For example, the goal of a photographer’s website is to get new clients. For this reason, the photographer creates a page for their portfolio. They can also create another page to read the previous clients’ testimonials. Most importantly, they need a contact page, where soon-to-be clients can reach them.

But how to get the visitors to find these pages? With the power of the WordPress call to action!

What is a Call to Action button?

The Call to Action button, also known as CTA is a type of button, tells the visitor to do something specific. For instance, if you sell a product or service, you can place a CTA to your homepage to urge the visitor to buy it. A good CTA can increase your conversions and give you a heavy revenue boost.

How can I use a Call to Action button?

CTAs are super versatile design elements, so you can use them for any purpose that suits your website’s main goal. For instance, if you have a newsletter or an email list, create email opt-ins with a CTA. Do you have a social media page which they should check out? Use A CTA button to send the visitors there!

How to create a good CTA?

Let’s make it simple: a good CTA button stands out. If the visitor can’t see your call to action button, they won’t click on it. Play with the colors, to make sure it stands out from the background. Consider creating a couple of variations, and split test your call to action buttons to see which one works best.

Choose the perfect label

Another way to create a good CTA is to craft the button label carefully. A simple, yet easy-to-understand text like “Buy now” is much more effective than a long and complex text. Of course, you don’t have to aim for two words long CTAs, just make sure your message is clear and simple.

For instance, let’s see the CTA on our Rotating Banner demo. The label isn’t just two words long, it says: “Download Now – It’s Free”. But it’s still encouraging, because it says the download is free, and who doesn’t like free stuff?

Try to use effective words, like “now”, “free”, “get”, “try” or even use numbers to get more clicks. For instance, use “Buy now – 60% off” instead of “Buy now and get a discount”.

Always test your CTA

Don’t make up your mind too early about your perfectly designed and labelled CTA. Be sure to split test it to see if it performs the way you want it to. It’s also useful to monitor and track your conversions with analytic plugins. If your CTA’s click rate is low, it means your CTA isn’t as effective as it should be.

If you believe your CTA isn’t effective, try varying the colors or find a more suitable label to deliver your message.

How to add a Call to Action button to your WordPress website?

The most popular WordPress themes have the ability to create gorgeous CTA buttons. The upside of this is that the button will surely fit your theme’s layout with minimal effort. On top of that, these CTA designs are made by the designers of the theme. As a result, they’ll look gorgeous on your site lowering the time you’ll need to spend on split testing the look. The downside is that you’ll need to create a new button everytime you want a new CTA.

Creating a CTA with WordPress plugins

If your theme doesn’t have the option to create CTA, visit the WordPress.org repository. You’ll find many call to action plugins there to help you create gorgeous CTAs. After setting up your CTA with these WordPress plugins, you’ll probably get a shortcode to display it.

This means you don’t have to create your button on every page where you want to use it. Using a plugin has another great advantage. Your CTA actually exists in one place only, so if you need to make changes, you can do it at one place. For instance, if you want to try a more effective label, you won’t have to go through all your pages. You only need to go to your Call to Action plugin, do your edits and you’re done!.

Use Gutenberg to create a Call to Action button

If you use Gutenberg, WordPress’ block based editor, you don’t even need a plugin for creating a CTA button. Gutenberg has its own Button block which is perfect to create your next amazing call to action!

With Gutenberg, you can configure your button in a visual way, like you can edit any other block. You can select different colors for the background and text. You can also choose the button style, which can be the default “pill” type of button, outlined or square. That’s enough for any kind of button you’ll want to create!

Creating Call to Action with Smart Slider 3

Smart Slider 3 is a powerful tool to create gorgeous sliders and blocks for your website. You can create fully responsive sliders and you can add Call to Action buttons to them. Best of all, you don’t even need the Pro version of Smart Slider 3 for this. Even with the free version of Smart Slider 3 you can create eye catching CTA for your WordPress site.

How to create a gorgeous CTA with Smart Slider 3?

Smart Slider 3 makes it super easy to create your own CTA. Simply create a new slider, add a slide and put down a button layer. You can completely customize the button to create a converting CTA. For example, you can change the color and font size to create the perfect WordPress call to action for your site.

What is the Gutenberg editor?

Before you can learn about the best Gutenberg plugins to add to your site, let’s see what Gutenberg is. Gutenberg is WordPress 5.0’s new editor to create content for your site. Gutenberg brings a new idea to create content: using blocks. What’s a block? A heading, a paragraph of a text or an image. To make it simple, a block can be anything you can add to your page or post content.

