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Technology is evolving at a sky-rocketing rate and the web design industry is no exception. Every year, we see the emergence of burgeoning design elements and styles, and clairvoyants take it upon themselves to predict the web design trends rising on the horizon and projected to alter the landscape of website design.

Some elements when implemented carefully, help brands in telling their stories and explaining their business values. Other elements work to improve how content looks on different screen sizes. While it’s not necessary to include all cutting-edge web design trends that come about every once in a while, many of them have real potential to improve the user experience.

Tech advancements in the web industry make it necessary for brands to redesign constantly or be lost to oblivion. But for many marketers, CEOs, and designers, website redesign is a scary thought. To stay ahead of the game in this fierce business world, brands have to stay modern, relevant, and up-to-date.

Sometimes it is mandatory for a brand to redesign its website. Imagine if major brands such as Facebook, YouTube, Dropbox, Google, and more didn’t revamp their website design from time to time in line with the most up-to-the-minute trends, would they still be as eminent? To make your website redesign a huge success, here are a few striking and beautiful website redesign examples for your inspiration. So that you can learn from their successes.

Let’s get into them!

Dropbox

To make Dropbox even better and user-friendly, they have updated their website design and put in a few functional tweaks for the ease of users, such as a simple navigational switch between linked accounts. A grid view to browse files, the addition of a homepage, allowing users to view their team members, and the addition of checkboxes that permit users to take action on files.

Twitch

Twitch is a live-streaming video platform that has recently undergone a website overhaul to enhance navigation, to focus on the video stream. The shaded video section lends even more focus and hierarchy that goes to create an amazing visual effect against the header banner imagery in the backdrop.

Facebook

The wildly popular social media platform has undergone many website remodels. But this time they went a bit further and threw in bucketloads of features, ads, and pages to their layout. The redesign is mainly focused on the visual language, with added modifications and spacing permeated throughout. The outcome is a remarkable interface that obscures much of the extended functionality and is easier to understand, even for average users.

Google

The awesome redesign of this search engine giant is immensely impressive due to the proliferate use of Material guidelines. Instead of going off on a tangent, the team of designers has brought it in line with many of the brand’s other web products, such as Google Drive, Docs, and Keep. The use of their signature blue color is a clean addition that gives the design a clutter-free look.

Trello

This renowned web-based project management application has come up with a user-friendly and simple user interface design and styling. The updated version of their website leverages depth-styling, muted colors, and different design cues from Material Design. The outcome is a perfect embodiment of a visually attractive design, offering improved contrast, clear call-to-action elements, and more spacing peppered throughout the design.

Volkswagen

This website redesign is a perfect embodiment that makes use of striking typography and diligently selected graphical images to enhance the design. The newly-formed structure offers a great deal of visual interest while adding a number of key components such as matching input and other important specifications such as pricing and more.

Twitter

Twitter has refreshed its look and feel to make it feel lighter, faster, and easier on the eye. They have taken an entirely new approach to fix the flaws inherent in their design.

They have amalgamated profiles, additional accounts, and settings all under one umbrella. The side navigation menu and some tabs at the bottom make it easier for users to peruse through their site. They have refined the typography, with the addition of more bolder and vibrant headings to make it easier for users to see what’s happening. The use of more intuitive icons makes the tweets more engaging and lends the design a clutter-free look.

LinkedIn

The new layout of LinkedIn is all about a more comprehensive visual hierarchy. The simplification of LinkedIn is well-structured and spacious. The use of large visuals, including profile pictures, creates a more enticing and inspiring design.

YouTube

YouTube's fresh look puts video content and creators that you love most at the front and center with a clean and simple design. The layout is built on a faster framework and the new dark theme cuts down the glare and allows the true colors of the videos that users are watching to bask in the limelight. The layout is being updated to bring it head and shoulder with the Material Design aesthetics.

IMDB

IMBD is one of the most popular and authoritative sites for movies, TV, and celebrity content. They have refurbished their look and the results are pretty awesome. They updated their homepage to bring all the information above the fold line so that users can easily find the latest trailers, top ten, news, and shows on air.

The new, intuitive search feature gives instant results. The new Discover feature opens up valuable information and interactions in a bare amount of time. In addition, the Detailed Sheet gives you media-related news, reviews, and recommendations.

Over to You

Website redesign is not an easy feat. In fact, it is a pretty big investment. While redesigning your website, you need to keep the latest web design trends, user experience, and site functionality in mind. To give your website a fresh look, consider the above-cited brand examples and make your website redesign process a huge success!

No list pertaining to the top digital marketing trends is complete without a stolid mention of video marketing. Video marketing isn’t exactly a novel notion. But this year, it is well poised to carve a niche as an integral part of digital marketing. More and more businesses are projected to rely on this medium to promote their products and services. Considering the skyrocketing popularity of videos on the web, popular social networking websites are introducing new features tailored towards video content.

