Emerging Web Design Trends 2018.

Simply having a website isn't enough in 2018. Take a look at the web design trends you'll need to stand out this year.

Web design's a fast moving industry. With so many factors at play, from new tech to changes in consumer tastes, there's a lot of moving parts to it.You need to know what you're doing before you dive in if you're going to create something you and your users can get any value out of. In today's article, we'll be looking at some of the biggest web design trends of 2018. With these in your arsenal, you'll be at the top of your web design game.

But why take our word for it? Get in touch with us, today, for more on how you can take your online presence to new heights, this year.

In the meantime, join us, as we look at what's going down in web design trends for 2018!

Mobile-first

In April this year, Android has officially overthrown Windows as the primary web-browsing trend out there. While it is true that tablets and desktop devices still have higher conversion rates, smartphones dominate the Asian market, which is currently becoming one of the greatest trading hubs in the world. Therefore, in order to approach the ever-growing demographic of mobile users, you might want to further invest in making your website mobile-first.

On the other hand, it is a known fact that about 90 percent of the time on their smartphones people spend on apps, rather than on browsers. This is what made some people question whether investing in mobile-optimization is even worth the effort. Still, considering how little effort and investment this idea may yield, as well as how great of an ROI it brings, going with mobile-first design indeed seems like a win-win scenario.

Authentic content

Another thing you need to keep in mind is the fact that the online audience values authenticity above all else. This especially takes prominence when it comes to the issue of images and illustrations. You see, using a generic image to back your content may be fairly successful but it will never have the impact of an image taken especially for that situation. With about 1.3 billion websites out there, it is getting harder and harder to appear unique, so tailoring your content to appear as a single-purposed might just be the tool that can win over your audience.

Hand-crafted design

Earlier on, we addressed the issue regarding the ever-growing websites out there. With the number constantly on the rise, it is getting harder and harder to distinguish yourself in a positive way. Sure, going for a free template might seem like a more frugal choice but how can you quantify losses you will endure due to the fact that your website appears generic? The truth is that when it comes to web design there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. This is also why web design veterans from Bapple focus on hand-crafting high-performance business websites, in order to create a unique impression on your audience.

Homepage videos

According to one conversion-rate statistic, including an introduction video before offering your audience a CTA (call-to-action) button can increase your conversion rate by 144 percent. This is why so many companies nowadays decide to use this tactic on their very homepage. One major drawback of this tactic is a fact that the video needs to be of a high-production value, which makes it quite costly to produce. First of all, you need a great script, an adequate gear and someone with either great editorial skills or at least a naturally gifted orator on your retainer. This is also what makes so many websites outsource this function, which is also quite expensive.
Check out two of our latest clients who use home Page Videos

RhythmHealth Clinic
MasalaMantra

Daring shapes and colours

Finally, even in the era where minimalism and flat design seem as predominant forces, going with daring shapes and colours does have its advantages. The perfect example of this is the trend of brutalism which draws inspiration from the Soviet-era Eastern Europe architecture. Odd and unpredictable geometrical shapes dominate the landscape of brutalist web design, as well as colour combinations that even some of the most experienced web designers wouldn’t even dream of.

The key here is to attract the attention of your website’s visitors at any cost. Surprisingly enough, this design trend which so many professionals deem as ‘ugly’ manages to succeed where all other trends have failed. So, if we are speaking of results only, brutalism is definitely not a force to be reckoned with and not an idea you should outright dismiss.

As you can see, with these few revolutionary ideas at your side, you have all the tools necessary to start making your mark in the digital world. Keep in mind that even though some of these trends may give you great immediate results, there is no guarantee that they will still be valid for several years or even months. The key to survival, therefore, rests on your ability to adapt to the newly changed circumstances in the world of web design. Luckily, succeeding at this daunting task will be more than worth your while.

Typography

Where and how to use your lettering. Just because it's a classic design issue, doesn't mean it's not still incredibly important. The size and shape of typography are as big of a concern in 2018 as they've ever been.Companies the world over are incorporating bold fonts that make a statement into their home and landing pages.The idea is to balance this out with simplistic, clean content. The bold typography serves as an anchor, instead of pelting the user with giant letters, with the smaller font toning it down, nicely.

