Web design must always be on-trend but also focuses on the user interface (UI) as UI determines the interaction between users and your website. 2021 – A new year has come but have new ideas come to you yet? Some of our suggestions below will inspire you as well as improve the UI of your websites in 2021.
Building an effective website has never been easy. An effective website is not only informative but also attractive. 2020 with many fluctuations has passed. Now is the time to think about website design with new trends. With the list below, we hope to help you temporarily forget the worries of 2020 with masks and hand sanitizers. We would love to present to you some of the trends that are likely to bring a breath of fresh air to your website as well as your sales reports. Design is always, so update the following suggestions to stay on-trend.
Deep dive into these 8 website design trends and you will get self-inspired:
1. More and more 3D visuals for website design
3D elements add a sense of uniqueness and dimensionality to any webpage. The 3D website is commonly classified into 2 main groups, including:
- 3D Workstation website design: This technology makes 3D web client/server-oriented, widely used with online web game form.
- Website model without installation: With this model, users will easily have a lively website experience.
3D web design tools usually have 3 main parts: static model (render), animation, artificial intelligence. In which, the artificial intelligence model is an important and complex activity. However, the effect of 3D is extremely high with realistic images.
These are some advantages when your websites use 3D visuals. First, 3D website design gives users a unique and different experience with realistic 360-degree images so that they can see, hear and feel like living outside the world. Second, businesses that own a 3D website will easily attract visitors by the prominence of images and interfaces. This gives your users unforgettable impressions of your website. Finally, 3D website design shows your serious and professional investment in the product to your client. As a result, this creates your web’s best competitive advantage with regard to UI.
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2. Multimedia experiences
Nowadays, the faster the internet speeds, the more multimedia web experiences pop up. Why do you need to expand this kind of experience?
Because bringing together visuals, text, video, and audio make for a rich user experience.
Without multimedia, your website will likely look like a huge wall of text. This can easily intimidate site users, and they might even navigate away from your site to find information elsewhere. Multimedia allows you to break up text in a way that allows users to consume it at a slower pace, instead of feeling overwhelmed.
Besides, multimedia contributes to a great user experience. Google is all about how well a website caters to the user. It means that when your web provides a good user interface, chances are it will be ranked a little higher on search engine results pages. Multimedia can also help decrease bounce rate because it entices users to stay on the page for a longer period.
Successful designs in 2021 will use constraint with multimedia experiences:
- Prioritize simplicity, like when combining motion and audio. Too much going on can be distracting or overwhelming to people with cognitive disorders.
- Use different media formats thoughtfully as a way to maximize the accessibility of content.
- Include alt text for images, and accompany complex images with longer descriptive text.
- Ensure that all text is made with HTML rather than rendered inside images.
source: webflow
3. Scrollytelling
A growing trend in designers telling stories has been seen through web experiences. This is where scroll telling comes in — visual storytelling that heightens the story and hooks you into its narrative.
Scrollytelling is the composition of storytelling and scrolling. It appears around the beginning of the 2010 decade as a format to develop and show stories in a new way. It is now a well-known format to dynamically tell multimedia stories.
The best applications of scroll telling practice restraint:
- Keep motion within a small area.
- Provide interactions on the user’s terms: provide obvious playback controls to play / pause/stop interactions and motions.
- Make sure that any scroll telling elements help to emphasize the story, rather than distracting from important text.
4. Audio in website design
When we talk about making content accessible, the sound is not always at the top of our list. But it does have a potential role to play. For example, websites that enable audio readings of printed text can be of help to users who are visually impaired. Text-based CAPTCHA fields, for instance, have offered audio alternatives for years. Many popular websites have embraced gamification as a way to keep users coming back. This is where the right sound effect can add to that sense of accomplishment. Look for something short and sweet to bring a smile to your loyal users.
Music provides a great vehicle for creating an emotional connection with others. And it’s not just for streaming services or the radio. Website product demonstrations, for example, can also benefit from a well-selected tune. A song with the right vibe can bring about positive emotion in users, potentially leading to the outcome of a more positive sale. They’ll quickly associate this sound with something good.
Offering audio as an integral part of a design removes accessibility barriers for those with visual impairments, and also benefits those who prefer to listen to a large chunk of text on a website.