If you have not jumped on the video marketing bandwagon yet. It is time to start using video as a marketing tool because video marketing is the future of digital marketing. Period. The ubiquity of video marketing is projected to reach unprecedented heights this year and marketers are ready to take the plunge.

Also Read: Videos are Reshaping Brands and Transforming Digital AD Industry

Here is an infographic that highlights seven reasons why you must use video marketing and why it is the best thing invented since sliced bread!

By profession, I am a computer science graduate. I did a graphic design crash course and right after that, I designed a brand logo for an eCommerce website. Luckily, I got selected as an intern in that firm. So, the first lesson I learned after venturing a foot into the professional world was that education never stops, and no matter how well-drilled and erudite you think you have become, it is your skills that get people’s attention in the market. I am a devoted learner of life and business. My first job in an eCommerce store taught me a lot. I was usually the first to cross over the threshold at work and was no stranger to burning the midnight oil. I was so deeply immersed in the system that I wanted to learn everything happening in my industry, and everything else that was going on beyond my field of interest. The reason behind, right from the time when I could identify a dog from a cat, and count my secret stash of chocolates, It was my dream to start a brand and make it a thriving success. My interest took root in ecommerce and I wanted to build my own store and sell things online. I gathered experience in digital marketing, delved deep into how to drive massive traffic to my website, and started brainstorming ways to turn those visitors into clients! My journey began with a website, a graphic designer, and a customer agent who was my friend. In the earliest days of our fellowship, we whiled away the time playing checkers because we received no orders. The day of deliverance arrived at last when we got our first order. Although it was a small value order, I was over myself with joy. In fact, everybody was excited to get the ball rolling at last. Since I considered myself rather a newbie back then, I became the jack of all trades, getting my feet wet in everything, failing continuously in the effort to juggle multiple facets simultaneously, and learning from it. Which was certainly a bad decision, because our time on this planet is numbered, and in that time, we need to eke out a decent living, make an impact, and die happily. But, as they say, life is not all rainbows and flowers. In life, everything is defined by moments. In some moments we succeed, and in some moments, we learn. Failure is inevitable. but I believe in taking risks & sharing my knowledge with others. So, here are the lifelong lessons which I learned along the way in pursuing my business idea.

1. Spend Time in Creative Imagination

“Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.” ~ Albert Einstein There is so much talk about mindfulness and meditation. But people find it difficult to maintain focus while they ruminate. The best way to meditate is to solicit a place of blissful solitude, close your eyes, and lose yourself in a higher dimension. Now, use the power of silence to immerse yourself in the taste of success and feel the sweet savor of accomplishment tantalize your tongue. Imagine your website receiving record traffic on that day. Customers place an order on your website and feel happy about it. You are delivering orders with ease and your bank account is adding figures by the day. This is one form of creative visualization that I have consistently capitalized on to achieve the impossible. The second stage of visualization is to be more creative with your mind's eye. Going outright wild with it. Here you need to envisage the bigger picture in your mind. If you can portray your grand success in your mind, you will be able to achieve it soon. Instead of squandering your energy on Pokémon and other such distractions, use your imagination. We’re all blessed with a beautiful mind that can create incredible things.

2. Take Online Courses for Free

This goes back to the idea of gleaning knowledge for the sake of gaining skills. No matter how accomplished you become in any field, there will always be new developments and things that you are oblivious to. The good news is that there are tons of online courses that you can jump on free of cost, and get drilled in without spending a dime. There are myriad great course offerings as well, such as Udemy and Coursera, they are offering a wealth of priceless courses at a very limited cost. When I first launched my website, I got the idea in my head to jump into the social media realm on my own. So, instead of hiring an agency, I invested my time and efforts in watching YouTube videos. These courses helped me with garnering a basic understanding of social media and I was able to jump-start the brand. After the initial success, competition got stiff and I was forced to look into the SEO. Again, I invested three whole days on the internet, watching videos and tutorials, and learning various methods on different forums. If you invest time in something, you get results. And once again, my brand was able to stay afloat in the competition.

3. Mastering Social Media Marketing

If you are willing to generate sales and expand your reach, you need to ace your social media marketing game. There is tough competition out there, and if you want to differentiate yourself from the competition, you need to reach out to the maximum people and get yourself heard. One of the lessons I learned is that the ‘world needs you. Despite all the competition out there, there is still room for your brand. Develop a social media strategy around some core values. Be authentic, be passionate, and be user-friendly to your customers. One of the best lessons I ever learned is that the world absolutely needs you. It wants you to be YOURSELF and be truly unique. And it most certainly doesn’t want you to sit on your butt and waste your talents. Be yourself and like anything, learn from the experts, who are succeeding at creating beautiful, inspiring messages on social media.

