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Top 5 Trends for Website Design 2018

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Video Transcript:

Top 5 trends for Website Design 2018

 Elizabeth Varian:  Hey everybody, Elizabeth Varian here. Can you believe it’s been an entire year? We’re already at the end of 2017, 2018 is right around the corner. A lot of you have put a fire under my booty to get this video done. I got to tell you, I appreciate all the feedback. It doesn’t matter if it’s fully positive or not so much, I welcome it.

We’re talking about a very subjective topic. Design, that’s the beauty of it is it can go any one way or the other, as long as it’s good for your target audience, good for your marketing and good, if you’re a designer, for your clientele.

I always tell people, before you hire a company, look at their portfolio. See if they’re designs match what you’re looking for, because design is very subjective. Just look at the art world and any museum, right?

We’re going to jump in, and I’m going to tell you, there’s actually, I believe we came up with four different trends to really watch out for. A couple of them are just increased variations to 2017 trends. If you look around on the Internet, they’re all over the board on what they think are the trends. What I’ve done is I’ve consolidated what everyone seems to be agreeing on.

I’ve added a couple extra items. One is marketing focused, and then the other one, everyone keeps starting to talk about it. I personally think they’re talking about it because it’s fun to talk about. Then we’ve got another year or so before, as designers, that we need to be gearing websites that way. We’ll get on that last though, that’s not that highly important.

I’m going to keep my notes off over here, that’s why I keep looking off. Plus, I’m going to bring up the Chrome browser, so you can see the trends, like I did last year. The very first one absolutely makes sense to me.

Actually, the first two make total sense to me for SEO purposes. We know that Google had shifted, so say mobile first. They had AMP pages, that was the focus, and now it’s no longer an option. Your website has to be responsive, but in addition to that, it has to download quickly for mobile apps, or mobile phone usage.

The first two trends we’re going to talk about can both be done in CSS, in your Cascade Style Sheets. If you’re a business owner, what it means is you can use these two trends and it’s not going to slow your site down if you’re focused on search engine optimization.

Just kind of a side note, I am going to create a video next week for web marketing trends for 2018, because I keep finding myself telling my clients the same thing over and over again, and I really think everybody needs to get onboard with some marketing that we should be all doing.

What is the first trend? The first trend is typography. If you’ll excuse me just one moment. By typography I mean, of course, fonts. Last year, we said for 2017, and we saw it consistently all year long, is that the larger fonts were now the trend, and you were going to go away from …

Well, we don’t use point fonts anymore, we’re all in pixels. Your 10 and 12 pixel fonts for your body text were going to go away, and your 14 and your 16 body pixel font size was going to be here to stay. Then of course, all your header fonts would go up naturally even larger. That’s font size, but the trend this year is not just going bigger, but it’s also going bolder.

You’re also going to start seeing people using more customized fonts or more unique fonts. They’re going to get away from the average. On the web, on the screen right now, you see the “Website Design Trends 2018.” We all know that’s an impact font. Everybody knows it as the social media meme font. That’s the bolder, that’s not necessarily unique, but it is the bolder.

Let me give you some … Pull up my browser window here so we can show you some sites. Some of the trends that I was seeing that’s coming about, we haven’t seen fully used. I’m really surprised how many people are still using gray and off-gray sites.

I’m not against gray and shades of gray, not into the movie. For website, for design, it is shifting a little bit away from that. For typography, I have just a couple sites here to show you where they’re using the larger, bolder fonts.

Now, this one is going to be on the lower end. It’s not necessarily a unique font, but you’re seeing how the larger font is going to be used throughout the site’s homepage, and this is BMW’s page, of course.

A lot of the websites for car companies, I noticed, are still using black and gray. It’s amazing to me because color pops so much on mobile. Maybe that’s the designer in me that just wants to add color. I’m not against black and white, don’t get me wrong, I like the classics, but …

Hormel, food, we always want to have color for pop. They do a wonderful job, now you’re getting in … See how it’s typography, it’s not embedded in the image, so it makes an easy, faster download. We usually only saw these larger fonts on the sliders or the initial large image. Now, as you go down, you’re starting to see, and you’ll continually see the larger fonts being used throughout the site.