5. A focus on muted colors for website design
Muted color is any hue that is highly saturated and adds a tone, tint, or shade to make it subdued and less bright. You often get a softer, calmer color as a result that is easier to work with, as well as match the overall web design. These colors and muted pastels were very intentional, and they speak to the modern-day culture and the masses. Being much easier to look at than sharp colors, they’re very conceptually fashionable too. Nowadays, UI designers should know that their color choices are actually their design choices, and color can indicate a lot, just like flow, content, usability, and function.
There are variations of the flat color palette that you’ve seen thousands of times, and oftentimes they just don’t fit with the design aesthetic you’re aiming for. Even when everything else appeals to it. This is where a muted color option can do wonders. It’s a classic, polished look that is different enough for it to stand out from all other flat projects.
Just think of using a light color palette, along with dark blocks of green. This makes for a distinct contrast between sections of this web design. These muted colors are the perfect backdrop to the hand-drawn styled text and illustrations. In the background, there’s a slightly buzzing grain that’s almost indiscernible, and a subtle distortion to the light and dark backgrounds, making the user interface feel very much alive.
6. Dark mode
The dark mode gives a cool effect to your website and it is perceived as trendy. When used properly, it can also complement bright icons and typography for easy reading. If users’ laptops or mobile screens have OLED displays, dark themes can also help them to save battery power.
Bright backgrounds make for brighter screens, which places more strain on your eyes. And when you’re working at night or in dimly-lit environments, bright screens can become particularly troublesome. Whilst not completely eliminating eye fatigue, dark modes help to give your eyes a bit of a break.
The dark mode is no substitute for true accessibility design decisions – it definitely can’t compensate for poorly chosen typefaces that are set at the wrong size or weights. Dark mode has its own design requirements. Simply inverting the background from light to dark and the text from dark to light, won’t do the trick. Instead, it should be carefully considered and tested. Making it an optional feature is a small way to make a potentially big difference to your users.
Two primary use cases when evaluating the need for dark mode: text-heavy websites with long-form reading like blogs and web applications that users are in for several hours a day.
7. Vintage fonts
Choosing vintage fonts can be a big benefit to your web design. In fact, this can bring a wide range of advantages, including:
First, supporting the style of your website. Minimalist or traditional, split-screen or grid layout, whatever style of web design you choose, there is a range of vintage fonts that can be used to support, or emphasize this. In fact, vintage fonts can even become the focal point that shows off your design style.
Next, attract attention. Vintage fonts are not the run-of-the-mill fonts that many websites repeat. Instead, vintage fonts add something a bit different to your website, which is sure to grab the attention of your potential customers and keep them interested. This means that they will be more likely to read your content, instead of skimming through it.
Finally, bold and defined. Other types of vintage fonts are bold and well-defined. These can help to “shout” your message, and really make sure that your headings will be seen and noticed. The biggest advantage of any retro style is that it evokes a sense of nostalgia and almost immediately creates a connection between the design with the user. Even without a brand or an icon, Modern Retro can make users say “Oh, I remember this.” Most designs will focus on fun, lightness, simplicity, and appeal to a young audience.
8. Parallax scroll animations
This effect we can see everywhere as we move: as we walk along the street, we see that all the closest moves much faster than the distant ones, as we drive a car, we can see that the trees and bushes near the road sweep a lot quicker, and the landscape behind, such as the mountains, moves very slowly. This effect is the Parallax movement. However, it is just used as a flashy effect or as a tool to emphasize or highlight important bits of content.
This effect can be applied to web pages: we can apply the parallax effect to blocks containing background images and some content inside. As we scroll the page, the content scrolls, but the background stays in place.
Remember that too much movement in parallax effects can cause disorientation and dizziness. Here are some guidelines we see more designers taking into account to ensure they incorporate parallax minimally and without causing harm:
- Don’t let parallax effects distract from the important information.
- Keep the number of parallax effects to a minimum.
- Constraining parallax effects within a small area of the screen.
- Include an option for users to turn off parallax effects.
It’s always exciting to see how web design continues to change, and the continuing momentum of the no-code movement. In Uway, we help you to design your website interface with your own ideas and improve it so that it can crazily impress your customers. We can’t wait to see how the user interface of your website could be more attractive together!
Feb 04, 2021