4. Learn the Art of Converting Connections into Raving Fans

"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." ~African Proverb Independence is good. But you cannot build a startup on your own. You need to solicit help from others. Social Media is a sure-shot way to build strong relationships & foster bonds with your customers. You need to hear Seth Godin talk about building a tribe. This tribe will become your repertoire of raving fans, who will become your ultimate brand ambassadors. You don’t need a master’s degree in psychology to understand the desires of your customers. You just need to analyze data with the right tools that are available in the market. Gary V in his book, “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook”, talks about doing two things for the customer before asking them to reciprocate a favor. Offer something. Offer something different. Ask for a favor. Repeat. Once you meet more people, you’ll keep learning and growing. And you’ll gain allies and fans of your own who will help you build your brand.

5. Focus on Execution

 “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ~Sylvia Plath Persistence is the key to success. As an Entrepreneur, you will face tons of failures. But make sure that those failures don’t stop you from trying again. Think. Execute. Fail. Try again. Fail harder this time. Eliminate time wasters and focus on executing your ideas. In your business, try different strategies. Some will work. Some will not. But, real success comes from failing with consistency. When hiring anyone in Google, they must mention more than one incidence of failure on their resumes, which goes a long way towards providing a testament to their courage and how they dealt with adversity and came out stronger.

To Conclude it All

Starting a business as a brand seems like a bed of roses. Contrary to popular belief, “they got lucky,” there is no such thing as luck. Luck, itself is the doorway that opens with hard work. In my whole career, if there is one advice that I want to give out, it is never to stop educating yourself. When the world is busy focusing on the competitors, take out some time for self-improvement. Until one day you will be successful yourself, and people will call it an overnight success or a fluke of luck.

Entrepreneurship blogs are valuable resources for business professionals seeking insights, inspiration, and guidance. Back in 1995, a computer programmer set up a small online auction on his personal website, known as AuctionWeb. His personal project turned out fruitful when the massive amount of website traffic entailed him to upgrade to a business account. This person eventually had to start charging people and hired help to manage payment checks. Within a few months, his venture transformed into a lucrative and popular web-based business that made internet history. Do you know who I am referring to? Pierre Omidyar, the Founder of eBay is renowned for revolutionizing the way people buy and sell stuff. The internet realm is replete with such entrepreneurial success stories that never fail to inspire and inculcate in you renewed waves of determination and enthusiasm. Successful entrepreneurs are often hailed as super humans, but in reality, they are regular people, just like you and me, who made it big with years of industrious labor and perhaps sometimes, a fluke of luck. History is abounding with entrepreneurs who started out without ample financial backing and yet within a few years, they found thriving success in the fields where they had no prior experience and turned their startups into coveted multi-million empires. Starting a new business is no easy feat. If you are planning to launch your new business or ready to experience entrepreneurial success in 2018, get ready to work hard. In order to help you launch or run your business successfully. Here are the top 8 entrepreneurship blogs that can be used as a source of motivation, to instill you with detailed insights, up-to-the-minute ideas, the most cutting-edge technology development bulletins, networking opportunities, and much more. Check them out!

1. O'Reilly Media

O'Reilly Media is an American media company founded by Tim O'Reilly, which has been named “the Oracle of Silicon Valley” by Inc. Magazine and “The Trend Spotter” by WIRED. The internationally recognized, multi-faceted company delivers online learning and publishes books and websites. The technology and business learning company runs many conferences in an attempt to motivate business owners to create more value for their customers. O'Reilly Media’s experts always strive to transform the world by spreading and amplifying the knowledge of innovators. You can learn about emerging technologies and business trends at O’Reilly Media and hone your entrepreneurial skills. O’Reilly’s Safari online platform offers live comprehensive training, videos, and books from more than 200 of the world’s best publishers.

2. Vinod Khosla Blog

Vinod Khosla is the founder of Khosla Ventures - a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that assists entrepreneurs in running technology-related businesses. He is a great entrepreneurship resource that is the hub of the latest insights about artificial intelligence, big data, leadership, marketing, product, sales, enterprise, and other important topics that can help small business owners launch and grow their businesses.

3. Zomato Blog

If you are looking to kick-start your restaurant business, the Zomato blog is a great platform that shares the latest food trends, must-visit restaurants, business tips for restaurant owners, and how-to guides to help you boost sales of your food business. Deepinder Goyal is the CEO of Zomato and is always looking for innovative ways to deliver the most pertinent online restaurant information, reviews, menus, pictures, and other important details.

4. Ellevest

Sallie Krawcheck is the CEO of Ellevest, a digital investment platform for women entrepreneurs, launched in 2016. The sole reason for Ellevest’s existence is to serve women’s needs by capitalizing on an algorithm that keeps women’s incomes and lifestyles in mind. The blog helps women entrepreneurs gain valuable insights on financial planning, investment tips, guides, and other important business strategies a woman might need to run her business successfully.

