2023 Web Design Trends: Scrollytelling, Integrated 3D, Innovative Animation & More!
It’s that time of the year again! Every new year brings new trends, newer learnings, and renewed opportunities. It’s a good time to reflect on what worked for you in the past and what didn’t work. How do you make the coming year stronger and more productive? Exploring the latest 2023 web design trends can certainly strengthen your skills.
How do you ensure your target audience is engaged when they land on your website? Applying the latest web design trends to some of your designs can certainly help them feel fresh, modern, and exciting. Learn how to help site visitors navigate, understand, and enjoy their website experience with these latest tactics.
Why You Need to Keep Aware of the Latest Web Design Trends
Every year, month, week, and day, more and more websites are launching online, which only means fierce competition. Your website may become stale if you don’t keep updating and upgrading your website experience. While great products, services, and the content will always be the top priority for search engines and your website users, you still need to stay relevant so competitors don’t poach your audience.
Technology like 3D animation, AI, and automation are game changers. You have to find the best mix of technology with targeted messaging to keep the attention of your website visitors and make it easy for them to understand your key offerings.
5 Key Web Design Trends To Keep Visitors Engaged
We’re going to discuss five key web design trends that can help you offer a better and more engaging website experience for anyone who lands on your website.
1. Inclusive Design
No matter how up-to-date you are with the latest web design trends, you’re missing out on a large user base if you’re not thinking of inclusive design. Think of people with permanent, temporary, or situational disabilities and how your website experience is designed for them. For example, think of someone with a cognitive learning challenge––does your website make it easy for them to grasp key information?
Or let’s say a person is browsing through your website while traveling via noisy public transport––will they be able to stay engaged with your best product video? Consider different challenges people could face because of their learning abilities, cognitive or physical limitations, or even situational challenges, and design your website with inclusivity in mind.
2. Scrollytelling
You may have used heatmaps and other tools to determine how far a website visitor scrolls on your website before they either lose interest or jump to another page. Chances are, if you have a static website, you would’ve noticed that users don’t scroll down all the way to the end. This is because static, text-heavy sections without a story throughout the page can make a user lose interest.
That’s where “scrollytelling” comes in. Every scroll should continue the story. You can make every scroll more interactive and engaging with animations, interactive widgets, and advanced design tools. Interactive scroll-based storytelling works to keep your users engaged.
3. Data Visualization
Numbers, statistics, pie charts, graphs––not everyone is a big fan of looking at data! While creating charts and graphs is better than raw numbers staring at you, web designers can get much more creative by visualizing important data.
Data can help reinforce your messaging and make a stronger statement about your products, services, or industry. But think about making data more engaging than just hard facts. Can you make it simpler to consume or add animation to make it more engaging? Help your website visitors visualize data better to help them make a more informed buying decision.
4. 3D Graphics, Art, and Animations
3D animations, art, and graphics have been around for a while, but they still dominate web design trends. Using 3D to showcase your products and services, allowing your users to play with 3D elements to visualize their needs, or simply using it to make your website more captivating are all great use cases for 3D.
Say, for example, you run an interior designing service website. You can use gamified 3D technology to allow your users to create a living room space or change the colors of walls or furnishings to see how they all come together. You can also incorporate simple 3D animations to make the website journey more engaging. Think of tiny elements critical to your user’s website journey and how you can elevate these with 3D.
5. Mobile Accessibility
Mobile accessibility is one of those web design trends that can never go out of style. It becomes more and more important every year. Most people today use their phones to access websites. Make sure your website runs effectively and as powerfully on a mobile device as a desktop.
When you’re thinking of web design trends like 3D, inclusive design, data visualization, or any other trend, ensure it’s adaptable to mobile. You want all your website visitors, regardless of their device, to have an engaging and impactful website experience.
Don’t Let Current Web Design Trends Become Your Web Design Crutch
If you’re like many web designers, following the latest trends and practices in the industry is standard practice. You read the latest news and updates from top blogs or websites that talk about web design and use that new knowledge to sharpen your skills. Maybe the latest trends make you try something different, or they validate that one of your go-to strategies is on par with the times.
One thing to watch out for is leaning too heavily on those latest trends. Even the web design trends we’ve mentioned above can be overused. Working the latest tips and tricks into every web design will not only become a crutch to your design skills, but your designs will likely feel stale much quicker than if you’re using your own ideas. It’s easy to get sucked into trends, especially if they’re cool or interesting, but be careful that they don’t change your style or heavily influence your process for the worse.
Looking to stay up to date with the latest design trends while still improving the efficiency of your business website? Reach out to the award-winning team at 3 Media Web to start your project today.