Mobile Responsive Design. We know this trend wont be new to 2018, but the reality is, mobile phones have been now officially named as the primary devices used for browsing the web. According to Google; if your website is not mobile friendly, it will not be easy to view by the 38 million smart phone users in the UK alone, which could be losing you potential customers.

The mobile revolution is here and it is not going anywhere. Business are now realising how important it is to deliver effective quality content in smaller screens. With a Responsive Website, the design instinctively adapts to the device its being viewed on, so looks great and it is easy to use on a mobile phone, tablet and desktop.

Greater use of Negative Space. Everything on the page, is there for one purpose; increase conversions. Many years ago, web designs were incredible complex. Today all that has changed. Web designs are embracing a minimalist and simplistic approach. Clean flat designs are very much in. Consumers that land on your site should be able to get to any page of your site within seconds. To earn links and credibility, people need to be able to find everything with no effort. Clean, simplistic pages were already hot in 2017. We’re taking minimalism to a whole new level in 2018.

The use of Scrolling and Parallax to deliver great content. Due to users viewing content on screens of all different sizes, scrolling is a versatile mechanising, used for getting from the top to the bottom of the page in an easy simple way. Also the demand for more written long form content, has led to web pages the requirement of using scrolling.

A parallax is utilised as a visual tool, gives a 3D effect as the foreground moves at a faster pace that the background. A parallax gives a sense of depth, ultimately lifting elements of the screen.

With the higher demand for more written content, also great for SEO, we predict that designers will want to be more creative in 2018, so scrolling and parallax will be implemented more and more online.

Beautiful Typography. To go along with the minimalistic style of 2018, Typography will be taking center-stage. Typography is a powerful medium for creating personality, draw emotion and set an atmosphere. Already we are seeing colourful, playful and artistic fonts taking the place of images. For mobile in particular, scaling size to your typography does not impact performance. Brands are expected to push the limits of typography even further, appealing to users and attracting more customers. So we should expect to see more unique bold and beautiful typography working along with parallax scrolling web designs.

Illustrations, Photo content. Illustrations are an extremely versatile visual element. Colour and Typography can only do so much to tell a unique story, but illustrations on the other hand, can tell a story on their own. With illustrations you can create friendly visuals to add element fun a uniqueness to your site. They can even be animated, creating unique experiences to your website visitors. Companies are already using them, but we are highly anticipating that business will use them even more in the next year as a way of bringing their branding to life.

Videos. The saying goes, ‘a picture paints a thousand words’, but while more words can lead to richer stories, videos also tell a story while not requiring the user to scroll down or read. Videos are far from new, used for marketing, storytelling, and has a more modern twist on traditional photograph. Video encourage greater level of engagement, more involvement from the visitor, and hopefully, better metrics. Reason why videos are taking over the internet. This trend is likely to grow in 2018.

Daring Colours. We believe in 2018, you will see brighter, more vivid colours, and greater use of gradients.  The use of bolder colours in web design actively attracts the attention of users, for 2018, expect to see more vivid colour palettes online. Colours transition is amongst the actual and contemporary trends in modern design. Additionally, expect to see brands be a little more creative with colour according to their identity, with start-ups in particular being more vibrant in the hope of gaining more attention.

Progressive Web App could be the next big thing for the mobile web. Progressive Web App takes advantage of the latest technologies to combine the best of web and mobile apps. Proposed originally by Google in 2015, they have already attracted lot of attention because of the relative easy development and the instant win for the application’s users experience. As we enter the development space of progressive web apps, we’ll see a trend in upgrading the functionality of websites to include things like push notifications, splash screens, offline mode, and animated page transitions. Think of it as a website built using web technologies, but that acts and feels like an app.

There are several reasons why PWAs could well be in the ascendancy very soon as the primary interface between mobile users and content websites; Far less expensive, responsive, they work on and off line, low data use, improve performance, safe, fast, push notifications, etc. Look for these types of capabilities to become commonplace in tomorrow’s web apps.

Micro-interactions. Even though we’re surrounded by micro-interactions every day, we don’t usually notice them until something goes horribly wrong. But micro-interactions are, despite their small size and near-invisibility, incredibly important. Micro-interactions are contained product moments that revolve around a single used case and have one main task. Every time you change a setting, sync your data or devices, set an alarm, pick a password, log in, set a status message, or favourite or “like” something, you are engaging with a micro-interaction.    

Micro-interactions will allow users to express interest and communicate in real-time, breaking down communication barriers and increasing the connectivity and speed customers expect in an increasingly mobile world. It’s only going to get bigger.

Web Security. Security is an ever growing issue online. During 2015-2016, ransomware attacks showed high growth. Ransomware is really a form of DoS that uses malware to encrypt critical data or executables, thus bringing key business services to a halt. Ransomware attacks tend to exploit the same vulnerabilities as breach attempts, but they also exploit weaknesses in data backup processes and traffic monitoring.

According to Google’s blog: “Intruders exploit unprotected communications to trick your users into giving up sensitive information or installing malware, or to insert their own advertisements into your resources. For example, some third parties inject advertisements into websites that potentially break user experiences and create security vulnerabilities.” https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/security/encrypt-in-transit/why-https

2017 was the year for HTTS. Last January, Google implemented websites to be encrypted: “Beginning in January 2017 (Chrome 56), we’ll mark HTTP pages that collect passwords or credit cards as non-secure, as part of a long-term plan to mark all HTTP sites as non-secure” https://security.googleblog.com/2016/09/moving-towards-more-secure-web.html

In 2018, trust is going to be a major concern of users who visit your web pages. Using HTTPS to protect confidential online transactions like online banking and online shopping order forms is the standard today, but soon users will expect a secure experience and a trusted certificate on any webpage they visit and interact with.


Whilst there are hundreds of ‘trends’ going on in every creative industry, it is hard to pinpoint the most important ones. However, we really do believe that the above are some of the more core trends to shine in 2018 and beyond.

Is your Website ready for 2018?