5. Startup Lessons Learned

Eric Ries is an American entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller, ‘The Lean Startup’. His blog, Startup Lesson Learned, is one of the finest entrepreneurship resources for small business owners that helps them navigate the choppy seas of launching a profitable business. Leveraging his out-of-the-box techniques and winner strategies, entrepreneurs can also come up with winning ideas to make their startups successful.

6. Biz Warriors

BizWarriors is a great platform for business owners, operated by two serial entrepreneurs, Matthew Toren and Adam Toren. The blog shares stellar tips and tricks for small business owners, the latest technology trends, effective business strategies, and useful information that enlighten entrepreneurs to stay ahead in this digital age.

7. Daymond John Blog

Daymond John is a businessman, investor, author, and motivational speaker. His blog is abounding in the best practices and strategies that help business owners expand their brand reach, increase sales, promote their business, and other valuable pearls of wisdom that help them grow and take their venture to unprecedented heights of success.

8. Barbara Corcoran Blog

Barbara Corcoran is a businesswoman, speaker, consultant, and investor. Her blog helps entrepreneurs, business managers, and salespeople learn about the how-to’s of building a successful business. She shares team-building tips, the latest business trends, and essential guides on how entrepreneurs can stay on the right track, in addition to useful snippets that almost every business person is keen to learn about.

Over to You

Whether you are already running a successful business or passionately contemplating launching your own, the above-cited blogs can provide you with all the quintessential information, the right tools, invaluable nuggets of advice, and everything else that you need to run your startup or small business in 2018.

To revive your content marketing, focus on creativity and adaptability. Start by repurposing existing content into different formats, such as turning blog posts into videos or infographics to reach a wider audience. Experiment with interactive content like quizzes, polls, and live streams to engage users in new ways. Collaborating with influencers or guest contributors can bring fresh perspectives to your content. Whether you are a digital marketer, a small business owner, a content marketer, a social media expert, or a blogger, at one time or another you have likely writhed at night, riddled with a content conundrum. In this digital age, consumers demand updated information to stay up to date and meet their needs. To keep your audience updated and engaged, your brand needs to create meaningful, top-notch, and engaging content. Producing valuable content can help you attract more new customers while keeping the existing ones engaged. But coming up with fresh, new ideas, that haven’t already been used anywhere else can be tricky, especially if your products or services are highly competitive. Producing great content marketing ideas takes a lot of time, practice, effort, and experimentation. It is an in-depth process that requires detailed knowledge about your brand, as well as a willingness to look for new methods, the latest tools, and inspirational sources so that you can bring your content to life. Here are a few easy and effective tips to revive your content marketing game in 2018 and  create out-of-the-box and awesome content marketing ideas to leave your readers in awe:

1. Use Instagram

In order to figure out what type of content is resonating with your target group, it is advised to find and follow up on the most popular hashtags within your community. You can identify top industry influences and thought leaders in a particular niche and then start looking for the hashtags these influences are using. Clicking on those tags will give you the most famous content items that you can use as a source of inspiration for your own blog or content marketing campaign. Instagram now allows you to follow hashtags, making it easier for brands to track what type of content is faring well with different audiences.

2. Use Quora

Quora is a popular Q & site that empowers people to ask questions and glean unique insights and quality answers. In essence, it’s a great place to share and gain knowledge. You can quickly skim through Quora to stumble upon the latest questions that are related to your industry. Also, you can leverage“top stories”, “trending” and “questions” to garner deeper insight into queries about your niche. You can even write a post to solve any real-life problems and dilemmas that your target audience might be bugged with.

3. Get Yourself on Pinterest

If you haven’t already used Pinterest to post your visual content, it’s high time to start testing out the waters. If you are a web design agency, you can post fonts textures, book covers, film posters, abstract art, the latest graphic design trends, quotes, and anything else that draws the attention of your audience. Pinterest is brimming with amazing photos and inspirational quotes that can definitely spark your creativity. If truth be told, it is an amazing hunting ground for creative ideas that you can use for creating your next blog post. Find out the type of content that people are re-pinning and commenting on, and jump on the ideas for your next content marketing campaign.

4. Stay Fresh with Twitter

You can use Twitter to generate exceptional content ideas and regularly follow up to see what people are tweeting about. There is a flood of ideas coming out every fraction of a second, regardless of your industry. Find out keywords, topics, and questions related to your industry. Use the Twitter search option by probing keywords and hashtags and you will get the desired results pertaining to them. You can simply check what is trending on Twitter, and if the trend relates to your industry, what’s stopping you from capitalizing on it.

5. Create Video Content

Needless to say, people can never get enough of this medium and want to see more video content, especially short, informative videos that solve a problem or answer a question. If you provide your audience with valuable content in the form of videos that have a propensity to help them solve their real-life problems, you will soon become an authority in your field. Record a screencast demo video showing your audience how your products can improve their lives. Create a thank you video for your customers, film short testimonials from real customers, or simply create an informational video showing your audience how to perform a specific function of your tool/product. You can also turn your previous blog posts into how-to videos. In addition, you can inform your audience about your company’s mission and values by using the power of video storytelling. Creating more video content can also broaden your brand reach, since you can connect with a host of new audiences across myriad platforms such as blogs, YouTube, social media, and search engines. If you consider Asana, this knowledge-intensive and easy-to-digest video has wonderfully explained the features of their product to help out their customers.