If you're looking for web design trends to help you stand out in 2018, start with typography.

Micro-interactions

As the user experience becomes more sophisticated, people need simple functions, more than ever. They also want to know, quickly, when something changes On desktops and mobile, we see micro-interactions as web trends becoming increasingly popular.

These are single-use animations, buttons and design elements that affect the way users interact with a website.

Examples of micro-transactions include:

Drag refresh, which allows mobile users to pull down on your site to refresh it easily.

Like and unlike buttons, which give users a short, easy window in which to comment on your posts or features.

Hover animations, which display information about different sections of your site.

Scrolling graphs, which allow users to see whatever piece of information they want to look at right now, without taking up the entire screen.

These micro-interactions help to make your site more intuitive for the user to navigate.

Improved Navigation

As we move into the end of the year, we see web design trends of 2017 starting to drop off the design elements of their past. One field where this is quite obvious in navigation.

Specifically, the hamburger menu. Originally introduced to remove information off of a website's homepage, the hamburger menu has been around for years.

The three-lined menu icon found in the top corners of many mobile websites are a great space saver, but they have one very obvious drawback:

They add to the number of clicks a user needs to get to whatever it is they're looking for.In website design, more clicks are almost always worse. Many websites are starting to shift over to a single bar menu at the top of the screen instead of this classic design element, and have been for some time.

Expect to see fewer hamburgers in 2018, but, also, new takes on the classic design. After all, the hamburger menu was designed to save space, and it does that well. It makes sense that designers would want to keep it around, albeit with some improvements. Navigation doesn't need to be kept in the foreground of a website, either.

It's become popular to use pop-out toolbars and hidden menus for maneuvering around a site. This keeps the site clean, showing off all the hard work you've put into your design while giving the user a full range of controls over what they want to do.

A word of caution on this idea: make sure you keep your tools obvious, even when they're hidden. It doesn't help to tidy up your landing page by moving the buttons out of the way if nobody can find them.

Conversational Interfacing

AI's not exactly a new concept. Everything from operating systems to video games has been aping the idea since before the turn of the millennium. What you need to know about AI web design trends in 2018, though, is that they're slowly becoming more common than they've ever been. It all comes down to communication. People are using websites like Facebook and Slack to communicate via text more and more.

And, with bots becoming more realistic every year, sales automation is set to become fully automated sooner rather than later. What does this change about the design of your website? Not much, practically, but it should influence how you think about what you include in that design.

Conversational bots are a useful tool for setting yourself apart, especially if you use them to address the actual needs of your users. Incorporating machine learning into the way these bots operate is a great way to give yourself a competitive edge, design wise.

360 Videos and VR

2016 was a good year for VR. Hemingway Editor Increased virtual reality development and marketing saw sales of headsets and apps skyrocket. More people began using this tech than ever before, bringing it into the mainstream. With the launch of the refined Hololens in 2017 and improvements in WebVR support, 2018 doesn't show any signs of slowing this trend.

And then there's the question of 360 videos. With big name sites like YouTube leading the way in VR and 360-degree video support, the tech still hasn't reached a lot of the lower-rung websites. Browser-based VR experiences are set to become the next big thing in web design trends, this year. Make sure you're ready for when it does.

Read More

Review: Fulcrum

Fulcrum is a mobile data collection tool that allows users to easily design custom forms and quickly conduct field data collection on Android and iOS. Fulcrum works in connected and disconnected environments.

Official Website

Fulcrum Features

Collect data in forms even when offline

Capture audio, video, photos, barcodes and more inside forms

Use built-in maps or upload your own custom maps to use for geolocation—even indoors

Turn data into PDF reports from mobile app

Use webhooks and API to build your own integrations with apps

iOS and Android apps available

Fulcrum Pricing

$18/month per user Essentials plan for basic features and 10GB storage

$22/month per user Standard plan for extended features and 20GB storage

$25/month per user Professional plan for full features and 30GB storage

Fulcrum Review

Knowing where something happened can often be just as important as knowing when or how it happened. But if you're using paper forms or a standard online form to gather data about your work, odds are you're not keeping track of where you filled out the form. Perhaps you'll enter a job site's address and hope Google Maps understands it next time, or at best you're checking a GPS and writing down coordinates—or marking where inside a building you performed your job.