Gutenberg is a visual editor and it’s super easy to use. It allows fine-tuning of content in a way that was only possible with shortcodes before. The future is the visual editing and Gutenberg does a marvelous job at supporting this.

A nice touch for WordPress theme developers: Gutenberg allows customizing its editor. They can make the backend editor look and feel like a frontend editor. For example, Gutenberg can use the font family and size at the backend, what the frontend uses. Theme developers can change the content width, set background color, and many more.

How to use Gutenberg?

When you create a new post or page in WordPress 5.0 or above, Gutenberg will open. Using its visual editor, you can write your next most trending post, or create a stunning page. Everything is visual and live, so you’ll see the result right there.

Using Gutenberg couldn’t be simpler. Type the title of your post or page to the large “Add title” field, then start creating content below. You can use many different blocks to create your content. You’ll probably use the paragraph, heading, image and button blocks the most. But you can easily add a list, video or a simple gallery with Gutenberg.

What are the best WordPress Gutenberg plugins?

Every website is unique and has its own needs. Because of that, many developers have created custom blocks for the editor and released it as a plugin. As a result, many amazing WordPress Gutenberg plugins were created for the community.

This means you will find what you need for your website for sure. On the downside, having many plugins to choose from makes it complicated to find the plugin you are looking for. To help you with your quest, here’s a list of some of the best Gutenberg plugins you can find. Best of all, they’re all free plugins. So let’s dig in!

1. Gutenberg Blocks – Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg

Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg is one of the most popular plugins for Gutenberg. The plugin offers many useful widgets. Additionally, after installing Ultimate Addons plugin, you won’t need to waste time to figure out which new content was added. The developers have created their own panel, where their blocks are easily accessible.

Some of the coolest blocks you can create: advanced heading, testimonial, social share, content timeline, blockquote (with an option to tweet the quote). There’s also a table of contents block which is useful for bloggers. It automatically reads every heading from your post and creates a table of contents for easy navigation. The block updates itself, so you don’t have to maintain it. Gutenberg blocks is really trying to be the ultimate blocks plugin for Gutenberg.

2. Kadence Blocks – Gutenberg Page Builder Toolkit

Kadence Blocks is yet another popular WordPress Gutenberg plugin. In this plugin, you can enable or disable the blocks you need. This way you can keep your editor nice and clean, without showing options you’ll never use. They also create their own panel to access their blocks in one place.

Some of the coolest blocks they have: Spacer/Divider, Advanced Button, Tabs, Info Box. You can also create an accordion layout where you can adjust the content of each tab by moving any block. I like how well this integrates with the Gutenberg experience.

3. Atomic Blocks – Gutenberg Blocks Collection

Atomic Blocks offers a handful of useful blocks to enhance your posts and pages. The plugin’s header shows some interesting icons which I have expected to see in Gutenberg. After seeing their colorful banner, it was disappointing to see that their icons are so simple.

Some of the best blocks are: Notice, Drop Cap, Profile Box, Sharing (you can use this to share on Facebook or Twitter). They integrate with Mailchimp and have a handy block to allow adding a newsletter subscription block. The pricing block they have is one of the coolest blocks I’ve seen.

4. Stackable – Gutenberg Blocks

Stackable – Gutenbergs Blocks extends your Gutenberg editor with a list of colorful blocks.

Some of the coolest blocks are: Notification, Blockquote, Team Member and Call to Action Button. They also have a separator block that looks like the Shape dividers in Smart Slider 3. My favorite block from them is their Card block. You can use it to create a block with an image, heading and description.

5. Advanced Gutenberg

Advanced Gutenberg by JoomUnited is yet another WordPress Gutenberg plugin. It promises to add all the missing blocks and configuration you need to build professional websites. Indeed, they offer some unique but useful blocks to enhance your website.

Some of the coolest blocks are: Advanced Accordion, Video, Count Up and Social Links. Another block I loved is the Login/Register Form block. Many people want to handle the login and registration outside of the /wp-login.php for some reason. Advanced Gutenberg Blocks makes it easy to create a page and have a login/registration form inside. For this reason, many website owners will love JoomUnited’s plugin.

6. Gutenberg Blocks and Template Library by Otter

ThemeIsle’s Gutenberg Blocks plugin starts with a cool tour to learn the basics of their plugin. Some of the options they show are targeting developers (like the option enable the Custom CSS module), so it might worth disabling it during the tour.

