The Official Fluid Blog

Visual has snuck up on verbal and become the new darling of digital. What do I mean? Digital shopping, design and communication are now ruled by vivid imagery that aims to stop consumers in their tracks. This is a window shopping world of show and tell. Sharing becomes irresistible. Making a statement can happen without words.

What’s driving this trend? At Fluid we see four main factors:

1. Mobile (and tablet) first design: Mobile is no longer the second thought to web design. The minimalism and functionality needed to make mobile sing is where designers are starting. Strong mobile growth projections and the shift in consumer behavior towards mobile access are fueling this fire. Just ask Facebook and eBay. Responsive design fits into this niche nicely.

2. Facebook timeline: In January 2012 Sophos conducted a poll that found that 51.29% of respondents said Facebook Timeline worried them (32.36% said they didn’t know why they were still on Facebook). With the roll out completed these numbers have likely changed. 900M active users now see their history of interactions visually.

3. Pinterest: In February ComScore reported that Pinterest passed 10M monthly uniques faster than any stand alone site ever. In March Pinterest served up 2.3B page impressions to 4M unique visitors. That’s 4000%+ growth YOY. Pinterest serves as such a strong source of referral traffic that two things are happening: Digital commerce sites are proactively pinning on Pinterest and Digital commerce sites are adapting their site photography to make pinning to Pinterest easy (and appealing). At Fluid we think infinite scroll is Pinterest’s secret sauce.

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