From MicroCreatives

Your website’s design is one of the most crucial elements that can either drive away or convert a visitor. Excellent web design can spell the difference between a poor and a fantastic user experience, which, in turn, is influential in helping you reach your business goals.

Statistics show that 2 in 3 users prefer to read beautifully designed content, making a visually pleasing and functional web design vital in achieving your business goals.

With the ever-changing trends in the web design industry, you’ll have to keep watch of what’s new to stay relevant and attract clients and customers. Below, we’ve covered the latest web design trends that will help make your site stand out. Let’s dive into it!

ANIMATION AND MOTION EFFECTS

With the right execution, animations and other motion effects can serve your website for the better. It can introduce your brand and demonstrate context or data visualization (e.g., grammarly.com) in an engaging way.

Animations and motion graphics add fun and magnetism to product or content pages, aiding visitors into the buyer’s journey or sales funnel. Plus, moving images come in handy when keeping a visitor’s attention while a page is loading or when a user encounters an error code (like what 9GAG does).

When injecting animations in your site, place careful consideration on your mobile visitors. Make it responsive to any device, so it provides the same experience for all users, regardless of the device they are using.

A MIX OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND GRAPHICS

Combining or overlapping customized graphics over real photographs brings about an interesting and compelling visual—for instance, a collage-like style to inject whimsicality. You can also use the imagery to communicate complicated concepts more interestingly, like in technology. This is where designers are free to pour in their creativity.

To make this more effective and attention-grabbing, match the style or design of the graphics with your brand personality, like what this website did.

IMMERSIVE 3D ELEMENTS

Three-dimensional imagery adds depth and a great sense of realism to concepts. Moreover, interactive 3D designs encourage people to stay longer on a website, especially when it’s taking up the whole screen.

The trend is quite surprising and still relatively new, but it’s something you can expect to see more of this year, as 3D elements in web design draw users in and level up the interaction game for them. Take a look at this 3D object at Salt & Pepper’s home page as an example.

MINIMALIST WITH MAXI TYPOGRAPHY

The modern style and limited color palettes in minimalist designs aim to keep the visitors’ attention to the essentials, such as the products and services, content, and brand messaging.

However, it’s ever-evolving nature—and lots of white space—offers just enough room for making a statement with the use of eye-catching maxi typography. With this style, the text takes center stage to get your message across in a bold way. For instance, sendamessage combines minimalism with a maxi typography approach and an interactive design to motivate visitors to engage with the website.

GRADIENTS V2

Using gradients instead of solid colors is a creative way to add vividness to flat layouts. It also makes it more visually pleasing. They’re versatile enough to play with and use in various contexts, such as an accent to call-to-action buttons or a background for a page. Take this funky example from Spotify.

VINTAGE STYLE IN MODERN WEB DESIGN

This one’s a blast from the past. Expect to see more websites donning a touch of the retro style from the ‘50s and ‘60s as it’s becoming an instrumental source of inspiration for many designers.

The color, font, noise, dust, black-and-white images, muted tones, and other effects that remind you of the yesteryears will become more present this 2020. The Harvard Film Archive’s website presents a mix of these elements, along with other trends, such as noise effects, retro font, and use of animation.

ARTISTIC ILLUSTRATIONS

Artistic elements add personality and authenticity to a brand’s website, such as using line-style, abstract, or contemporary drawings. Combining any illustration style with animation makes for more imaginative, creative, and active storytelling.

All these can also help you communicate better and convince your visitors to stay longer on your site, giving them enough time to explore your page, develop interest, and even take action. This websiteshowcases line-style drawing paired with animation to walk visitors through the history of Heschung, a French footwear company.

DARK MODE

The year 2019 introduced the ultra-modern and aesthetically-pleasing world of dark UI, so much so that more and more apps and brands are offering both light and dark mode options to their products. It’s a great design that improves visual ergonomics by alleviating eye strain while making other design elements stand out more (i.e., a product image or typography).

To keep up with the trend, you’ll see a wave of websites embracing the dark side. Apple’s overview page of their iPhone 11 Pro adopts the dark interface well.

SCROLL-GENERATED WEBSITES

The push for technological innovation allows web designers and developers to offer an out-of-this-world visual web experience. Scroll-generated sites monitor the users’ movement to display contextually-relevant information as they scroll through the page.

Often, animation effects and motion graphics are showcased in this style, for it adds dynamism and an extra layer of meaning to the content, making it more interesting and memorable for users. Apple’s iPhone 11 Pro page also exhibits this style.

BENDING TYPOGRAPHY RULES

Traditional typography rules are tried-and-tested in helping you select, combine, or arrange text styles and appearances for optimum readability.

This year, more designers are set to bend these rules for stylistic choice, without compromising readability (e.g., spacing, sizing, effect, etc.). This works when you consider the color scheme, design theme, and effects to ensure that it works well with your typography.

Makers & Dreamers flips typography in a polished manner. The clean design, excellent color choices, and complementing fonts still manage to make it easily readable.

SERVE YOUR VISITORS WITH EXCELLENT WEB DESIGN

The look and feel of your website have the power to attract more leads. A website plagued with intrusive design elements or one that’s implementing an out-of-date style can make a visitor hit the X button quickly.

Take note of these trends to guide you in redesigning your website for better user experience (and to boost your sales). Not quite sure where to start? You can outsource web design services to help you create a functional website that’s also a visual treat! Create a memorable experience for your site visitors—grab their attention and lead them down the funnel.

SOURCE: https://www.microcreatives.com/general/web-design-trends-2020-infographic/