6. Use ‘Answer the Public’

Answer the Public is a great tool that aggregates data from search engines, such as Google and Bing, and identifies important queries being searched around any given topic. All you need is to enter a topic or a brand and it gives a collection of related useful terms to help you come up with a detailed post.

7. Survey Your Users

To find out what ticks your audience, you can use Survey Monkey to ask a question on Facebook and Twitter. Invite your users to reply and confide in you the problems that they are facing and what questions they have in their minds. When you engage with your readers, it makes it easier for you to create content that is readable and shareable.

Your Turn

Creating an endless supply of fresh and unique content is a tough nut to crack. However, content creators can produce interesting and fresh content by following the above-mentioned content-generating ideas. So, are you ready to come up with some awesome, valuable content to improve your content marketing efforts in 2018 and to better connect with your audience?

Can incorporating a little bit of fun influence your users' buying behavior? Meteorologists did a little experiment on the stairs with UX design, to see how people would respond to it. Instead of the normal staircase that people are accustomed to, they transformed the staircase into a piano. Check out the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw Did you like it? Can you relate to it? Yes, you can. Why? Because instead of a simple flight of steps, it is now a well-designed masterpiece. The same goes for the UX design of websites. If you alter the UX design of the website, keeping functionality intact but tweaking the aesthetic appeal, it piques the curiosity of new users and forces them to take a sojourn through your web space. When you provide your users with an enhanced user experience, it gives them a reason to trust you and stay with you for a longer period. "On the web, usability is a necessary condition for survival."  - J Nielsen Now the question arises. What triggers the behavior of users to buy online? Certainly, everyone is an Entrepreneur. But not everyone is the same. A professional custom website design agency can surely put your apprehensions to rest, but if you want to stay in the business for long, you need to ensure that the UX Design of your website is engaging enough to convert visitors into customers. Coming back to UX Design – the real purpose of UX Design isn’t just providing the end-user with a dazzling experience, it is about designing a digital experience that replicates the physical experience. The goal of a great UX Design is to enthrall and capture the users, not drive them away from the website. Without wasting more time, let's dive into the world of UX Design & how you can design an experience that users will love to refer to their friends.

Let’s Start with Scarcity

The principle of Scarcity states that people tend to want what they don’t have. We value things that have a mortal lifeline and are prone to be unavailable to us soon. Thus, we tend to undermine those that are in abundance. In a study conducted by Achewole, Lee, and Worchel in the year 1975, we tried to figure out how people would respond to cookies placed in two identical jars. Jar A was filled with ten cookies, while jar B contained only three. People were asked to take one cookie from any Jar that they liked. Which Jar do you think people found more attractive? Even though the jars were identical and so were the nature of their constituents, people made a grasp for Jar B. Perhaps even more interesting, the researchers also concluded: “Cookies were rated as more valuable when their supply changed from abundant to scarce than when they were constantly scarce.” This is basically a common supply & demand problem. As availability takes a hit, the demand soars up. The same goes for UX Design.

How You Can Apply Scarcity To Your Design

Time-sensitive Deals

Set Sales Deadlines, limited-time discounts on abandoned cart items, or time-bound purchases for next-day shipping. Similarly, adding a stock list is the most efficient way to grab user’s attention

Principle of Reciprocation

An ancient seed of wisdom still holds true centuries down the road. Do something good for someone, and they will happily do something for you in return. Give your users something useful first, and then ask them for a favor. I can happily venture that they will be happy to oblige! Randy Garner – a social scientist conducted a study in the year 2015, on whether hand-written notes can increase the response rate of a survey. One-third of the participants were presented with a survey with a personal hand-written note, asking them to complete the survey. The other was sent a blank post-it note without any preamble. The response: Not only were the hand-written surveys completed with a double response rate, but the quality of the answers was better as well. Author and psychologist David Straker said, “The inner tension created in the gap between receiving and giving is often so powerful that we will give anything in return just to reduce this discomfort.”

How to Leverage Reciprocation in Your Design?

Give valuable information for free. This can be in the form of eBooks, tips, checklists, cheat sheets, podcasts, or videos. Or you can even ask for information from the user and they will love to take part in the competition.

The Salience Principle

In a website, users are drawn to information that is most relevant to them. By identifying those moments which turn users towards you, you will be able to upsell things by influencing the users with additional offers. Imagine if you go to Sears.com to look for a brand-new refrigerator. When you visit the website, what will catch your fancy: an ad for their financial plan, or finding the right fridge? So, while fridge shoppers are not interested in the financial plan of the company, they are most likely to turn their gaze toward relevant information pertaining to the specifications of the new fridge.

