Online users’ attention has become increasingly limited as more and more online businesses are popping up. Staying on top of the latest website design trends is an effective way to capture the fleeting attention of your audience.

Since the advent of the novel coronavirus pandemic, we have seen a rise in online businesses accompanied by the most innovative and engaging web design trends. In 2022, we see exciting potential and opportunities for even more creativity in website design.

So, let’s take a look at the website designs shaping the digital world in 2022.

Create Parallax Scrolling

Parallax Scrolling

Although it should be your priority to make all your text easily readable, you can also make your text dynamic to hold the attention of your visitors. Scrolling text elements can add emphasis to your key branding message as well as capture your target audience’s interest. The key to maintaining readability is that the speed of the scrolling text is slow and consists of short phrases.

Websites that offer horizontal scrolling can result in a surprisingly higher degree of inter activeness. This is particularly true for maps, catalogs, galleries and portfolio websites. When done the right way, horizontal scrolling elements can make a website more fun and memorable, which can increase your traffic, returning customers, and result in better conversions.

As far as vertical scrolling goes, websites that feature this element are often the least complex and the most accessible ones. Vertical scrolling allows visitors to view all the subject matter on a single page, just like a flyer, which prevents distraction and the need to use various buttons and links to navigate to other pages.

Introduce Micro-interactions

Nowadays, people have increasingly short attention spans. Due to this factor, most online users are obsessed with short-form videos, bite-sized blogs, quick how-to-guides, and social media platforms like Twitter, which allows them to express their thoughts in as few words as possible.

One of the most effective ways to play to people’s shorter attention spans is to incorporate small animations into the website as background images. You can do this at the top of the website page so that your visitor sees the moving images as soon as they land on the page.

A very simple yet helpful example of micro-interaction is a visual scrollbar, typically placed on the extreme right of the page that offers visual feedback to the reader by showing them where on the page they are scrolling. Another similar micro-animation is one where the user can see how much content on a given web page he has covered by showing them a percentage reading on the very top of the page.

Another very popular example of micro-interaction is the changing notification symbol. Typically, the notification symbol on a user’s account is shown with a bell sign. However, when a message arrives, the symbol may become illuminated and starts moving. It will also display a dot with a number in it that shows how many total notifications the user has received.

Micro-interactions and animations

It is important to pay attention to color and contrast when adding moving animations to your page so that they complement each other. If you are using neutral or natural tones for the background, then you should use bolder or brighter colors to highlight the moving images.

However, a web design service needs to be responsible when incorporating micro-animations since too many moving elements can be distracting and can also induce motion sickness in some people.

Bring Back the 90s

The 90s was characterized by bright and bold colors, gaudy styles, pairing chaotic varieties of shapes and patterns together, and typefaces like Courier. This was a time of experimentation and when graphic designing rules were not written – and hence, it was a time of unlimited and unrestricted creativity.

In 2022, several of these nostalgic retro trends have started to make a comeback. Designers have been able to create a sense of nostalgia and familiarity in websites by using typography and imagery with an analog feel, using retro image filters and fonts, grains, textures, pastel color palettes, and soft lighting.

Many retro-style websites are characterized by simple and geometric shapes with bright backgrounds. they feature vintage calligraphy and fonts, neon elements, pop art, and vintage elements like classic cars and radio devices.

With light textures and almost-invisible patterns in the background, the retro style will not create a dull or outdated look in contemporary times. One popular style is to use canvas texture  of parchment, old paper, wood, or rough-woven fabric with thin lines and strokes for a more antique look.

Go Bold With Hero Fonts

Hero typography can make a bold statement on your website. Basically, the purpose of hero typography is to eliminate or decrease the use of imagery and to highlight the main message using large and bold typography that are designed to impress.

Hero Typography

Attribution: surfrider.org

Instead of making your website look bare, hero typography caries a lot of impact and captivates audience attention from the clutter. In addition, they are also excellent canvases for showing off your own creative font or lettering style.

Create Contrasts with Color

Color is one of the most basic tools to rapidly grab attention and evoke specific emotions. Websites with starkly contrasting colors are targeted towards a specific niche. This style has a popping and vibrant esthetic and is filled with gradients, bright contrast, neon colors, and acid shapes.

