We all know that the internet landscape is rapidly changing. It can be hard to keep up with what is hot right now in the world of web. With people’s tastes changing and Google’s algorithm moving rankings regularly it can be exhausting trying to keep up with everything. Here we have a few trends for you to keep your eye on this year.
Online Content Trends
Content is king right now. If you don’t have content you are as good as dead in the online world. Content gives your company a voice and a ‘personality’ among your clients and customers. It is a great way to let people know who you are and that you are engaged in your industry.
Now, can you just write a blog post about the new shoes you bought or a video about how your week was? You can, but it absolutely is not enough. Here are your current content marketing trends for this year.
Longer Blog Posts
If you are not already blogging start now. Google crawlers have been favoring longer, well researched, quality blog posts lately. Not only will this help your Google rankings, but it will also show potential clients and customers that you are well-versed in your industry.
Video and Live Streaming
We plan to see more and more video content rise to the top this year. Some people want more than just reading words on a page, they might be a visual learner or want to listen to some commentary on a certain topic while they do the dishes. Whatever the case may videos are going to be pretty big in 2018.
Human to Human Writing
We wrote recently about how to use an authentic voice when writing content. This is a huge content trend for 2018 because Google is getting smarter. The Google robots are able to distinguish between which posts have stuffed keywords and are just repeating the same sales jargon over and over and posts that have original, relevant content. Optimize your writing for living breathing people.
More Graphics in Blog Posts
Graphics add visual interest to any post and lately quality infographics, animated images, and bright, flat original illustrations are huge. People who don’t have time to read your whole post should be able to scroll through quickly and get the gist of what the post is about through infographics, sub-headlines, and illustrations.
Web Design Trends for 2018
Variable Typography
This is a trend that very few would have predicted being a thing 10 years ago because it may have seemed too busy, but with superior graphics tools, higher color saturation and increased creativity in the booming graphic design world variable typography is definitely going to be popular in 2018. Varying font size and type along with bold and italic stylings will be an easy way to up your web design game this year.
Bright Bold Minimalist Imagery
The words bright, bold and minimalist never really seemed to compliment each other in the past, but this combo is perfect for 2018. We are moving out of the simple neutral website palette and pumping up graphics. Don’t be afraid of color this year when it comes to graphic styling, trust us it will be huge. Now don’t clutter your graphics choices with too many components. Keep lines clean and simple, keep illustrations and photos to a minimum and take your time to beautifully edit them. Quality over quantity people!
Artificial Intelligence
This is a huge trend this year and to be quite honest… it has some people freaking out. Let us briefly explain what might be the most talked about, most innovative, and most complicated new trend of 2018. Let’s cover some quick points first of all, yes robots are involved, they are not the types of robots you see in apocalyptic movies, but more like mini computers that push you along your journey of the world wide web, making your time on the internet more personal and efficient.
Micro-Interactions
Users love the ability to contribute a variety of reactions to posts and private messages. Like reacts, love reacts, and sad reacts are all ways to show how you feel about the content presented to you without refreshing the page. This convenience helps with conversion rates and keeps your potential lead from jumping off of your page.
Mobile Focused Design
Mobile browsing surpassed desktop browsing in 2017, so that means this year we have to create mobile friendly pages and dynamic applications to keep up with this change of landscape. Keep in mind as you design your site that most people will see it on their phone by keeping your pages neat, orderly, and attractive you will definitely see improvements in web traffic.
Chatbots
This kind of ties in with AI but we decided to give chatbots their own section. In 2018 we are going to see bots start to replace some native apps. The flow of app to site or vise versa will start to fade away, the chatbot will simply bring all of the info to you based on your personal needs. In 2018, it’s estimated that 30% of interactions with tech will be in the form of a conversation. Mobile voice activated assistants saw a significant increased use in 2017 and we expect that trend to keep skyrocketing into 2018.
Let us know which of these hot new trends your company will be implementing this year!
