations
With more stock vectors and illustrations available, more business can have special designs, but in 2018 they won’t search for them online, they will want custom artwork and illustrations that suits their needings and desires.
Unique and custom illustrations will add to personalization of the brand and will make it harder to forget. According to that, standardized solutions will be replaced by authentic hand-drawn illustrations, papercut illustrations, and photographs combined with digital drawings.
Animations
It’s time to leave static websites in the past and give a warm welcome to interactive sites. As animations drag more attention and encourage visitors to search and read more content on your website, in 2018 we can expect more of it. We will see more animated logos, backgrounds, and menus, which means there will be more parallax scrolling, mouseover effects and animations of various elements or sections.
Also, we can expect more GIF animations and cinemagraphs which will look more appealing than regular images without video loops on one section of the image.
With more details and playful animations on your website, you can take your design to the next level and make it more interesting. But don’t get too playful with it, as overuse of animations can lead to a site that will take a millions of years to load.
Photography and video
Speaking of animations and return of the cinemagraph, authentic photography and videos will be seen on many websites. Polished stock photos can be helpful in many situations, but as many people used them, they can be a bit of a turn-off for people as they learned they are fake. Instead of furnished photos, try looking for photography that will tell a story, represent an emotion and look natural as in real-life and not on a made up scene.
In 2018 we won’t see videos only on the main pages. As they drag more attention, wake up more interest and give more information in lesser time, we will see videos in multiple areas of the websites which will make sites look more personalized and interactive.
Now that you’ve read what trends can you expect in 2018, can you tell us which of this trends you don’t like and which will you follow? 🙂
Build your social media presence right now!
Do you remember the times when most of the social media were just platforms for fun and connecting with your friends, family, and relatives living in the long distance? A lot has changed since then and social media soon became a vital part of any businesses marketing strategy.
The ability to share numerous kind of information in real-time has transformed the way people think and behave. When most of the people wake up, the first thing they do when they open their eyes, they scroll through their news feed and then continue with their daily routine.
This way social media become the unavoidable channel for promoting various brands, influencers, and other people, trying to build and/or sustain their public persona and get more results from what they are doing – sell more products, get more publicity and become recognizible. Likes, comments, clicks, and shares become crucial for sustaining on the market and getting the best results and creating visibility.
People who engaged social media in their marketing strategy have seen great results with their campaigns, so we decided to bring you some of the ways to improve your business through social media.
Don’t let your competition steal your customers
Everybody is on social media. Even dog and cat owners opened their Instagram accounts for their pets. So don’t think social media is something that you don’t need. If you want to sustain on the market, you should do it too, because your competition has already opened their accounts months ago.
If your competition is still not involved on social media, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to be. The field is open, so get started as soon as you can.
Increase your brand awareness
If you want to be recognized, it’s an imperative to build your offline and online presence using various platforms. TV and radio can be good for some parts of your marketing strategy, but with social media networks, you will get more opportunity to increase your visibility, access new and existing customers and become recognizable.
More and more people tend to have an account on some of the social media platforms, some of them will be familiar with your brand, and some are (still) not. Creating a strong persona on your social media could attract new customers after stumbling upon some of your content in their news feed and some customers could get more interested in your brand after they’ve seen how you communicate with your customers.
Build and strengthen relationships
Social media is a communication channel and if you want to get the best results, you will have to make your audiences satisfied. Every interaction with your customers is a personal experience – an opportunity to strengthen your relationship and demonstrate that you care about what your customers think and say about your products and business.
Besides that, it is easier to communicate with your customers through social media as they will get information about your products no matter where they are. They don’t have to visit your shop, send you an e-mail or call you to get information about something, they will see it on their news feed and they can immediately give you feedback about it. For example, if they are unsatisfied with your products, you can publicly apologize to them and offer them some solution, and if they appreciate you, you can thank them and offer them to try something new from your assortment. This way you will have things under control and know which parts of your businesses you have to change or improve.
Opportunity to target your audience
You are well known in your city, you have permanent buyers and your business is going well. But did you know that with advertising on social media you could get more (and sell more)?
