Note: This is a guest post written by Corey Williams – To win the attention and loyalty of a potential client, a business needs a user-friendly website with an up-to-date design. If you are interested in trends in UI for web applications and websites, then this article is for you. You will learn about web design trends that will be popular in the near future.
How Users Shape Trends
Web design trends don’t just happen. They are formed by the leading companies in the industry and the users themselves. Most often, design trends appear as a result of the fact that global companies introduce technological innovations. For example, when Apple introduced the Retina screen with increased pixel density, this technology launched a trend toward ultra-thin fonts. On new screens, such fonts could be displayed without distortion and quickly gained popularity around the world.
The success of a new trend depends on how users perceive it. Most often, user experience is influenced by three factors: the visual design of the site, speed, and adaptability.
- Site appearance. A study by marketing company Blue Corona found that 38% of users will leave a site if they find the design unattractive or the content too complex or boring. At the same time, according to statistics, 75% of users judge a company by how its website looks.
- Work speed. 47% of users want their site to load in 2 seconds or less.
- Adaptability. Users make 31% of online purchases from mobile devices, while 90% of customers are ready to leave for competitors if the experience of using the site is unsuccessful.
By creating websites with a modern design, high-quality content, and adaptability to mobile devices, companies increase customer loyalty and, as a result, increase their profits.
What Will Be Popular In Creating Websites in 2023
Trends often appear and gain popularity quickly, but just as quickly disappear. By focusing on such fleeting trends, a business runs the risk of launching a website that looks dated. We will focus on sustainable trends that, according to many design studios, will remain relevant in the next 1-2 years.
New Minimalism
This is one of the most enduring trends followed by many tech and digital companies like Apple or Tesla. The main principles of minimalism are conciseness, a lot of free space, and the contrast of design elements.
Minimalistic design helps to direct the user’s attention to the main thing – text and images. Such sites are convenient and understandable, while they look aesthetically pleasing and expensive.
- Hidden navigation. Minimalistic web design often uses hidden navigation. To do this, the main links are hidden under icons or buttons. The user needs to click on them to see the menu and other necessary elements. If the site has hidden navigation, its design must be intuitive, otherwise, there is a risk of worsening the user experience. At the same time, this design is great for mobile versions of the site, since the screen size is limited on smartphones.
- Use of empty space. The free space between the design elements of the site allows you to control the user’s attention. You can focus on meaningful content: text, image, or headline.
- Minimalistic first screen. The first screen contains only the image and title. This is a rather controversial technique that goes against the principle of placing a call to action on the first screen. Nevertheless, it looks aesthetically pleasing and is increasingly seen in the design of commercial sites.
Animation
In modern web design, a lot of attention is paid to interactive animation. It is an animation that is based on user interaction. This includes animation of menu items and other clickable elements, the appearance of text with a fade-in effect, smooth scrolling, etc.
Such techniques create a sense of volume and depth of space and immerse the user in the atmosphere of the project. In addition, dynamic content with animated elements attracts more audiences and promotes better and faster results.
- Parallax scrolling. The main feature of such scrolling is its interactivity. When scrolling, the site constantly interacts with the user. For example, when swiping, animation starts, text and images gradually appear, or the background image slides down relative to the content.
- Videophone use. The video as the cover of the site immediately grabs the attention of the user. With the help of video, you can tell a person information about the project, so that from the first seconds the user can understand what the company is doing and what awaits him on the site.
Such a background can be used, for example, on a restaurant website. Instead of a text description, in a few seconds, you can show the new items on the menu, how dishes are prepared in the kitchen, or what events are held in the institution.
Creative Typography
Recently, the trend of experimenting with typography is gaining more and more popularity. This technique captures the user’s attention and allows the business to convey the character and mood of the brand through textual elements.
- Font combination. The combination of two different fonts in one phrase is increasingly common on the websites of different brands. In addition to local inclusions of another typeface, characters can be stretched, compressed, or distorted.
- Non-standard text layout. The non-standard position of the text, when the phrases are not located on the grid, at an angle, is suitable for creative projects. For example, the announcement of events or creative training courses. This technique makes it difficult to read the text, so you should be more careful with it and use it pointwise in projects when you want to select one of the blocks.
3D Elements
The trend for 3D objects has been popular for several years now. Often volumetric elements are used as icons, buttons, and illustrations on websites and applications. They look unusual and attract attention well. But if earlier it was enough to simply use three-dimensional shapes in design to make the site look modern, now you need to use more complex solutions, for example, creating animated 3D objects.
In 2023, the fashion style in 3D illustrations will be a new trend – clay morphism. Most often, this style involves images of funny figures of people or objects. Clay morphism is characterized by light, pastel, and bright colors, simple rounded shapes, mostly cylinders, and ovals. Depth is created using inner and outer shadows.
Wrapping it Up
When developing UI for websites and web applications, we recommend following stable trends. In this case, your site will remain relevant for several years. Use only those trends that reflect the nature of your business and are suitable for solving its problems. If you are looking for a UI for web applications service providers, we recommend that you contact Digiteum.
