With user expectations growing and trends changing constantly, it is important to build digital experiences that are fun, engaging, innovative and intuitive. To help you keep up with what’s happening, we deliver web development trends expected in 2018.

Material Design

Materialize is a CSS framework based on Google’s Material Design which  combines visual material and motion. As a popular design trend, it is expected to gain more popularity this year. It is known for being more responsive, easy to use and well documented. Materialize is more opinionated than others of the class about how UX elements should look and  behave and helps to conform to Material Design.

Motion UI

Simplicity is the emerging trend in web design but sophisticated Motion UI is becoming more popular. Motion UI is a design created using animations and visual effects. As digital experiences are emulating real life, motion is driving not only the interface design but the entire UI.

Single page application

 Another catching trend this year is single-page websites. This allows  putting all content on to a long scrollable page removing all the complex links and clutter. This kind of websites are not suited for eCommerce or blogs but for the business world, it offers significant benefit to present their services in a simple, engaging way.

JavaScript (Angular 2 , Angular 4, Angular 5)

 A programming language for web applications, it improves modularity, provides benefits of cross platform to create high-performance, complex choreographic and animation timelines with little code through intuitive API. With SEO optimization and quick loading, it is gaining more popularity.

PHP 7.x / Laravel 5.x 

PHP remains the popular choice for website backend development this  year. Laravel with its existing packages & ready solutions for complex tasks offers shorter  development time with more reliability. With its large community of users, any issues encountered  are solved socially with the developer always offered support.

Chatbots

Chatbots are making life easier for customers and businesses alike. So is it any wonder  that they are setting a trend in web development this year? With chatbots, consumers can avoid  long queuing time, get help in all stages from research to purchase. Chatbots support and scale business teams in their relation with the consumers, save money and be available anytime, anywhere.

SSL & HTTPS

 Site security is not a new trend. Providing strong site security irrespective of the trend is the sign of a responsible provider. Google is rolling out its plan to label non-HTTPS pages as insecure. So it is a necessity to establish a trust worthy presence by following the security norms. Site security is also imperative to enhance credibility and feature better in SEO results.

WordPress 4.9

Drag & drop themes with no coding requirement, video headers, virtual reality  plugins, enhanced ecommerce website options are some of the features which is set to make this year a perfect time to hop on to the WordPress bandwagon.

Mobile optimized websites

 Everyone knows that a mobile optimized site enhances user experience, increases average time on site, loads faster, improves mobile SEO & increases consumer  traffic. So we can see more of mobile optimization this year too, in fact it will become a necessity

Scalable vector graphics

While it has been around for a while, SVG’s or scalable vector graphics will continue to gain ground in 2018. They are light-weight vector images which makes it easy for your website to carry it around, load it quickly and render it perfectly regardless of the screen size.

Modular designs

A design approach using modular, block grid pattern to layout elements & clearly define each content element. Though it is not anything new, it is gaining popularity with each  year.

Contemporary fonts & typography 

This year we can expect many creative uses of typography  with bold fonts, more screen space and creative typefaces

Innovative parallax page

The interactive nature and level of engagement it offers, lends parallax design the popularity and it is expected to gain more ground this year

 

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Written By Midhya K P

"Irrespective of the stuff you make, it is the stories that sell". With her flair for story telling, Midhya designs unique digital marketing campaigns for Codelattice Clients. With her taste for Digital Media, what Midhya loves about Marketing is the goal of adapting creative strategies to drive sales & revenue. She can be reached at midhya@codelattice.com