Some of their best blocks are: About Author, Service and Pricing. What’s cool in this plugin is that they don’t only offer blocks. They offer templates (created with Gutenberg blocks) to help those who don’t have an eye for design. To add a template, add a new section under the Otter panel.

7. WooCommerce Blocks

Ecommerce is blooming. Because of this, it’s not possible not to add a Gutenberg plugin with eCommerce features to our list. Meet WooCommerce Blocks which is the most popular Gutenberg plugin to add WooCommerce blocks to your post or pages.

The most notable blocks are: Featured Product, On Sale Products and Products by Category. I love the Reviews by Product block, as it’s very useful for promoting any product. The Newest Products block is also great, especially for landing page building.

8. Page Builder Gutenberg Blocks – CoBlocks

CoBlocks has some interesting features some of which target business owners. For example, they have a Hero block which you can use to create a beautiful hero section for your website. There’s also a Contact form block which you can use to add a simple contact form to your page. A contact form can help you get new clients (e.g. if you’re a photographer) so they are important to have.

If you run a restaurant, check out CoBlocks. Their Food Item block will be super useful to display your menu. Their Social Profiles block seems to allow the most social sharing features compared to the other plugins on this list.

What’s the future of Gutenberg?

Gutenberg is already fantastic, but still has lots of room for improvement. As a matter of fact, there are many ways to move forward with such a versatile plugin. Luckily, the developers are full of amazing ideas about the future of Gutenberg.

What are these cool ideas? At the moment, Gutenberg is only responsible for content creation at posts and pages. The developers’ plan is to extend this and make Gutenberg the menu and sidebar editor as well. In other words, they plan to replace the current widget system with Gutenberg blocks. This sounds like an excellent idea, and we’re curious to see how it goes.

Conclusion

Gutenberg block editor is the future of creating content in WordPress. It will make the editing experience consistent across different parts of your site. Because of that, WordPress will be easier and faster to use and learn for everyone. As a result, more and more people will be interested in building their site with WordPress.

The only question is how long will it take for Gutenberg to revolutionize how you can work with your WordPress site.

The post What are the best Gutenberg plugins? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

In this post, I’ll walk you through the basics of Gutenberg so you can see how it works, and then I’ll show you how to add a slider to a post using the Gutenberg editor. Lastly, we’ll take a look at some of the different types of sliders you can add using Gutenberg that make great additions to posts.

What is Gutenberg?

Gutenberg will soon be the new visual editor for WordPress. The existing visual editor hasn’t changed much at all since WordPress was first released back in 2003. Since then, other platforms have come along with simplified writing experiences that make WordPress look old-school. Basically, Gutenberg is WordPress’ attempt at catching up with the cool kids.

Here’s what the classic editor and the Gutenberg editor look like side-by-side:

When you put together a page or post with Gutenberg you use “content blocks,” which are basically blocks of text, headings, images, and other media. With blocks, you can achieve what might otherwise require shortcodes or custom HTML.

Work on Gutenberg started in early 2017 and it’s still a work in progress. You can download it as a plugin from WordPress.org and try it out. It’s slated for release with WordPress 5.0 but there’s no set date. Some say it might be released later this year or even early next year.

I’m firmly in the “love it” camp. I’ve had Gutenberg installed on my site for a few months now and it’s been cool seeing how the interface has changed with every update.

As a writer who’s been working with WordPress for many years, I think Gutenberg is a breath of fresh air and well overdue.

I mean, why shouldn’t WordPress be as easy to use as Medium?

Working with Gutenberg and Content Blocks

After installing and activating Gutenberg, it will become the default visual editor for your WordPress site. You’ll notice a new Gutenberg menu item at the bottom of the sidebar, which includes a demo (which we’ll explore below).

You’ll also see links underneath your posts that let you switch between using Gutenberg and the classic editor.

If you haven’t used it yet, let’s take a look at how it works using the demo post:

On the right, you’ll see the sidebar has been copied over from the classic editor. It hasn’t changed all that much and still includes all the usual options, such as updating visibility, and post time and date. Underneath, you’ll see meta boxes for categories, tags, and featured image, as well as excerpt and discussion.

The “Publish” button has been moved to the top right, and you can still preview posts. When you click the click cog, it hides the sidebar so there’s even more room to write.