You’ll notice they’re using a couple of different styles. You usually want to stick, depending on the item and how busy it is, up to three fonts, no more than that. Typically, we stay within two, but you can see we’ve got three different fonts here.

You’ve got your Arial or Verdana, which ever that is, it looks like Arial. You’ve got, it’s Antique font. Then you’ve got more of the handwritten font. I don’t know the precise names, I’m just giving you what I think they are. You’re seeing that throughout. Then we’ve got Yeti, does a wonderful job with a more adventure kind of a font. They take it throughout the entire site.

See how much bolder, and it pops, and it adds variation without adding heavy downloads, so they can keep the sight light, still use the weight of the site on the images. You just don’t want to hit that server too many times. Using fonts that you don’t have to embed in the server are nicer.

There’s getting better ways of serving to the font or serving to the browser easier these days. It’s getting easier, which means the designers get to play and we get to play a lot more. We like playing. Just kind of an example of how they’re using that big, bold font. It’s not obnoxious. It doesn’t take away from anything, and it uses the white space very nicely.

Okay, so the next one, I’m going to tell you, I found a handful of them to show you, actually three, four, five, six to show you, seven maybe that is about, again, it’s CSS, it’s Style Sheet, so it’s light. We started going this route last year, which is why I think we’re not seeing a lot of sites there yet. You’re going to see a lot more sites, and not just the designers are saying that.

There’s a lot of people that are in the Internet marketing world, are seeing that color pops. This wall behind me is bright orange. It’s my accent wall for my Webmaster for Hire orange, but color pops and grabs the eye. Use of it combined with the larger, bolder typography is going to really make your website pop. A lot of gradients are being used or it’s shifting that way, I should say, because I found a few.

I don’t know if you know who Lisa is here, Lisa Nichols. She’s part of that movie “The Secret.” I also like including this because it shows you, there’s an other site that it shows you as well, that video is not going away. It’s so much easier to serve where it’s lighter on the site to keep away from video, but if you have it, like she had it downloading in a pre-loader, it kind of balances out.

You see the large font, but she really does, or her designer did, a really good pop of colors, and utilizing both white space as well as adding some darker backgrounds without being obnoxious. Look at this beautiful gradient that comes in with the texture background. That’s what I’m more talking about that you’re going to see. Now that was great for her, but this is what you’re going to see, absolutely. Look how it pops that menu, to have that gradient and the texture added to it.

There’s another thing I’m going to tell you that’s more for designers than it is for business owners, where you’re going to be able to utilize images a whole lot easier. I’m sure all of you guys already know what that is. Here, I think she did a good balance of gray, dark gray to color, but you’re really seeing the pop in her site.

Let’s go on to the next one, which is Jack Canfield. Can you tell I was in the same mindset? His doesn’t do as great of a job, but he does have this pop of color coming through, and you see the gradient with the imagery. That’s not going to go away, photos won’t go aways, but stock photos are no longer. That was last year, 2017, or this year we’re still in. That’s the trend that we’re shifting away from, the very obvious stock photos.

If you have a business website, it’s so much better if you have actual photos of your business, your products, your whatever it is that they can connect with you. You want to connect with your customers.

That’s what I always tell people when they want to use stock photos is, “Can I just show up with my camera and let’s get real photos?” That way, people can relate and connect with your products without having to do video all the time. These guys do video. I am very much for doing video. I think every- … Obviously. Everybody should be doing video.

Here you’re seeing, it’s the layover, this isn’t a gradient, but now you’re seeing the variations that are used. Very nice. I like how they popped him there.

These icons aren’t fully going away yet either. They’re just getting more refined and more customized. One of the site trends I saw out there was saying that they’re more quirky, if you will. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think that’s great for web designers or anyone in the creative field.