In many cases, such website design is used in the music and entertainment niche. Depending on the elements and the details given to the design, you can choose to have a solid black background, with fuchsia or neon yellow shapes or images in the fore, as well as navigation buttons that change to acid green or bright red when you hover on them.

Go To the Dark Side

Night mode or dark mode websites are fast becoming a trend in 2022 as they not just increase the aesthetic value but also have a few different useful functions.

Dark mode websites are often preferred because they are not stark and bright, thus reducing eye strain, which is a concern for people who spend a lot of time looking at screens as well as the elderly.

A great example is the Master Class website, which offers dark background and softer, muted color elements on its website. Another example is the Jack Daniel’s website that comprises of black and dark amber tones, which are soothing to the eye.

Night Mode Website

Attribution: masterclass.com

If you are going for aesthetics, the dark mode also offers a chic and super-urban look for your website, as well as allows you to highlight important elements by playing with various gradients and shades.

Embrace Minimalism

Flat designs, also known as minimalistic designs, are not new and are often used hand in hand with white space. However, it doesn’t have to have white space to be minimalistic. This type of design is characterized by a bold background with minimal images and design elements and clean text, which is easy on the eyes, but not boring.

An interesting effect of these designs is that they look very modern and elegant but are not very expensive to create. In addition, they allow your main products and services to take center stage and help you stay with your branding message.

One important focus of minimalism is the use of white space, also known as negative space. This space is free from graphic or textual elements and delivers a clutter-free look to the website, which reduces distraction.

White space is an excellent option for all sorts of websites that need to improve their readability. Keep in mind, though, white space is just the term used for the empty space between elements – it does not have to be white in color as long as it is empty.

Offer Accessibility to All

There is a growing need for conscientious web design that takes into account the needs of people with disabilities. Having a website that every single person can interact with and navigate means excellent customer experience and points to your exceptionally good services. In addition, it can also allow you to access a wider audience, boost your SEO and increase conversion rates.

Some elements that can improve accessibility are high contrast between the background and the text and images; incorporating elements like bright outlines around links that appear when using keyboard navigation; using alt text for images, etc.

Become Inclusive

Gender-neutral designs are quickly being adopted across the globe. Obviously, the biggest step is to eliminate unnecessarily gendered elements, like full pink sites for self-care products and aggressive alpha-male themes for weapons and camping equipment since all genders buy self-care products and camping gear and weapons.

In addition, it has now become standard practice for many websites to offer multi-gender options and pronouns in menus and forms. In fact, if your website does not absolutely have to add these options, you can simply take them out.

When writing copy, the new norm is to write ‘they’ rather than ‘he’ or ‘she’ when the gender is not specified. In fact, many e-commerce stores are becoming more inclusive by not categorizing clothes in gender-based categories to make their products more accessible.

Offer More Interaction

Adding interactive elements to your website can help provide a lot of value for your visitors, allow you to learn more about them, and increase their engagement.

Some common interactive elements in websites are quizzes, polls and surveys, contests, calculators (for financial or real estate companies), free downloads, short forms, high-contrast buttons, videos, and social media sharing.

One of the most popular interactive elements on websites that is being used by beauty, fashion, and lifestyle brands is virtual product testing which allows users to try on products virtually. An example is Georgio Armani and Sephora which allows users to upload their photo and virtually try on cosmetic products that can be bought from Sephora so that customers can see their effects in real-time.

Interactive Elements

Attribution: modiface.com

Interactive infographics are another example of interactive elements, and add another level of interactivity and movement and dynamism into previously static graphics. These infographics allow the creators to integrate a huge amount of information in a single visual element that takes a small amount of space on your website. This enhances engagement, adds value, and increases customer experience.

A great example of interactive infographics is the Lunar Cycle and Sleep Pattern infographic and the Global Threat Interactive.

Augment Your Reality

Augmented reality has been here for a few years but its use is now increasingly being seen on websites and is expected to increase in 2022 and the coming years.

Examples of augmented reality elements are 3D touring of a rental before you book it, virtually trying on an outfit before you buy it from a designer, or finding out what a piece of furniture would look like in your home.

Augmented Reality

Attribution: DAMAC Properties

The applications for augmented reality are limitless. It is also a very powerful tool for websites that want to provide value-adding and meaningful content to its visitors to help them make smarter buying decisions quickly. As such, incorporating augmented reality in your website can increase customer engagement and experience and also cause an increase in conversion.