If you’re wondering how to switch to the code editor, just click on the three dots in the top-right and you’ll see the option there. With all this familiar kind of stuff out of the way, let’s dive into working with content blocks.

Using Content Blocks

On the left you’ve got a big ol’ space for writing. It’s especially convenient for laptop users (like myself!) who struggle using the classic editor’s bulky interface.

To access content block, click on the “+” icon in the top-left. You’ll see “most used” blocks displayed first, but when you scroll down you can access other blocks for formatting, layout, widgets, and a ton of different embeds for everything from YouTube and Twitter to Spotify and SoundCloud.

Let’s take a look at how these blocks work. The demo already has a title and when you hover over it, you can click anywhere within the block to edit the text. Clicking on the block also brings up the option to edit the post’s permalink.

Underneath the title is a cover image block, which is a new concept for WordPress. This type of block lets you display text over an image, or just an image without text. When you click on this block, it displays options at the top for editing the image, including replacing it and alignment.

Options also pop up for editing the text to make it bold, italicized, or to add a link. Strangely enough, there’s a fourth option for adding a strikethrough.

Adding and editing text is super intuitive. Gutenberg treats each paragraph of text as a separate block, so when you type something and hit ‘enter,’ a new paragraph block will be automatically created so you can continue writing.

When you click on a paragraph of text, you get options for aligning and formatting the text, and also adding links and strikethroughs.

Overall, Gutenberg is really easy to use and it takes no time at all to work out how to use it. I would suggest installing it on a staging site before adding it to your live site, just so you can get a feel for how it works before you start playing with post on your live site.

Adding Gutenberg Sliders to WordPress

The Smart Slider 3 team have been working hard since Gutenberg was announced to ensure that sliders are compatible.

And I’m happy to tell you Smart Slider 3 is compatible with Gutenberg! When you update SS3, you’ll see a new slider content block the next time you use Gutenberg.

Here’s how to add Gutenberg sliders to WordPress using the new Smart Slider 3 content block:

1. First up, install (or update) Smart Slider 3 so you’re running the latest version.
2. Click on Smart Slider in the sidebar, create a New project and choose the Start with a Template option.

3. Choose the template you would like to use. I’m going to go for a simple image slider.

4. You’ll be redirected to the editing screen for your imported slider. Go ahead and make any changes to your slider.

5. When you’re ready to add your slider to your post, open it up in Gutenberg and click the content blocks icon. You’ll see Smart Slider 3 has been added to your “Most Used” list of blocks.

6. When you click it, a new slider block will be added to your post. If you don’t have a block in your post currently selected, by default your slider will be inserted at the bottom of the post. If you do have a block selected, it will be inserted underneath your highlighted block.

7. Click Select Slider and your sliders for Smart Slider 3 will be displayed. Choose your slider and it will appear in your post.

8. There’s one more easy way you can add sliders to your post: When you add a new paragraph content block, you’ll see three little icons in the bottom-left of the block, including the Smart Slider 3 icon. When you click it, you can then insert a slider.

And that’s all you need to do to add a slider to a post using Gutenberg. Even easier than copy+pasting a shortcode, if you ask me!

The only difference is that this post focuses specifically on what’s happening in the WordPress world. Because there’s a helluva lot going on right now. Gutenberg, mostly. ThemeForest is still dominating as the go-to marketplace for themes. Page builders aren’t going anywhere. Then there’s the REST API and the Tide project.

In putting this post together, I looked at hundreds of themes to see what’s hot and what’s not, and talked to WordPress designers and developers to gauge their thoughts on this year’s theme and design trends.

Here’s what I found.

1. Gutenberg

Gutenberg. Everybody’s talking about it. So I can’t not mention it first. Whether you love it or hate it, 2018 is going to be the year of Gutenberg. It’s slated for inclusion with WordPress 5.0, which at the time of writing doesn’t have a release date, just sometime this year.

If you’ve been living under a rock during the past 12 months, Gutenberg is basically a new page builder that will add content block and page builder-like functionality to WordPress. When in use, it will replace TinyMCE as the default content editor.

There’s been a lot of healthy debate going on around Gutenberg. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg has been pushing for it and you can read his thoughts on it here: We Called it Gutenberg for a Reason. WP Tavern has published an exhaustive collection of posts and conversations about Gutenberg here: A Collection of Gutenberg Conversations, Resources, and Videos.