I think if you’re in the non-creative field, finding icons like this, are classy, will actually help you better than quirky, but icons are definitely not going away.

You see the large body font here as well. We’ll go down, get that touchy, feely. I don’t want to take too much time. A lot of people know this site. This site did a fantastic job. Stripe. Stripe has not changed its look for a long time. This gradient is a good example though of where things are shifting. See how it pops and holds your attention? You can still read without it being distracting.

Want to make sure we’re on the same point here. I wanted to not just do large corporation sites this year like I did last year. I wanted to bring in some local sites. I actually found two competing attorneys that fit for a couple of trends.

This is a personal injury attorney. He has color. He sticks with a couple of different colors and doesn’t use the gradients. You’re going to see the large font. It’s not a unique font, this is a pretty basic font. You’re going to see that they don’t stick with the white anymore. He’s got some parallax going on there. Doesn’t he look so calm and peaceful? You get …

I don’t know how long parallax is going to stick around. I don’t know that it has that wow factor anymore, like it did last year. What I’m going to show you in a couple more trends, you’ll see that actually get better.

You’ll have to forgive me. Nobody gets mad at me here in Florida or gets upset that I’m so hot. It’s when I get my throat, because it’s too warm and humid that it still, I get my raspy throat. Anyways, I digress.

You’re seeing the pop of color. This has been used for a while, but it’s getting bigger and bolder is what I really wanted to showcase.

This one isn’t showing a lot of pops and color, but I really wanted to show you that the black design does not have to go away. Having the black background is not obnoxious on your phone.

Especially with Guinness, they did a fantastic job. They still used the large font for their product site, which shows also that product sites don’t have to be the square, boring sites. They can get the big, bold products here and then still have it so that the color of the products are popping off the page.

I really like the balance of this color, because I mean, they branded a lot of their hue that they use in their product labeling. You can see that you can still have a black background and have that pop of color that really showcases product very well.

Here we go with video again. Coca-Cola, actually I was really surprised. I’m not a Coke or Pepsi girl, I like both. I was going to try and show both, but one is a little old school. Pepsi here brings it home, and really showcases with video, that large font throughout the site. Then check out the color change and the color variations. They’re really showcasing it well. It doesn’t get obnoxious when they go to the white. You see that large, bold font right through it all.

These actually we’re going to talk about here next. I’ll come back to this one, so and it’s, I can see the Pepsi icon in the tab, so it’s easy to come back to. You can see that they’re really using their colors very well. The video, it really pops. If this is our mobile phone, it looks phenomenal as well.

Then the last one, which is more of a classic style, which shows if you are not in a business that’s necessarily bold or you would rather not have bold, say you’re a quiet accounting firm, you can still do classic and have a lovely site with the larger fonts.

The Grey Goose does a wonderful job with the lighter fonts. It looks like those could have been utilized … That’s my thinking. I’m not afraid of white space, but it’s just kind of odd to leave that hanging out there. It’s a gorgeous site. Not just the photos. Usually it’s only just the photos, but they use textures very well.

I would say we’re not going to get away from textures at all. The gradient and the textures together just make it so classic and so nice. It really gives it that, it’s a bold look without the bold font. This is another example of how to use colors adding some texture and patterns to it.

Then again, we’re going to talk about this next. Actually, I’m going to talk about it right now. This is a trend that started just a couple years ago, probably a little more than that, time kind of blends for me, that’s not going to go away. I got to be honest, I thought it was going to shift away because of that boxiness to it. We’ve really been kind of getting more fluid and less boxy as we go with designs.

This is called a card in your layout or design. Cards are used in a variety of ways. I said earlier, I’ll come back to Pepsi because that’s what this is. This here is a card layout. It can have as much or as little space in-between. It can have as much or as little content. This is one where this is how they’re tying in their social media, they’re latest posts.

Gray Goose, they’ve got it, it looks like their blog posts for various areas for using theirs. There’s no text. You can click them. It could be their photo gallery as well.