First thing you will have to do is to get to know your audience. Find out what their needs and desires are. With detailed targeting, you can choose which people you want to reach by their interests, age, gender, location and many more. This way you have more control over things you want to promote.
Also, find out which things work the best for your business depending on the products you sell. Don’t be scared to try something new and don’t forget to optimize your campaigns to get the best results. Remember – if it helps you to sell more products, to find a new audience or connect with the existing one, it means that you’re doing things right.
Drive more traffic
Everybody wants to see their money coming up after they invested so much in their businesses. On social media, you could build awareness of your products and introduce people with some of the products that don’t sell that well. For example, you could give discounts on various products that could wake more interest in people, build traffic and lead to more conversions.
Get more people to your website
If you have a website and/or a webshop, then you can use social media as a tool that will help you lead more customers to your site. You can direct your customers to your website by using links to your blog posts and other parts of your website you want to promote or encourage them to visit your webshop by using call-to-action buttons as Shop now.
This way you will lead more people to your website and they will, hopefully, explore, read and engage with your business and your offerings.
Don’t wait too long to start your social media channels because the longer you wait, the more customers you will lose. If you’re interested in building your online presence through social media, but don’t know where to start, feel free to contact us. We will be glad to help you with it.
5 Tips for Building Your Online Presence
Regardless of whether you have been doing business for some time or you are just starting with it, you need to build your online presence to sustain the market. With the strong competition, the spoken word u reccomendations of your customers to potential clients.
Remember that you don’t have to be everywhere online, but it’s good to be somewhere if you want to expand your business. That’s why we bring you 5 tips for building your online presence which could help you to become more visible and get more clients.
1. Create a topnotch website
A website is your first touch with your potential customers so it has to be brilliant. When people search for information they want it now, they don’t want to wait for the page to load too long or search for information like they are searching for gold in the mine.
Your website needs to have clear and concise information about your business, it needs to load fast and be optimized for all sorts of devices. As people tend to surf more from their mobile phones, make sure your website looks good on every device, not just desktop.
Also, don’t forget about correct grammar and spelling as it can be a huge turn off for most of the people.
2. Content can make a difference
Sometimes it’s really hard to be innovative but it’s even worse if you copy the content of your competition. You wouldn’t feel good if someone stole your idea, so don’t do it either. You can search for inspiration all over the Internet, but make sure your content differs. With interesting and creative content, you could get more visits to your website, blog or social media.
3. Think visual
Visual communication can have a big impact on your online presence. With high-quality pictures and visuals, you can roll-up a story about your brand and tell more about what are you selling or offering. Using visual content can help your audience to remember the information you are sending more effectively.
Make sure everything you post online matches your brand. Don’t change your brand colors and visual elements too often. You need to be consistent so people can easily recognize you. Remember Starbucks? When you see a white cup with a green logo on it, you directly know it’s them. Through years they built a strong and recognizable brand by using consistent colors and visual elements in their communication. Let that be your guideline.
4. Money makes the world go round
Some people say that the best things in life aren’t free. We can’t agree with that a 100%, but if you want to be the best in your business, you need to follow the trends and constantly invest in your business.
In some point of your business cycle, you will have to invest some money in advertising on various platforms depending on your type of business. First of all, you need to set your goals and budgets straight, specify your target group and decide what you want to represent and on what platform.
When you specify what you want to get from each campaign and platform, with given results you will see where you could expand your business and get more tangible results. For example, if you want to get more visibility of your brand, you can buy targeted keywords on Google or make brand awareness campaigns on Facebook which will bring you more likes on your page. With more likes, you get more followers (potential clients) who are up to date with your latest information about your business or products which can result in more income to your business.
5. Be patient and wait
Unfortunately, there are no magic wands so you can’t make your business grow in just one day. You need to work on your online presence continuously and keep track of your results. Over time you will find which things are most suitable for you and discover on which campaigns you shouldn’t waste your time or money on.
With good content and design, but also a strong will and consistency, you will make something positive for your online presence – we assure you of that. You just need to be patient without setting unrealistic expectations.
If you need help with building your online presence, feel free to contact us. Our team is always willing to help and will get you the best results.