Since 2010, there’s been a default WordPress theme released each year with the exception of 2017. Mullenweg said the decision to skip a year was to “keep the focus on the focuses,” for WordPress core last year, which were the REST API, the Editor and the Customizer. There will be a default this this year, however, with Mullenweg promising at WordCamp US that there would be “extra cool stuff for next year” in the Twenty Eighteen default theme.

The upcoming merger of Gutenberg into core has kept theme developers on their toes, particularly those that have products with drag and drop. Robby McCullough, co-founder of Beaver Builder, said the page builder was “in a bit of a limbo period awaiting the arrival of Gutenberg.”

“The initial release of Gutenberg is not going to provide an alternative for what Page Builders are doing now, but we know the core team is going to tackle site customization next. Our strategy is to double down on developers and web professionals. Big names in WordPress like WP Engine and Crowd Favorite trust and use Beaver Builder. We want to continue to focus on stability and features that cater to professionals and power users.” – Robby McCullough, Beaver Builder

2. More Hand-Drawn Illustrations

As far as actual design trends go, let’s kick off with illustrations and custom graphics, and how we’re seeing more of both. In past years, developers and designers have relied heavily on stock photography to fill out imagery in themes. But heading into 2018, we’re seeing the work of illustrators and graphic designers take center stage.

Take web host Kinsta‘s recently redesigned homepage, for example. The completely custom graphics are eye-catching to say the least. Imagine if they’d used a stock photo instead?

Brian Jackson said the competition in any WordPress niche or space was pretty fierce and to stand out, having the best features or prices wasn’t enough.

“Your design, brand, and illustrations also need to catch people’s attention. When our team discussed the idea of needing a complete refresh, there was no hesitation in outsourcing this to a professional local design agency. Even three months after launching our new site and branding we’re still working with the agency and designers to help improve other areas of our service, such as the UI in our hosting dashboard. Unless you have amazing in-house designers, let the professionals do what they do best! Working with an outside agency was a great investment for us, both timewise and getting the quality of work we wanted.” – Brian Jackson, Kinsta

It’s interesting that more and more WordPress companies are using the talents of illustrators. WPMU DEV and Yoast, for example, both have in-house illustrators on staff who create all of their custom graphics, animations and blog post feature images.

Julian Savio, the designer who creates all of WPMU DEV’s illustrations, said illustrations were able to trigger interest and create instant connections with people in a way that stock imagery couldn’t.

“Unlike stock photography, illustrations can be be uniquely created to explain complex topics, emphasize an article’s theme, or simply created to compliment a client’s site – something that would be very costly and time consuming to achieve even with an in-house photographer.” – Julian Savio, WPMU DEV

Outside of WordPress, one of my favorite examples of how illustrations have been used effectively is the meditation app Headspace. As John Moore Williams describes in his design trends round-up for 2018, “illustrations can be very powerful in bringing more abstract concepts to vivid life.”

Williams notes that illustrations can neatly resolve representational challenges posed by photography. In recent years, off-line organizations have scrambled to ensure any photography they use features a diverse mix of people. You’ll notice that Headspace’s illustrations leave specifiers like race, gender, nationality, and much more undefined, making it easier for us, as Williams notes, “to project ourselves into the role of that lone thinker, contemplating the creative possibilities illuminated by a guiding light.”

3. Bolder Typography Choices

Big, bold typefaces have been on trend for a couple of years now and you can expect to see more of it this year. Not only are bigger fonts ridiculously eye-catching and hard to miss, but they fill white space well and allow businesses focus their message.

ThemeFuse’s Dimi Baitanciuc said it wasn’t too long ago when using custom fonts on the web meant having to include them as rendered images with JavaScript.

“It was a mess. Now you just embed Google Fonts (it’s free), Typekit (if you want a premium top notch option) or even a custom font you purchased. The access to thousands of custom fonts empowered designers to create very cool typography on the web. I think typography will always be an important aspect, and we’ll continue to see great typography in websites in 2018.” – Dimi Baitanciuc, ThemeFuse.

Serif fonts are also everywhere right now. They’re classy and bring to mind feelings of elegance and literary polish, both of which are evident in Themes Kingdom’s Collecto theme:

4. Broken Grid Layouts

Designers are breaking free from the constraints of grids, creating rule-breaking layouts with images and text that overlap and converge. Some designs even look like they are unintentional errors that are the result of broken CSS.