I brought in Design Shack to show you, they had a wonderful layout of the various card designs to kind of give you some variety. Look, I’m part of a Buick ad here.

Okay, as we scroll down, you’re going to see it’s definitely not going to go away in real estate. It really lines up very nicely and lays out a lot of information in one little bit of space. It doesn’t take up a lot, but it delivers a lot of content, and it still lays out nicely.

It’s also used in project management programs if you’re using, you have a team and you’re using a project management system. You can see how it’s used for real estate. Here it shows, kind of very similar, how Spotify uses it very similar to what Grey Goose was using it. This is if you have your maps. There’s your project management system, that you see that all the time now in the various programs out there.

Then this is one I think is eventually going to go away. Maybe it’s a personal preference of not liking so much busyness, but I think this style site is going to go away as it doesn’t always lend to a great user experience for navigation, this is the route you go.

Let me show you some sites that actually I believe I have down because they’re doing three, two or three of the different trends that I just talked about. They’re doing the big, bold fonts, they’ve got color variations and gradients, brighter colors, and the card use. It’s kind of bringing all three of the first trends together.

This is Philips, they’re “Meet Hue” site, which is their personal wireless lighting. Here’s the cards. First, you see the color here. Then here’s cards. This is that card layout. Now, you’ve got a dark site, but you’ve got the white on here and it doesn’t look obnoxious.

If you look at the background, it goes from the dark, dark blue or actually, it’s black to dark blue down to the blue to the corner diagonally. That’s that gradient that I was talking about that the colors are really helping to bring some variety, so it’s not just one color here and there. The white really pops off, and still continuing with that larger body font, it just is easy on the eyes.

Back in the ’90s, going back and aging myself, when we tried to do white on black, it was horrendous on the eyes. Come on, anyone who’s in the business watching, you know what I’m talking about. You’re seeing the variations of the font weights so that you’re giving more emphasis, and they’re able to tie the white in with the gradient hue.

Now I also … Here’s some more card. I tagged in a couple of their sub-pages for reasons here. This is one how they’re showing how to use the lower pages. Some people just throw their lower pages away

This is where you can really keep the attention going. They don’t just go to white. They keep that continual going from the dark to blue gradient, use of the cards throughout the site, lovely. It’s very nice. I really appreciate the designers and what they did on this site.You’ve got the big, bold fonts and then that beautiful logo.

Now this one just shows you the perfect use of video. It’s a lower page, they’re still using the larger font, but then they tie the video in down here. Then you’re going to see as we go down, now we have the hues, which works perfect when you’re talking about lighting. It really showcases their products wonderfully,

That is the … Oh, I have one more. I forgot I had the second attorney. If you notice, their colors are actually very similar. Where did that other guy go? Here it is. They’ve got the blue and yellow, right? Then these are their competitors. Blue and yellow. Interesting, huh? Blue and yellow, I guess, is the attorneys’ go-to color. It used to be green. I think everyone’s shifting away from green. Blue pops a lot better.

We’ve got the larger fonts, we’ve got colors. Then as we come down, we have the cards. Actually, I think these cards are beautifully done by customizing the images and not just throwing images here. Adding that accent to put the headline on there, it gives it some movement.

Everybody loves movement still. Nobody’s getting away from that. They’ve got a lot of movement. Some of it can get a little obnoxious to a designer, but it’s about the user experience, right? They have the big bold fonts, the pops of color, the movement and the cards.

We’re going to show one last trend, which I’m going to tell you, I saved this until last because I really think it’s going to pick up even more. I’m excited for it to pick up more. I think this is where designers really get to sink their teeth into their ability.

Before I go on, I talk about designers, developers and webmasters many times. We’re webmasters. Web designers typically focus on design. They may know code and they may know functionality. They may be wonderful at it, but their number one priority is focused on design. Developers, of course, they’re focused on functionality, they’re programmers.

