Vivid Image staff predictions for web design and marketing this next year.
Web Design & Style
- The use of more realistic images, candid shots, and images that capture real people in real life situations are going to be used much more than stock photography. The trend will be to bring the human story back into marketing and authenticity from companies.
- Asymmetrical designs and the inclusion of some fun illustrations and geometric shapes. There will be more use of organic shapes making for imperfect and asymmetrical designs, adding to the depth of designs.
- With the use of sliders decreasing, fun simple animations and micro-interactions (think hovers and clicking on buttons) are becoming more popular. They add some movement to a website without being over the top.
- Whether as a background or as a way to explain, video is still popular. People like the visual aspect, and it makes it better if they are able to be viewed without sound.
- We’ll see an increase in making websites as easy and accessible for all people, while still keeping a human story to give it a personal touch.
- Use of simpler, more accessible layouts for web design. Minimal color and distractions. Easy to navigate pages with straight to the point content.
- Subtle things like use of videos, chatbots, and micro-animations (such as hover/scroll animations, chimes, etc) will be used to make the web pages feel a little more advanced without a lot of distractions.
- This past year we started seeing more use of gradients in backgrounds, and we will be seeing more in 2019. Gradients & duotones will be used for backgrounds as well as on main focal objects.
- Sans serif & hand lettering will continue to be widely used, but we will start seeing serif more often again, especially on screen. Sans serif is still best for longer copy, but we will see more serif for titles, short phrases, etc.
Usability
- Mobile design is going to be even more important than ever before, with extra focus on how people hold their phones and the use of thumb-friendly navigation.
- The Gutenberg WordPress Editor was introduced in late 2018, so more people will start seeing and using this.
- Web accessibility is becoming more commonly used, and we’ll see more people being proactive with addressing ADA compliance. We’ll see it taken into consideration when designing/developing online and off. Web accessibility is going to help everyone’s overall experience with the site.
Google & Online Marketing
- User intent will continue to play a large role in what content or websites get ranked well. Now more than ever, you need to make sure your content is answering questions, providing rich information (not only in written, but video and other formats), and do a better job of anticipating what questions someone will have next to keep the user engaged.
- Audience targeting will continue to get even better. The machine learning features within Google especially are getting better every day, and we’ll see new features introduced for 2019.
- Google+ officially going away April 2019. It has been coming for a while as Google has been optimizing and spending their efforts making Google My Business more robust.
- More additions, changes, features will be added to Google My Business. We expect to see this continued changes each month over the coming year. More now than ever it is important to make sure your business has your Google listing claimed and optimized to get your best search results.
Targeting & Market Appeal
- Brand personas and values will continue to be key in attracting and retaining loyal customers. People like to support brands that match to their individual beliefs and values, or those that feel more “human”. But be careful when picking sides of very polarizing issues–it helps to know in advance which side of issues your target market is on or you risk alienating or turning off potential customers.
- Retargeting and marketing personalization is going to continue to get more granular. As time goes on and people continue to browse, share, and click, the data and personalization that marketers can use to target their customers gets even more in-depth.
- In light of our political, environmental, and societal landscape, we are going to see consumers going the distance to learn more about the companies and products they purchase, especially products/services that come with higher price tags. Opportunities will present themselves for companies who have a point of difference such as, “US Made”, “Non-GMO”, “Environmentally Conscious”, “Woman-owned”, etc.
Social Media and Video
- The use of video in social media ads will become even more important in order to be effective. To generate attention, to sell your “story” in a short amount of time, and to humanize your brand, a short video will be more effective than catchy headlines alone.
- Facebook has been hinting at big changes for a long time now, but only made smaller changes. We could see a big shake-up in 2019.
- More businesses will take advantage of Instagram, especially those looking to reach a younger generation.
- Social media and automation tools will help us to be more efficient, more creative, better listeners, and more personable with responses.
- Social media influencers and micro influencers will be more of a trend in 2019. Influencers create content for the brands they are partnering with and are able to get that message out to their unique group of followers. It’s kind of neat to see individual people being their own marketing platform in a sense, but they know how to do it in an authentic and engaging way that keeps people coming back.
Best Practices and Transparency
- Other parts of the world, including the United States putting more focus on GDPR-type considerations and best practices to protect people.
- We’ll likely see changes in the kinds of information we can access as marketers within Social Media channels and how we can use it.
- There will be new hoops to jump through to prove you are a human running ad accounts.
- Consumer consciousness will continue to increase.
If you’re ready to try something different, embrace change, and explore possibilities contact us today!