A quick scroll through ThemeForest and you’ll see the majority of themes play it safe, sticking to the same ‘ol layouts they’ve been using for years and trying to secure sales using tried and trusted designs techniques. A bit boring if you ask me. However, some themes like Albert are embracing modern trends.

Outside of WordPress, sites like Surfers Against Sewage and Roccafiore Winery use broken grids more subtly.

5. CSS Grid

“…the web is about to become a much more beautiful place than what we’re accustomed to,” according to Robin Rendle on CSS-Tricks who goes on to explain that CSS Grid is the “first real layout system for the web.”

“It’s designed for organizing content both into columns and rows and it finally gives developers almost God-like control of the screens before us. That means that we can finally ditch decades of hacks and workarounds for setting elements on a web page – ultimately it means that complex layouts and beautifully typeset pages are now not only possible but easy and maintainable.” – Robin Rendle, CSS-Tricks

Themeco’s Kory Wakefield, a lead developer for the popular X theme, said that with all the incredible new layout power that CSS Grid offered, he was excited to see what creative solutions developers would come up with to age-old layout problems, not to mention the potential for new design patterns and approaches compared to flexbox.

“I might even go so far as to say that using CSS grid for all layout considerations is better in terms of consistency, a more readily apparent mental model, and greater control over the relationships between cells across rows. I also love that I can create “self-referential” layouts that respond to element size rather than global media queries using CSS grid’s minmax()function. It gives me just a tiny glimpse of what using “container/element queries” down the road might be like if we ever get to see such features developed, and it’s a very powerful tool to have at your disposal.” – Kory Wakefield, Themeco

6. Brutalism and “Ugly” Websites

Big, bold blocks of web safe colors, lots of white space (though it usually isn’t white), color combinations you’d never think to use (think blue and pink), and even links that are hard to find… yes, you’ve stumbled across a site with a brutalist design.

Brutalism comes from the French word for “raw”. At first, many brutalist websites look like a horror show of random images and clashing colors and fonts. But there is some method to the madness. Well, sort of. Interestingly, fashion websites such as Gucci and Fiorucci have embraced this trend.

7. Louder, More Vibrant Colors

Dropbox made a splash and got designers talking when it launched its redesigned website, surprising everyone with its bold use of color, a huge departure from its previously clean design.

We’re going to see an excess of colors online this year as designers say goodbye to web-safe colors and continue to experiment with bolder color combinations and super-saturation that looks amazing on retina screens.

There are explosions of color on ThemeForest, especially when you search for newer themes. Pinata is a fun example and offers multiple homepage designs using lots of bright colors.

Inside The Head, an online publication inspired by the delusions, confusions and illusions experienced by young adults, used bold, block colors in combination with gentle animations.

8. Dynamic Gradients Are Back

In 2018, they’re making a come-back in their own right with loud, bright colors. We’re also seeing gradient filters over photos – a great way to breath life into less interesting images. Take the Ivery theme, for example, which features a large photo over a gradient background.

The folks at Wyde Themes who created the Ivery theme said gradients were on-trend for two reasons: they allowed for unique color combinations and were memorable.

“As you know, there are not enough different colors in order to let brands create their unique identity. When using gradients, you can fade two or more different colors so you have something that feels like a new color and unique. Also, we don’t see gradients in web design a lot. Our eyes catch them as something new. We remember these unusual colors much better than usual and flat colors. And, of course, being memorable is exactly what you want for your design.” – Wyde Themes

Stripe is a prominent example of a site that uses gradients to create a sense of movement.

The great thing about gradients is that they can provide an on-trend solution for sites that lack photography, illustrations or other imagery.

9. Microinteractions and Animations

The things about microinteractions is that they’ve become so pervasive now that when you come across a site that doesn’t have them, they tend is feel a bit boring and lifeless.

These small moments are the little bits of magic that delight and surprise users. At the same time, they provide the subtle animation needed to direct a person’s attention to the right content at the right time, ensuring site visitors don’t miss crucial links of copy or important CTAs.

The popular Bridge theme uses microinteractions beautifully in its Bakery demo, bringing to life the everyday elements you would find in a kitchen as the homepage loads.

The designers at Qode Themes who create Bridge’s demos said thanks to touch devices and apps, users had come to expect microinteractions online.

