9 UI Trends to Get Your Product Ready for 2018
There’s no need to explain why UI is a crucial element of a web or mobile app. Briefly speaking, interface is the face of your product; it is what makes visitors stay on your site or leave it after a while. Every visitor is your potential customer, and to a large extent his or her first impression determines whether he or she will turn into a loyal customer
Experts say that an ineffectual interface is one of the primary reasons why people don’t use mobile apps after downloading. An effective interface, in turn, is a powerful tool of customer acquisition. To create effective interfaces one must be on trend. In this article we’ll cover nine latest UI design trends for web developers to consider in 2018.
What are the Reasons for Being on Trend?
Unlike fashion trends, for example, in clothes, latest trends in web and mobile development have a practical, utilitarian meaning. In other words, they are not just about a beautiful picture, but also about usability, functionality and ease of use. Modern design complying with web UI trends resolves several important tasks.
- Influences users’ mood. It has been repeatedly proved by reputable researchers that different colors influence people’s mood in a different way. If you can create a positive visual experience for your visitors, you win. Think what emotions you want to provoke in your customers — excitement and aggression, or peace and relaxation? Use colors that help you to achieve your goals, and not vice versa.
- Strengthens credibility of the company. People tend to believe that professionally-looking apps and sites belong to reputable companies that care of every small detail of their business, including users’ visual experience. Make your site look up-to-date and polished, and customers’ trust to your business will grow at an exponential rate.
- Improves usability. You must know that usability is everything. When a site has a simple, clear design, when it works promptly and properly, it’s a real pleasure to use it. And be sure, users appreciate it.
Spare neither trouble nor expense to improve user interface of your web or mobile app, make it look professional and up-to-date, and success will be not slow to arrive.
Cutting-Edge Trends in UI for Web
Here are some user interface design trends that are all the rage now. Make use of them if you want your web product look really cool and up-to date.
1. Landing page with seamless interface
You must have seen how neatly modern landing pages look. All the content (blocks with texts, photos, etc.) is placed on a single page, so that a visitor doesn’t have to move from one page to another. Seamless interface is the hottest trend in web developing.
2. Unique lettering style
Typography is another clearly defined trend. Use massive headings, don’t be shy to play with font types. Don’t forget about animation, but try to make is as smooth and soft-core as possible. Care of the structure of text blocks and their positioning on the page. Great typographic treatment eliminates the need in other types of content.
3. Gradient colors
Modern displays are capable of reproducing much more color shades than previous-gen screens, so why not take advantage of it? Gradients (smooth subtle color transitions) are all the rage now, so feel free to use them to highlight the beauty of your website design.
4. Unique images
It’s no secret that search engines like unique content, and no site owner will ever copy texts from other sources. But this is true for images as well. By posting unique pictures of high quality you raise attractiveness of your site incredibly.
5. 3D graphics
Though 3D still seems to be something non-typical for websites, use of 3D solutions in web development is gaining popularity, and this trend will preserve in 2018. Use WebGL JS library, which allows creating quickly-loading web-pages with 3D elements.
6. Video content
Videos in 2018 are going to be even more popular than graphics, and not without reason. Few people like reading huge blocks of text, while video clips are perfect for rendering a lot of information quickly. Moreover, they are easy to share in social media. If possible, make unique video clips specially for your business promotion. But try not to use mainstream videos — they usually are of no interest.
UI Trends in Mobile Development
Mobile development is one more sphere where new trends replace each other at rapid-fire pace. Of course, you will hardly apply all the innovations at once, as it is a time-consuming and expensive affair. But if you want to keep up with the time, you must be aware of some basic mobile UI trends.
7. UX instead of UI
A general idea sounds like this: more results with fewer actions. In other words, don’t make users do a lot of job to achieve their goal. Minimalism is on trend. Get rid of all unnecessary elements, make interface as clean and simple as you can in order to provide the best user experience. A user must be able of accomplishing tasks in your app easily and quickly.
8. Be interactive
Users prefer responsive design. In simple terms, they need to see the response to all their actions inside the app in order to be sure they do everything properly. Keep in mind that feedback must be subtle but tangible enough.
9. Quiet colors
Calm pastel shades look beautiful, but what is more important, they don’t hurt eyes. If you want your customers spend more time with your mobile app, feel free to use soft colors, as they are all the rage in 2018. Add some gradient transitions, and your app will look really cool and up-to-date.
How to Understand that it’s Time for Updating
If you are still not sure of whether it’s time to redesign your site/app, check the following list of arguments. If you can agree with at least one statement, it’s a clear sign, indicating the need for upgrading.
- Interface of your site has a lot of unnecessary details. If there are any elements that can be removed without loss of functionality — remove them with no regret. Remember of minimalism.
- You want to raise competitiveness of your product. Always keep in mind that there are — literally — millions of apps and websites. If you want to really stand out, you must respond the challenges of the time.
- Your site or app is slow. If so, start upgrading immediately! Most users leave a site if it loads more than 5–6 seconds.
- The focus of your business has shifted. If you have already changed all the content, think of altering design as well in order to draw users’ attention to the changes.
- Your site/app looks outdated. If it was created years ago, and no changes had been made, it’s high time to think of upgrading and add some fresh trendy elements to your product.
Trends change even faster than you can imagine, and sometimes it is difficult to track all of them. But if you want your product be competitive, you need to comply with the requirements of time.