How to Use Salience in Your Design?

The best kind of up-selling is during the checkout process. When the customer seems ready to finalize a purchase, it presents the perfect time to add something extra that won’t bother the customer.

Social Proof

When people aren’t sure what to do, they look for clues, and they seek out other people to clear their doubts. This is what we call social proof in action. According to Robert Cialdini, the NY Times best-selling author, “Whether the question is what to do with an empty popcorn box in a movie theater, how fast to drive on a certain stretch of highway, or how to eat chicken at a dinner party, the actions of those around us will be important guides when it comes to defining the answer.” If you want those confused users to buy from you, you can always try to influence those customers by revealing the reviews of other users.

How to Use Social Proof in Your Design?

You can start by selling on the big brands, and show your affiliations with the high-octane brands. Customer reviews: Or even social counts work wonders!

To Conclude it All

If you want your UX Designs to accomplish your business goals, you need to master the art of persuasion. Using the triggers above gives you infallible influence over your users and turns those design experiences into leads. If you know any other ways in which UX Design influences users, feel free to share your valuable tips.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the social media giant that we cannot bear to part with for 5 minutes, is undoubtedly a true inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs. He is one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs who never fails to innovate, inspire, and create. This self-made billionaire has given modern consumers a new horizon to the world of virtual reality. With the launch of Facebook, his dream of making the world more open and connected has been realized. “Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected.” – Mark Zuckerberg Do you want to know what put Zuckerberg to the top of the echelons, and different from the rest? What traits does he possess that separate him from those he has long crossed over? How has he successfully crafted a billion-dollar empire for himself? Also Read: Introducing Facebook Portal Here are some reasons why following in his footprints can take almost every business to new heights of success. Being an entrepreneur, you must follow the key traits that made Mark Zuckerberg a huge success.

1. Move at a Fast Pace

“Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.” – Mark Zuckerberg If you are not moving at a fast pace, you are going to be left far behind in this maddening race. Zuckerberg developed the very first version of Facebook in his spare time from within his college dorm room. He built a successful product quickly and launched it. He believes that instead of waiting for the right time that never seems to come, just start doing whatever comes to your mind and leave the rest to fate. Moving fast is something that enabled him to build more things and learn quickly. When you move slowly, you will miss out on a plethora of opportunities that would have been yours for the taking. But sadly, most entrepreneurs are afraid of breaking through the glass ceiling, getting out of their comfort zone, and making mistakes. The key here is to move fast, and it will ultimately turn out to be a huge success.

2. Never Be Afraid of Taking Risks

“The biggest risk is not taking any risks… In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”– Mark Zuckerberg He is never afraid of taking risks, especially when it comes to Facebook as can be judged from all Mark Zuckerberg quotes. He ignored his important calls and meetings and turned down countless investors just to focus on his project. It might seem hard at a glance, especially when you work so hard on your dream project day in and day out. What matters most is to keep that fear of taking risks at bay, and keep your head high while continuing to work on what you have set your heart to. Mark Zuckerberg harbors a strong faith in his product and is always ready to throw caution to the winds and venture forward. “So many businesses get worried about looking like they might make a mistake, that they become afraid of taking any risks. Companies are set up so that people judge each other on failure.” – Mark Zuckerberg

3. Believe in What You are Doing

“The question I ask myself like almost every day is, ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?’” – Mark Zuckerberg It takes a lot of time, patience, and determination to become successful. You have to put in hours and hours of hard work to build your company up from scratch or launch your product. And it is only possible when you truly believe in and enjoy what you are doing. Also Read: Mark Zuckerberg Testimony: 7 Memorable Moments From The Event “Find that thing you are super passionate about.” – Mark Zuckerberg Mark Zuckerberg truly believes in his work and team. He thinks that finding the right people for your business is essential to make your product successful. Zuckerberg believes in hiring smart people, experts in their fields, and share the same values and commitments.

4. Dream Big

“People think that innovation is just about having a good idea but a lot of it is just moving quickly and trying a lot of things.” – Mark Zuckerberg Zuckerberg always had a clear sense of vision and big ideas in his mind about his venture. From the word go, he had an unflinching belief that the project he was going to start off would end up becoming a sensation. The courage to dream high and his consistent hard work, struggle, and passion allowed him to gain a competitive edge in this fierce business world. Not too many people have the courage to make their ideas happen. If you have a good idea, go ahead, and execute it before someone else picks your brain.

5. Don’t be Afraid of Competition

“Companies face a handful of different risks, whether it is competitors or different market environments. But I think that people focus way too much on competitors and not enough on their own execution.”– Mark Zuckerberg When Zuckerberg first launched his product, it was surrounded by a long list of competitors such as MySpace, Friendster, Orkut, and more. Each was quite prominent and in a far better position than Facebook. Many entrepreneurs don’t have the stamina and sufficient level of patience to survive in the competitive business world. But Zuckerberg and his team rolled out their product with careful planning and smart execution. He and his entire team always had a keen eye on their competitors and learned from the mistakes they made in order to come up with a successful venture.

