The year 2017 is about to end and people are gearing up for the parties, vacations, resolutions, and whatnot. For most of the world, it’s time to prep-up and welcome the New Year with grand celebrations, and web designers are no different. They are also gearing up to welcome 2018 but their preparations are not only for the grand parties. No, don’t get us wrong, we don’t mean to call web designers boring beings; they too are booking their tables for the New Year Eve. But a major part of their attention is focused on reflecting the past year’s trends and accordingly making predictions for the coming year.

2017 was a year of dawning for the web as trends centered on user experience. Voice user interface, conversational bots, and micro-interactions knocked on the doors of designing this year. In fact, many UX design trends even faded into darkness. The coming year would also throw light on the user-experience offered by website design. While we cannot predict the future; (no one can!) but seeing the web design trends that hit the big time in 2017, comprehending the design trends for 2018 seems within the realms of possibility. So, here is a prediction for the top 5 UX web design trends to follow in 2018.

  • Increased Conversation With The Bots

Chatbots became a ‘thing’ in 2017 and offered an automated response to the common queries from the visitors. Roping in chatbots helped a number of website owners crank up their conversion stats. The quick assistance offered by them has been appreciated by the visitors and even reduced the bounce rate of many websites. In 2018, the personalized experience would take the toll on chatbots and they would be seen conversing more with the users. Best creative web designers would get into coding a more conversational interface for the chatbots that would offer a customized interaction. This would offer a personalized user experience that would engage and assist the user through the website.

  • Alternative Search To Hamburger Menu

The three lines on the corner of the screen, known as hamburger menu, would take the last breath in 2018. New alternatives to this menu would come to the fore as web designers would start experimenting with new design elements for creating the page menu. Initially loved by all, hamburger menus are now being accused of lowering the efficiency and discoverability, thus affecting the overall UX of the site. Web designers would be experimenting with alternatives to hamburgers in order to get higher navigation menu clicks. The tabbed menu, incorporated by Spotify after removing hamburger, could become popular owing to the 30% increase in navigation menu click it caused.

  • Voice User Interface For The AI Assistants

AI assistants like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google’s OK Google, and Amazon’s Alexa created a buzz in 2017. In fact, Google has announced that by 2020, more than 50% of total search queries would be voice-based. So it won’t be wrong to say that in 2018, most of the web designers would be seen optimizing their site with a voice user interface. Incorporating a voice-activated interface in websites and apps would be among the leading web design trends for business websites. VUI offers an expedited and simplified experience to the users by eliminating the need to type. Expectations from 2018 are that web designers would come up with personal voice user interface for the AI assistants.

  • Content As The Focus Of Design

Content-focused designs would become a favorite among the web designers in the coming year. Rich, informative, detailed, and high-value content is something that majorly affects the UX of the website and engages the visitors. The design would be centered on the content, whether it is the home page or other landing pages, content would be placed in such a way that it would grasp the fancy of the visitors. The order of content would be done in a way that content comprehension becomes easier. The design elements cluttering the website would be removed and more a white space would be incorporated to throw light on the content on the page.

  • Quick Strikes With Micro-Interactions

Micro-interactions were on the rise in 2017 and 2018 would be nowhere behind. Website developers would start incorporating more micro-interactions to offer better and more engaging user experience. Micro-interactions would act as means of a quick strike to grab the eyeballs. They would be used to enhance the sense of direct manipulation, offer the visual effect of any visitor action, and communicate and provide feedback. Reflecting the system status, highlighting changes, interacting calls-to-action, and visualizing inputs would be some of the major areas where web designers would be including micro-interactions for boosting the user experience.

Tap on the new technologies like conversational bots, voice user interface, micro-interactions, give up the old hamburger menu and create the content-centered design to enhance the user experience of your website. Future-proof your website by following the top five UX web design trends that were discussed above. While the list is not exhaustive but it somehow sums up the web design trends that are expected to hit the big time in 2018. Start implementing these trends on your website to boost the experience and maximize your gains.

Author Bio:

Anurag Gupta is a budding entrepreneur with stakes in WeblinkIndia.net an acclaimed Web Designing & Development Company, headquartered in India. He also happens to be a keen writer, sharing insights, tips, and tutorials on subjects related to the ever evolving landscape of Web Designing and Development.