They may work alongside a designer to give their function a bigger boost, which is what we do in our company as webmasters, is we do design, development, and we do marketing. Everything I focus on in design is focused on marketing. We talk about trends, but I’ll finish up telling you my perspective of trends.

Designers are the ones that are really sinking their teeth into this next trend. Developers, maybe so much, but they’re still focused on a lot of the connection of app and more user experience and making it more interactive.

The next trend, which is the fourth trend that we’re going to talk about, that you can see is the unusual or irregular grid layouts. I found two, that they’re not so irregular, but they’re getting that way. We’re starting to see this more and more.

Again, designers, we’re just totally excited about this, sinking our teeth into it and allowing our creativity to get better and more visible. We’re not being stuck to the old square ways of things or the column layout.

Kashi, they have their fun, hand fonts, but look how they’re making sure to tie in, they have the card layout, that they scroll, and then you go, and then it goes on the side and then back up, so you’ve got some really good layers going on. It adds to that visual. It makes it interesting and intriguing. I wish they wouldn’t be so gray on the bottom, but that’s just me.

Really breaking the mold is what we’re going to see a lot of in 2018. Then, though my colors are very similar, I didn’t go to any school here in Florida, but this happens to be the Gators, where they have blue and orange as their colors.

They did a wonderful job of starting to shift out of that regular layout. They’re bringing it down, and they’re creating movement, interactivity. They are allowing the eye to wander and be curious, which is fantastic for a college. They’re using the big, bold fonts.

It’s amazing to see shadowing used on fonts these days, but it’s working for them. You’re seeing that color, they’re not shying away from it, and they’re not sticking with just the horizontal layout. They’ve got some tied in here, but they really blended it in nicely.

Your trends that you want to be on point with is your typography. Not just bigger, but bolder, and unique fonts are coming into play, more Google fonts are being used.

Bright colors with gradients. You’re seeing texture backgrounds and pattern backgrounds that I think are being better used. I’ve seen them used in the past, and they were obnoxious. Now, they’re just getting classy, and I like that. Cards are still in rule. They’re not going away, and the irregular grid layout.

Now, I’m going to pull up the PowerPoint to show you this next set, which is actually five, not four.

Oops. Well, let’s see if we can bring this over here. There we go. Let’s go back. There we are. I knew we could work it out. Technical issues here and there.

Scalable vector graphics. All the designers go, “Yay!” SVGs, these, they’ve been around. I have it on the slides. I made sure to put notes here so I didn’t forget it and gave a lot. There’s a couple of links that I can put in the description down below for developers and designers.

What does this mean if you’re a business owner? Scalable vector graphics is, again, they’ve been around since 1999. They are a way of having images on your site that add value and benefits, especially nowadays with SEO. They’re scalable because the resolution can go up and down and it doesn’t get depixelated or morphed.

They’re based in XML, which is coding. I believe you can do it with HML, HTML5, in fact, I’m pretty certain of it. Because we had to shift away from Flash when Flash was not readable on tablets and more people were buying tablets. Going Vector, SVG and HTML5 allowed that fluid movement that flash gave us without the heavy movie.

Just a couple of things that you don’t lose the quality if they’re zoomed in or resized. It is W3C recommended for coding. It integrates with other W3C standards such as the Dome and XLS or XSSL, I shouldn’t speak so quickly. I put on there a link that, again, I’ll put it down for designers, where you can create in Photoshop.

Then there’s another link that gives you some examples of what SVGs can do. The reason we like SVGs, the scalable vector graphics, you won’t know as a business owner or a visitor to a website that these are necessarily being used, but a developer, we’re going to use them. Because first of all, nowadays, if you have an old browser, like really old, IE, uch, IE. If you have really old, Firefox, they’re not going to read them.

All your current browsers can read your scalable vectors. Your mobile devices, I put on there IOS 3, 2, Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, Android 3 Plus are all supporting scalable vectors. These can be used in 3D graphics, they can be used in video. Like I said, a lot of us use them for replacing Flash.

