New year, new trends – what will be some of the big website and digital trends in 2017? Well, we’ve done some research and these are the top 5 digital trends we predict will be the major players this year:
Video Content is King
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/tasty
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video would be worth much more. Towards the later half of 2016, there has been a great increase of video content to engage media viewers. If you’ve been on Facebook, many publications, such as Tasty, Buzzfeed or Insider, have popped up with short clips. They are no longer just posting links to their articles, but have a short 30-second clip to showcase their recipes or destination with a link in the comment that goes to the full information.
Video content makes it much easier for consumers to digest information and share it with their peers. Videos quickly became the top dog for engaging content online and will continue to dominate in 2017.
According to Hyperfine Media’s finding combining a video with full page ads boost engagement by 22% and increases landing page conversions by 80%. Take a look at this infographic to see how video marketing can help your products/brand: 31 Must Know Video Marketing Stats.
Eightball recommends every business to consider and develop a video strategy for 2017.
Card & Grid User Interfaces
Source: https://www.mapltd.com/news/london/
Cards or tiles have gained popularity since the launch of Pinterest. Their design has proven to be successful especially because it fits easily to the mobile and responsive design of websites. The grid design means that content can easily move and resize to devices screen sizes and is easily digestible. Images, text and videos are broken down into individual sections which users can navigate through.
Cards and grid user interfaces allow larger amounts of information to be shown at once without being too hard to read. This allows users to quickly scan what interests them. As more and more information are being present to users, we anticipate more brands will implement this user interface pattern to organise their content and keep their visitors engaged.
Big, Bold Type & Bright Colours
Source: https://www.airbnb.com.au
Typography has always been a powerful visual medium – it sets the tone of the brand. We are no longer limited by the default web fonts: Arial, Verdana, Georgia and so on. Google offers a font library that can easily be used on any websites. They have hundreds of fonts available for free. Of course, there are also the option to purchase other web friendly fonts from My Fonts and other similar sites.
We’ve seen the increase in over-sized text as well as hand-rendered typography – some using layering of imageries and scrolling effect. We’re certain that typography will be bigger and better in 2017 and be as important as the actual content itself.
A lot of the major brands such as Airbnb and Spotify have also lead the way with the use of bright colours and subtle gradients. It adds a touch of depth to the flat design trends of 2015/2016. Remember when Instagram changed their logo to the rainbow coloured icon? They sure got onto the trends early!
Animations & Gifs
Source: https://www.8bm.com.au
Who doesn’t like receiving those quirky animations in our inboxes? They just make the advertising and emails more fun and appealing. More and more platforms are accepting the animated gif formats now and it doesn’t just stop in our inboxes.
Instagram and Facebook support animated gifs, and this opens up opportunities for us to create more engaging and smile-sparking content. This is even more appealing for mobile phone users as it is more likely to grab viewers attention.
You can also use animation to entertain user while waiting for content to load or as an interesting hover-state.
Similar to the video content, you can also use animations and gifs to narrate a story or set of instructions in an interesting way. Some websites even integrate animations with the website itself such as parallax scrolling effect.
Tab/Priority+ Navigation
Source: https://jamesarcher.me/hamburger-menu
Remember the birth of hamburger menus? If you’re not sure what that is, it’s the three thick lines you usually see on apps or mobile websites (usually placed on the top corner). Even though it has been around for the past few years, many people still aren’t familiar with it, and this just proves that this particular design is not effective.
If you’re a social media user, you may have noticed that Facebook has changed their navigation recently from having the hamburger menu on the top right to having a navigation bar along the bottom with 4 of their main menu options.
Many websites have also done the same – ditching the stand alone hamburger menu and having a small navigation bar along the top. “But I have too many menus to fit along the top of my mobile website?”, we hear you ask. Well, pick the main items that are most important and move the other navigation to the bottom of the page (or you can still have a hamburger menu that will reveal more navigation).
Some websites have adopted the icon+text structure to keep the button size large enough for people to click on. This may not be a solution for everyone, but it may work better for your user than hiding everything within the three lined icon.
So there you have it. Eightball Media’s prediction of the top 5 digital trends you’ll see in 2017! If you’re interested in implementing some of these on your own website and digital media, give us a call, and we’ll have a chat.
Sources:
- https://www.zazzlemedia.co.uk/blog/digital-design-trends/
- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/video-marketing-statistics#sm.0000foxptg11x5efruh251wy13g6e
- https://webflow.com/blog/18-web-design-trends-for-2017
- https://jamesarcher.me/hamburger-menu
- https://www.justinmind.com/blog/web-app-design-trends-2017-6-experts-predictions/
- https://hyperfinemedia.co.uk/31-must-know-video-marketing-stats/
