2018 website trends to watch out for

It’s the beginning of the year so that means that we get to look forward at what’s likely to be hot this year when it comes to websites.

Our very own website designers and developers were the perfect people to ask in the industry so we reached out to them to get their predictions for the year ahead. If these predictions are true, 2018 will be an exciting year indeed.

Mobile-responsive design

This is a trend that really isn’t going anywhere. We can’t stress enough how important it is to ensure that your website is mobile friendly. According to Statista 50.3% of all web pages served in 2017 were on a mobile device; that’s a huge increase on the years previous to this. Your site must be responsive in 2018 and fully functional otherwise we fear you’ll be left behind.

SSL certificates

2018 for sure will be the year of encryption. Web browsers are now starting to require an SSL certificate as standard and we’d be surprised if you could make it out of 2018 with your website marked as “Not Secure” if you haven’t installed one. This doesn’t depend on the size of your business or website, this applies to everyone so don’t be surprised if you lose traffic to your site if it is being marked as “Not Secure”.

Page speed

Having adequate page speed for your websites is an increasingly crucial factor of both user experience (UX) and search engine optimization (SEO). This will surely be a hot trend throughout 2018 as some pretty major players have dropped hints. Google have hinted that site load speed is an influencing factor in their algorithm and they may look to penalise sites that don’t get up to scratch with this. Facebook have also recently stated that they’ll “soon take into account the estimated load time of a webpage that someone clicks to from any link in News Feed on the mobile app. Factors such as the person’s current network connection and the general speed of the corresponding webpage will be considered. If signals indicate the webpage will load quickly, the link to that webpage might appear higher in your feed.” Ultimately meaning that Facebook may favour Instant Articles in the near future.

Gradients

The use of gradients was popular a couple of years ago but recent years saw their demise as they didn’t look as ‘modern’ as the sharp imagery that came into fashion. That could all change now, as sharp gradients appear to be gaining some real traction. These are much more visually appealing and work extremely well with the bold colour schemes that are really hot right now.

Storytelling through video

Throughout 2017 the implementation of video across websites and social media exploded and our web team believes this trend is going to get hotter during 2018. This is a superb way to deliver content and is becoming more accessible and affordable to do for companies. Expect to see video backgrounds and embedded videos across many websites this year.