Fulcrum has better options. As a mobile form app designed for gather data on the go, it can tap into your phone's GPS and record precisely where data was collected automatically. Then, it lets you pinpoint that location on a map, even if you're in a remote area with poor Google Maps coverage—or inside a facility. It includes data from Mapbox, MapQuest, and OpenStreetMap, then you can upload your own .mbtiles map texture files with detailed location or building maps. That lets you precisely tag where you worked no matter where you are. And it all works offline, letting you conduct research in remote places and still gather all the data you need.

You'll need to collect more than just locations, of course. As with most form builders for mobile data collection, Fulcrum lets you take photos, scan QR and barcodes, and capture signatures right from your form, along with standard text data. It even lets you capture and upload videos, and Fulcrum adds geotag info to your videos while they're being captured.

Collecting data is only half of the challenge. Once your field work is done, you'll have to turn your data into documents, plot it on maps, and more. Fulcrum has features to help there, too. You can create your own PDF document templates, and then whenever a form is filled out Fulcrum can use the form data to fill in the PDF template blanks and create a custom invoice, report, work order, or anything else you need right from your mobile device. You'll never have to copy and paste form data into Word again.

Plotting your captured data is easy, too. In Fulcrum's web app, you can visualize your data entries on any of Fulcrum's built-in map services or your custom maps. Or, Fulcrum can sync your form data to CartoDB, Arc2Earth, and more to plot your data, create map visualizations, monitor team activity, and more. Or, you can export data in CSV, Shapefile, KML, GeoJSON and other popular formats to plot data in your own apps.

Fulcrum is a great tool for making mobile data capture forms, one that's especially great at mapping. If you need to gather data remotely and know exactly where it was gathered, Fulcrum's tools can help you never worry you overlooked anything. You'll just have to fill out your forms, and Fulcrum will take care of your data and mapping needs automatically.Fulcrum Review

Knowing where something happened can often be just as important as knowing when or how it happened. But if you're using paper forms or a standard online form to gather data about your work, odds are you're not keeping track of where you filled out the form. Perhaps you'll enter a job site's address and hope Google Maps understands it next time, or at best you're checking a GPS and writing down coordinates—or marking where inside a building you performed your job.

Fulcrum has better options. As a mobile form app designed for gather data on the go, it can tap into your phone's GPS and record precisely where data was collected automatically. Then, it lets you pinpoint that location on a map, even if you're in a remote area with poor Google Maps coverage—or inside a facility. It includes data from Mapbox, MapQuest, and OpenStreetMap, then you can upload your own .mbtiles map texture files with detailed location or building maps. That lets you precisely tag where you worked no matter where you are. And it all works offline, letting you conduct research in remote places and still gather all the data you need.

You'll need to collect more than just locations, of course. As with most form builders for mobile data collection, Fulcrum lets you take photos, scan QR and barcodes, and capture signatures right from your form, along with standard text data. It even lets you capture and upload videos, and Fulcrum adds geotag info to your videos while they're being captured.

Collecting data is only half of the challenge. Once your field work is done, you'll have to turn your data into documents, plot it on maps, and more. Fulcrum has features to help there, too. You can create your own PDF document templates, and then whenever a form is filled out Fulcrum can use the form data to fill in the PDF template blanks and create a custom invoice, report, work order, or anything else you need right from your mobile device. You'll never have to copy and paste form data into Word again.

Plotting your captured data is easy, too. In Fulcrum's web app, you can visualize your data entries on any of Fulcrum's built-in map services or your custom maps. Or, Fulcrum can sync your form data to CartoDB, Arc2Earth, and more to plot your data, create map visualizations, monitor team activity, and more. Or, you can export data in CSV, Shapefile, KML, GeoJSON and other popular formats to plot data in your own apps.

Fulcrum is a great tool for making mobile data capture forms, one that's especially great at mapping. If you need to gather data remotely and know exactly where it was gathered, Fulcrum's tools can help you never worry you overlooked anything. You'll just have to fill out your forms, and Fulcrum will take care of your data and mapping needs automatically.

Read More