6. Focus on the Long-Term Vision

“I’m here to build something for the long term. Anything else is a distraction.” – Mark Zuckerberg Mark Zuckerberg always wanted to work towards the long-term vision for his company to make the world open and connected, instead of beating financial expectations. Zuckerberg ignored many potential investors and countless service providers at first to save Facebook from deterring its long-term goal. Successful companies are built by focusing on a long-term vision, not capitalizing on short-term financial rewards.

Over to You

Every business can be just as successful as Facebook, all you need is a dare to take risks, make mistakes, learn from your competitors, dream big, and believe in your business idea. Every entrepreneur should adopt the key traits and entrepreneurial skills of Mark Zuckerberg that can definitely lead their business toward success. Read up on all Mark Zuckerberg quotes to glean a dose of inspiration.

Be it logo design, web design, or graphic design, trends evolve so quickly that it often becomes impossible to keep pace, even for those working in the industry. Akin to colors, typography has the power to generate emotions and can tell a lot about your brand personality. Due to this, it is important to choose typography that aligns well with your brand personality, especially when it comes to your logo, website, or graphics. Before choosing a typeface for your website design or logo. It is important to know what is hot in the typeface industry and what has become obsolete. This can help you choose the font that people will fall in love with and you can get maximum engagement as a result. Here is an infographic that highlights the ten biggest typography trends for 2018. Read on and set yourself up for digital design success in 2018.

On average, only 4% of people remember the facts and figures you present at a sales meeting or when pitching an idea to an investor. PowerPoint presentations drone on and on, eliciting nothing but a chorus of yawns and sleepy nods. So, the question remains, what makes a brand resonate with the audience and impinge on their memory for a long time? For this, you need to take a trip down memory lane, back to your childhood days. Apart from all the mischief you must have caused, there always came that time at night when you were all excited about the bedtime story you were going to be entertained with before sweet slumber claimed you. You might not remember every detail of your infancy, but I am sure, like me, you remember all the stories that you were told. Why? Because stories are what add meaning to our otherwise monotonous lives. Here is a not-so-common brand story that created tons of hype and touched people to the core, making them buy from Warby Parker: Brands find it difficult to understand that it is not fabrications and dull crunch numbers that steal the show. It is a compelling brand story that helps fortify your message and makes your business come across as relatable. If you can put out a story that relates to a solution that people are looking for, or a story that will touch them profoundly, people are sure to see the human side of your business. Gone are the days when people used to get away with cheap marketing tactics. Now is the era of storytelling. First, you need to understand the needs of your audience. Next, you need to create a story that capitalizes on one motion to fashion a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the customer. Sure, it might be difficult at first to create an experience, but once you come up with a coaxing story, people will automatically feel the pull.

Five Tricks to Create an Impactful Brand Story

1. What is your business objective?

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends on a good deal on where you want to get to." "I don't much care where –" "Then it doesn't matter which way you go.” ~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland This amazing line stemming from Alice in Wonderland speaks a truth that can relate to both life and business. If you are doing something without a clear objective there is no point in doing it at all. In business, you must progress by making timely decisions. And if you don’t have a clear picture of where you are going with the business, it gets difficult to survive. Set a clear objective. What is the need of the customer? With that need in mind, create a story that has a propensity to flare-up emotions. Also Read: Top Agencies Harnessing the Power of Visual Storytelling

2. Write it Like a Movie

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few years, it is that if you want people to remember your brand, tell your tale in the form of a movie. Reason? A movie consists of all the gamut of emotions that people go through, from the setup, the conflict, the tension, and the resolution. For instance, you can create a superhero during a conflict, and he meets a guide who helps him with the problem. The hero faces life-threatening problems while he resolves the problem, with the help of your product or solution.

3. Read it Aloud

This is quite impactful. While writing the story of your brand, you might miss some important points. But when you read it aloud, your brain frees up space for writing and focuses solely on the thing that is written. And one important thing that you need to keep in mind is that if you write words that you can’t speak, get rid of them.

4. If Your Mom Doesn’t Understand Your Story, Re-write

No matter how geeky your audience gets, if your brand story is not rendered in simple words, you need to redo it. Consider it a major brand victory when your mom gets your story. Even if she hates technology, but doesn’t look utterly befuzzled while listening to your brand story, and even nods incomprehension, you are done.