Optimize for Mobile

Responsive Designs

Thumb-friendly and responsive website designs are no longer an option for businesses in 2022. Websites need to be designed to fulfill the way we use our smartphones by putting the menu, contact buttons and the navigation bar within the reach of your thumb. This design is more ergonomic and makes it easy to use a website on mobile devices.

Even if you prefer your desktop or laptop computer for accessing websites, people are now more obsessed with smaller, experience-focused sites with app-like designs. These types of websites have never existed before and offer a truly unique and rich experience to visitors.

The biggest reason is that it offers a consistent browsing experience across all devices and screen sizes and is compatible with all major platforms. To ensure this, designers have to focus on elements that offer users a more comfortable viewing and browsing experience, including adding an appropriate amount of white space, margins, and line spacing. In addition, the website needs to be very navigable on all screens, allowing users to immediately find what they are looking for as well as be thumb- and finger-friendly.

One of the most important aspects of a responsive website is how quickly the graphic elements load on the website and how stable they are. Without image optimization, you may be losing more than 50% of prospective traffic on your website.

Split Your Design

Split-screen Design

Attribution: Get2Know NOKE

Split-screen designs were trendy a few years back and now the design is back with a vengeance.

This design allows your website to be split either horizontally or vertically with each side typically having different functions or clicks. In some cases, one side is dedicated to text, while the other side is dedicated to visual elements.

No matter what kind of split-screen design you opt for, the best design will give you an impactful visual experience and will offer you various entry-points to dive deep into your website.

Need for Speed

Page speed optimization has become one of the biggest concerns for a professional web designer. In 2021, Google has made page load speed one of the most important criteria for SEO, considering that 53% of visitors will leave your site if it does not load within three seconds.

Website designers can take a few simple steps to ensure quick page load speed, including eliminating complex coding, incorporating image compression and optimization, limiting the use of fonts, as well as not relying too heavily on plug-ins.

According to PageSpeed Insights, an optimized website needs to eliminate redirects as every redirect will increase the time it takes to load the page. Many of the static content files on the website also need to be compressed so that the time to download it can be reduced, page rendering is improved, and there is a decrease in client data usage.

An excellent way to reduce page speed load time is to minimize the size of its HTML, CSS, and JavaScript resources and to remove complex, lengthy, render-blocking JavaScript codes from the website.

All in all, your server response time, that is the time to load the necessary HTML to render your webpage, should be not more than 200 millisecond.

Page Speed of a Website

Call To Action

A call-to-action is a prompt or an instruction that encourages a user to take a specific action when they land on a website. Typically, a CTA is in the form of a written command like Order Now” or “Subscribe to Us” and takes the form of a hyperlink or button.

Without a clear and obvious CTA, the visitors to your website may not know what action to take next and helps eliminate the obstacles for the user to move down the sales funnel. A few common examples of calls-to-action that you may see on a website may include:

  • Read More/ Learn More
  • Subscribe to our Newsletter
  • Support Us
  • Donate
  • Free Trial
  • Add to Cart
  • Add to Wishlist

One very important example of CTA is a chatbot that uses natural language processing and AI to understand what a visitor wants and helps them get the answer to their query in as little time as possible.

These days, almost all websites also feature a contact form or email that requires visitors to add in their contact information and any query they may have to get an answer from the website owner. it is a very convenient way to ask business questions.

Call-to-action hyperlinks and buttons are now an essential part of landing pages and email newsletters as well, which can help redirect the visitor to the company’s site.

An effective call-to-action will be able to draw the visitor’s attention with a highly-visible and eye-catching design. It will also be featured prominently on the page and will state clear benefits for the user as well as actionable text.

The best call-to-actions are short and sweet and create a sense of urgency, which encourages a visitor to take action quickly.

Last Words

As you can see, 2022 offers a versatile mix of design trends that can be used for different types of websites. We are witnessing a new era of website design in the second decade of the new millennium and their becoming mainstream is not a matter of “if” but “when” — and we believe the time is very close.

To stay ahead of the competition, businesses need to incorporate newer, more engaging, and more inclusive design trends that will not just better serve their businesses well, but the world at large.

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