This is, again, this is going to be more your developer side, working with your designer. It gives movement to your site. It makes your site that much more. The beauty of it is, is because it is connecting with code, it’s a faster, lighter download.

You’ve got the resolution that works. My computer goes up to 1980 I think is, it actually goes even higher than that. This one goes higher. This one is a little lower. You have down to a small scale on your mobile You need the speed, you’ve got it, you’re creating animation.

Now, you find out Google indexes SVGs. Google does not index JPEGs or TIF or any other binary code or image. Ones and zeros, that’s all it sees, right? We all are ones and zeros. With scalable vector, its fantastic, because the content, whether it’s standalone or embedded as HTML, it’s indexed, so it will help you.

Again, the downside, old browsers, and if you get too complicated, oh my gosh, you’ll freak your browser out. Don’t get overly complicated with it. I’ll put all three of these links, again, down below, all the bullet points I grab from W3Schools, because I wanted to make sure I got it accurate for you.

Scalable vector graphics is going to be huge in 2018. We’re getting away from the pretty, right? What is not going away is mobile is a priority. It’s not an option. I am so amazed how many times I go and it says, “Do you want to see mobile view?” in my Android. Because so many sites still haven’t translated over to responsive.

I have one customer who refuses to translate over and transfer to a responsive website. He’s the customer, it’s his business. You will have to have it mobile priority. Google is putting their foot down, they’re trying to make it for everybody. That is not a trend that’s going away, that is going to be sticking.

The next one is not a trend, it’s now a requirement. It actually kind of goes more towards marketing, but I put it here because it’s kind of both. That is Google has now come out strongly, strongly saying, “SSL is now required.”

It’s not design, like I said, it’s worth mentioning. It was September of this year, so just a few months ago, they announced its intention to shift towards a more secure web. That’s the link to their blog, so I’ll put it also in the description so you have it.

We had to send the announcement out to all of our clientele, not just our marketing clients, but everywhere. You’re not seeing that “not secure” yet. You’re seeing it if it’s on an e-commerce site of if you’re on a page with a form, of if you’re on a page where you’re inserting information that may be sensitive, like credit card information.

What you’re seeing instead is a circle with the letter “i” in it, and if people click on it, it’ll state “non secure.” That’s most likely going to be shifting in 2018. They started rolling this out or announcing this late last year. Early this year, they got a little bit more on the announcing of it. In September of this year, they stated very boldly that this is the route they’re going.

Okay, this next thing is the one thing that I don’t know that it needs to be mentioned at this point. Everyone that has written their website design trends for 2018, they keep mentioning this. I am addicted to the show on Viceland called “Cyberwars.”

I keep up with what’s going on on the dark web. I keep up with how governments are using the web, how hackers are using it. It’s part of what I do for a living, is being on the Internet. We are always combating hackers to our site, so keeping up on this stuff, in my opinion, it’s smart, but it’s also interesting. Unfortunately, interesting doesn’t mean it’s the trend that is right today.

Let me kind of pull it up so you know what I’m talking about. I’m making it a side note, which is Internet of Things. If you’ve not heard this term, get used to it. For anybody out there. It’s not a design, not a development, not a website thing. This is a consumer thing. I am not currently for Internet of Things and they did a show on “Cyberwars” about how they can be misused and the problems with them.

What are Internet of Things? If you look at my image on the screen here, you will see computers, printers. Then you’re going to see blenders, lights, so we showed the one site with the Philips, that it’s the wireless light. Aren’t lights all wireless if you put a battery in them? Well, they’re not talking about batteries, they’re talking about Internet of Things. You’re talking about your watches, we all …

Well, we don’t all, I don’t, but people have smart phones, microwaves, stoves, ovens, refrigerators, washer/dryers, all are going wireless, and they have computer in them, basically. On “Cyberwar,” the reason they were staring that it’s not necessarily the wisest thing to have right now is because if my computer gets hacked, I can go back to a past point and revert my computer back. I can go in and clean up.

