Web Design Wonders for 2018

Websites are the digital face of a business. Any digital marketing efforts are pointless without a strong website to back them up. Businesses can have a fantastic digital marketing campaign, a great email newsletter or a clever social media ad. All these processes lead back to the website, it is important to make sure the website not only stands out, but makes it easy for potential customers to get the information they need.

“39% of people will stop engaging with a website if images won’t load” (Adobe)

“38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content/layout is unattractive” (Adobe)

Website design, like anything digital at the moment, is constantly evolving. Here are few of the top web design trends to look out for in 2018.

 

Web Animation

Animation is fun and very user friendly, it can be as big as a full screen moving image, or a simple pop up or hover effect. The key to integrating animation into web design is to keep it small. Simple animations are engaging and interesting, if you add too much and bring in large scale animations you may over complicate things and detract from the actual objective, whether that be lead generation or brand awareness.

Animation can be used to guide users through a process, and new web design tools and techniques mean that they can be added to a website without making the pages slow to load.

Good animation will make the user experience better, by making the site easier to use or even by making something fun or memorable.

 

Colour Psychology

Designing a website around the colours of the brand isn’t necessarily the best decision. For years psychologists have been associating colours with emotions and attitudes. Certain colours appeal to consumers, others don’t. Research has shown that website colours will affect conversions.

Blue is one of the most used colours for websites, lots of people like the colour blue and colour psychology shows that blue is a colour of trust, peace, order and loyalty. It’s no coincidence that the worlds biggest social media network sites are blue; Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Many banks have blue websites; Barclays, Cooperative, RBS and Paypal. The NHS home page is also themed blue.

Businesses may not be in a position to rebrand and completely change their colour pallets, but you can use colour in clever ways when considering website design.

 

Evolution of AI

Digital interaction is becoming more and more commonplace. The introduction of voice assistants with Siri and Alexa has invited AI into people’s homes. A chatbot is a computer programme which can conduct a conversation. They are used in many situations such as customer service or gathering information.

You can use chatbots to communicate with website visitors, according to a survey by Ubisend people prefer messaging to email or phonecalls. You can even personalise your bot, giving it a name and a photo!

Chatbots can act as the first point of contact, even qualifying the lead before passing them through to an actual person. Chatbots can answer simple questions that consumers may have. Chatbots can also act as data gathers.

It is becoming more and more expected that websites will have some kind of chatbot type interface where consumers can interact and get the information they need.

 

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

There are an estimated 4.77 billion mobile phone users in the world. 80% of internet users own a smartphone. (Smart Insights) 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. (socPub)

We have been saying for several years that mobile is the way forward. In 2016 mobile usage overtook desktop computer usage for the first time every, experts predict this will only increase. Mobile functionality for any website is now more important than ever. It’s no good having an amazing website if it doesn’t translate to mobile devices.

 

Kinetic email marketing

Email marketing has proven over time that it could compete with and in fact beat direct mail. Email marketing relates to all types of consumers across different demographics, backgrounds and industries. Kinetic email takes it a step further and makes emails interactive. DIY giants B&Q sent a kinetic email to its customers encouraging them to “tap to interact” using buttons to display content quickly. They reported an 18% increase in open rates and a huge click through rate to the main website. The email was designed to display different content depending on the customer persona, which is something we have been developing with the introduction of Marketing Automation. Kinetic emails are the next step.

 

For all your Digital Marketing and Website Design requirements, get in touch with eppiq today.