One of the lessons of all these years of change and new trends is that success often requires riding the wave of change rather than simply riding in its wake. You can do this by exploring the trends of tomorrow and seeking to incorporate those that may apply to you, before everyone else does.
Better online support
Being connected to its users is more important than ever. Chatbots, written or oral conversation software, allow a website to be contacted every day, at all hours, without having to maintain a continuous customer service department. The evolution of chatbots has given them new capabilities: they can answer frequently asked questions, redirect customers to information or web pages, or even help them complete a transaction. As consumers get used to their presence and the ways to interact with them, they will expect all sites to have their own.
Progressive Web Apps
A recent study on mobile phone usage showed that applications accounted for 89% of the time spent on our smartphone. It would therefore be logical that the use of a format similar to a mobile application would be well received by the general public.
Progressive web apps are applications that appear to the user like a phone app, but are actually website pages. They take advantage of the characteristics of a web browser, with a mobile application interface. This technology has many advantages, such as the possibility of working offline, almost zero loading time (because a large part of the information is kept in the phone’s cache), good reliability and the possibility of receiving notifications. These progressive web appscan be built faster than mobile apps, work for all users, and are generally easier to deploy and maintain, which benefits both the developer and the user.
Website notifications
Notifications are one of the best tools in mobile apps. The ability to send information directly to an interested user quickly proved popular in everything from traffic news to sports scores or promotional sales. This type of communication also works with websites after the user allows notifications. This benefits from greater customer involvement, without the additional costs of creating a mobile app that replaces a website.
Single page websites
This trend of single-page websites has taken hold this year, and should continue to grow. These sites are therefore composed of only one very long page. To navigate it, we simply scroll it, or links take us down or up along the page to the desired section.
The biggest advantage of these sites is their simplicity. There’s no complex navigation or endless menus to explore. And this concept works very well on smartphones, where scrolling is the easiest navigation mode. It’s a modern solution to simple online needs, and very inexpensive to develop and host.
Static websites
A static website is very basic. Each page is coded simply in HTML and displays the same fixed or static content for each visitor. Why, you will tell me, want to take a step (or more) backwards in terms of web technology and their options? For the sake of simplicity.
These websites are secure, load quickly, and are inexpensive to develop. We should see a resurgence of static sites in budget-conscious projects in the near future. Especially since they are now much more advanced than the first static sites, and much less boring or difficult to achieve.
Moving user interfaces
Interfaces have been a major concern of developers for several years. Even the best of designs becomes useless if the user is unable to find what they are looking for. First intended for mobile applications, mobile interfaces allow the use of animations or transitions that indicate to users certain actions, or certain important parts, in addition to breathing life and a certain class into projects.
This technology opens up a huge range of customization, which gives the developer plenty of options to build a highly functional and attractive website. Examples of movements include easing, layering, cloning, obfuscation, parallax scrolling, matching, and dimensionality games.
The release of Flash
Flash was something very interesting for websites: it allowed to add animations or other movements. It was heavily used for years, but now it’s something everyone should try to get rid of. Adobe announced this year that Flash Player will no longer be updated or distributed starting in 2020. It is also incompatible with most phones. Rather than losing traffic, especially on the mobile version of your site, you should replace Flash with HTML5, which is rapidly becoming the universal format on the internet.
photo content
The interest of a good photo has never been greater on the internet, especially because a good photo can help to (re)start a discussion. This concept is not new, since in the golden age of the paper magazine, quality photos were in high demand to launch debates simply from the story contained in the image. A unique photo, full of individuality, but which also conveys information, will be the key to success on the internet in 2018.