“We think that striving to integrate or to replicate similar functionality for WordPress themes is very good because users who are already used to this will recognize similarities and they will appreciate it. In short, when you are used to something which is good, you don’t want to change it, and offering the same thing will make users comfortable using your product. Designers have recognized this, and we think that the popularity of this trend will continue for some time.” – Qode Themes

10. A Greater Emphasis On Copyrighting and UX Writing

“Words are really important because the graphics don’t make sense sometimes.” So says John Maeda, Automattic’s head of computational design, in his 2017 Design in Tech Report.

As it turns out, code isn’t the only unicorn skill. Copywriting, and more specifically user experience writing, is finally being acknowledged as necessary to web design. It’s still an emerging field, but as Google explains, the role of a UX writer is someone who helps “shape product experiences by crafting copy that helps users complete the task at hand.”

MailChimp is my go-to example for UX writing. If you’ve ever used it, you’ve probably felt a little pinch of anxiety just after hitting send on an email that’s going out to thousands of people. The folks at MailChimp know that feeling, so their email success message helps lighten the mood:

By itself, the animation is fun, but it doesn’t mean much without the words that go with it and provide meaning and context.

As a UX writer myself, I’m really excited to see that copywriting is becoming an important role in web and product design. Interestingly, more and more theme developers have reached out to me in recent months, asking for help with copy because Lorem Ipsum just doesn’t cut it anymore.

11. Sliders Will Become Even More Pervasive

I want to say that sliders are making a coming back, but the truth is, they didn’t go away in the first place. Whether you realize it or not, sliders are everywhere.

I wrote about sliders recently for this blog and provided extensive proof of the pervasive nature of sliders in modern web design, how companies big and small are using them, and that – for the record – they don’t suck.

I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, so check out the post for more. But here’s a sneak peek of one of my favorite modern implementations of a slider:

12. WordPress REST API

The REST API has been around for a couple of years now and while WordPress development agencies are using it extensively to build custom projects for enterprise-level clients, it’s yet to become a mainstream inclusion in everyday themes.

There are some themes that use the REST API, such as the Wallace theme and Foxhound, the latter of which is a React-based them and the first in the WordPress.org directory to use the REST API endpoints included in WordPress 4.7.

At last year’s WordCamp U.S. Mullenweg said the REST API still needed a lot of work to make it a “first-class citizen” in the WordPress world. So it will be interesting to see how it evolves and how agencies continue to use it to create WordPress projects that look nothing like WordPress.

13. The Tide Project

Last, but not least, I want to mention Tide, a project that XWP, Google, Automattic and WP Engine have teamed up on in an effort to raise the code quality of themes and plugins across the WordPress ecosystem. As Rob Stinson explains on the XWP site:

“Tide is a service, consisting of an API, Audit Server, and Sync Server, working in tandem to run a series of automated tests against the WordPress.org plugin and theme directories. Through the Tide plugin, the results of these tests are delivered as an aggregated score in the WordPress admin that represents the overall code quality of the plugin or theme. A comprehensive report is generated, equipping developers to better understand how they can increase the quality of their code.” – Rob Stinson

The project is still in development and, according to WP Tavern, the Tide team is continuing to experiment with different ways to making the plugin audit available data, as well as refining how the data is weight when delivering a Tide score.

13 + 1: Elementor Page Builder

If you want to create posts and pages for your WordPress website, then a page builder plugin is the best way to do so in 2018. Elementor is not only the fastest growing page builder, but also one of the most popular WordPress plugins of all time less than two years after launch. With over 800.000 active installations, and a 4.9 out of 5 stars rating based on 720 user reviews.

“Elementor Theme Builder is the perfect all-in-one tool to take your theme design to the next level. Visually customize your header, footer, single post and archive page without using any code. Take control over your theme design, customize different styles for different blog categories, edit ACF content. What used to take hours of PHP code can now be done in minutes.” – Ben Pines

What Do You Think 2018 Will Hold for WordPress Theme Design?

Looking back on what’s I’ve covered in this article, there’s so much going on right now in design. I had to leave some things out, such as page transitions and unexpected scrolling rates, that were trending in 2017 but look to be sticking around this year.

It’s great to see so many theme designers and developers experimenting with the latest design trends and creating some truly gorgeous themes. But at the same time, it seems some theme authors are stuck in the dark ages and haven’t updated their themes in years.

Do you have a favorite trend or one you think I’ve missed that you’d like to highlight? Let us know in the comments what your WordPress design predictions are for 2018.

The post 13+1 Design Predictions for WordPress Themes in 2018 appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.