5. Compact it, as Much as Possible

The plot of a thriller movie travels like a bullet. If the story of your brand is not moving people, it is better to re-write the story. And one important thing is to keep the sentences short. A common man can grasp a 10-word sentence. Anything longer than that will not be registered by the human brain for quick recall. If the story is short, it will be easier for the customer to remember the story. Your story will build the foundation of trust, but only a customer’s personal experience will cement that trust into something that lasts for a lifetime. “We are much better storytellers than we are logicians.” ~Daniel Kahneman

Creative marketing is more than just putting a smile on people’s faces and grabbing their attention. Companies that create an artistic splash can capitalize on multiple strands. With the audience already clutching for straws in a deluge of information overload, brands need to come up with amazing, useful, and memorable ideas in ads to promote their message into the minds of their consumers or lose their identity to a nameless and faceless sea of oblivion. In this saturated digital environment, digital marketers need to make sure that their brand can be seen and heard while putting it at the forefront of people’s minds. Creative advertising that is easy, succinct, witty, and simply digestible can help you make a big difference. If you are up for a little magic and aspire to communicate with your audience in a way that they have not seen before, you can still make your brand stand out from your competitors. A creative ad can increase sales and heighten brand awareness. Coming up with some smart and amazing ways in which advertising affects consumer behavior will help brands create stronger, more memorable, and thought-provoking ads. Creative marketing is something that can make a difference, drive business performance, and shift consumer perceptions. 2017 saw myriad faces of marketing campaigns, running the gamut from digital to print to even statues. Here are 6 of the most creative and craziest ads of 2017 that will make you look twice and imprint their essence in your mind. Let’s get into it!

1. IKEA’s Special Offer for Pregnant Women

Who could have thought that pee advertising could be such a jaw-hanger? Pee on an advert and get a special discount. Sounds weird? Thanks to pregnancy test kits, this advert is all that people could talk about. IKEA has come up with a tongue-in-cheek approach to its marketing campaign that presents pregnant women with a special price on a new baby crib. At first sight, IKEA’s, which was initially featured in a Swedish women’s magazine, appears as a typical advert promoting the Sundvik baby crib. But if you read the description carefully, women are asked to pee in a marked area. It acts as a pregnancy test, showing a special discount offer on the baby crib when it detects a positive!

2. Nike’s Ad features Arab Female Athletes

Nike advert features five successful Arab female athletes from different parts of the Arab world exercising and competing. The brand has made a successful attempt to smash stereotypes about women leading home-bound and restricted lives in the conservative society of the Middle East. Nike aims to highlight the stories of successful professional women athletes to instigate others. In these inspirational ads, the brand wanted to use the prowess of sports to change society in a positive way.

3. Procter & Gamble: The Talk

Procter & Gamble, best known for selling myriad brands of beauty soaps, has come up with thought-provoking, heart-wrenching ads, known as ‘The Talk’. The campaign #MyBlackIsBeautiful aims to make the world a better place, devoid of bias, and offer an equal opportunity for success for everyone, regardless of race, gender, and the color of their skin. The two-minute ad depicts black mothers sharing the harsh realities of being an ethnic race, and the truths about racial stereotypes and bias spreading like wildfire in the U.S. This powerful #TalkAboutBias ad from P&Gis designed to celebrate cultural identity and launches a conversation about racial prejudices that children will inevitably face sometime in their lives. This type of great marketing campaign can change minds and inspire a real, lasting change.

4. "MailChimp" Campaign

Did You Mean MailChimp’ is one of the best marketing campaigns of MailChimp so far? The brand launched an artful campaign to play on its own name - MaleCrimp, MailChimp, KaleLimp, FailChips, VeilHymn, SnailPrimp, JailBlimp, WhaleSynth, and NailChamp. They all rhyme with “MailChimp. The company is not troubled by what people call it, but rather concerned about providing the right tools for their clients, while giving them the confidence to grow their company in the best possible way.

5. CNN Facts First

CNN, the most trusted tag in the realm of worldwide news, launched an ad campaign that differentiates CNN from other cable news networks. CNN’s ad campaign “Facts First” was a direct response to Trump’s attack on the media.   The short ad features a single, unchanged visual of an apple in a minimalist fashion. "This is an apple. Some people might try to tell you that it's a banana. They might scream, 'Banana, banana, banana,' over and over and over again. They might put a banana in all caps. You might even start to believe it's a banana, but it's not. This is an apple." The voiceover states.

6. Burger King “Flame Grilled”

Burger King has creatively leveraged photos of restaurant fires in its creative marketing campaign. The campaign “Flame Grilled since 1954” shows an unbelievable series of print ads, portraying real-life emergency scenes of actual Burger King Restaurants at times when it caught fire. The brand wanted to convey the message that no matter what the situation is, they always flame-grill their burgers, even amid disastrous upheavals.

Final Words

You have seen a barrage of ad campaigns hither and thither through the years, but the above-mentioned ones will surely inspire you to spruce up your next marketing campaign. It is awe-aspiring that brands of today don’t feel any hesitation to weigh in on some hot-button topics. Let’s see what 2018 has in store for the advertising world!