I personally, I can get Malwarebytes, I can get my RKill or RXKill. I can get, I can go into the operating system. I can personally go in and revert my computer back to original state or last pinpoint that was taken. I can fix my computer if it gets hacked. With these appliances, if there’s updates that happen as of today that I’m unaware of, you can’t revert back. They were actually showing …

I recommend, go look up “Cyberwars” and Internet of Things. Watch that show because they’re saying that they’re actually … A kid used them for attacking another gamer, used Internet of Things to bounce and use the resources as hubs, so that’s what Internet of Things is about. My opinion, as I put up there is I’ll keep it in mind as far as web design. I think people are putting it on their list because it’s cool.

I don’t think that it will be more like 2019, 2020 before our websites are going to be fully functioning and needing to be moving in that direction. Of course, I always have to put in that little shadow of the doubt that the Internet and the digital world move so fast, who knows? Maybe we will have to focus on it in 2018.

Right now, your refrigerator tells you what’s in your refrigerator and keeps track of your shopping list. Your microwave, I have no clue why you have that on the Internet. They utilize that so you can use your phone. Your washer and dryer, you can keep your dryer going. Home security, obviously, that one you can watch from a distance.

You’re not using these things yet or …Your blender. Can you imagine looking at a website on your blender? You’re not using these yet for the Internet and for the web. I added it here just because almost every trend site announcement I saw had it, and I thought, I’m going to give you my two cents worth. I don’t think it’s necessary right now.

I do think the big, bolder fonts are phenomenal. I love pops of color. I think it adds more diversity and more uniqueness to the web. It’s not as dull. I like having, I already told you I’m excited about having a different layout in the grids, that you’re not having to use the same, consistent … I’m okay with cards consistently being used. We’re still using them.

We’ve got our new design. I know I said all last year, “Our new design, our new design,” but I’m a shoemaker with kids that are barefooted. I actually just approved the finalization of our new design, because we had to change it because I waited so long.

You guys kept me busy this year. Not a complaint, I’m excited about it. We had a blast. I love developing sites, I love Internet marketing and anything creative, and really bringing success to our clients.

I want you to keep something in mind. Ultimately, you have to remember good design is great, but it goes beyond the pretty site or current trends. You’ve got to keep marketing in mind. We always start with, “Who’s your target audience? What’s your goals, and what’s your purpose for being in business and having this site and delivering it?”

We need to know what kind of functionality we have to add in. If big, bold and bright and colorful doesn’t fit your audience or your functionality, or the coloring plus the added plug-ins to your WordPress site or whatever is slowing the site down, then we need to take that into consideration.

The user experience is in all caps because it is the number one importance on the website. Security is number one, user experience is number two. I did a video last year you can look up for security maintenance. Brute-force is still on the rise and it’s not going to go away. You definitely have to keep your website secure.

Ultimately, I want you to remember to not jump on a trend just because it’s trendy. Not every woman or man should be wearing the latest fads. You dress for your body type, you develop your website for your target audience. I use Craig’s List as an example, but I suppose we could also use Google in that they don’t change their layouts and their design, and they’re still successful with their target audience.

This video has gone on quite a bit, so this is the end for the Website Design Trends for 2018. As always, I welcome the comments down there. I’m the one answering them. You can see I accidentally did it from my personal YouTube, but I’ll come in as Webmaster for Hire, that’s me.

If you call this number, 561-822-9931 or go to WebmasterForHire.US, it’s me. I’m the person that answers the phone, it’s my company. We have a team of developers, programmers, marketing, writers, an entire staff to help out, but I’m still the one that answers the phone. Because Webmaster for Hire, although we are a digital agency, I very much believe in personalized service.

Give us a shout out if you’re looking for a new website this year, and I hope you all have a wonderful entry into 2018. Next week, I’m going to be creating website marketing, or web marketing trends for 2018, so check it out. Talk to you later. Bye.

 

 

 

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