Do you know that it only takes a few seconds for a new user to form an impression of your website? So, how do you ensure that they have a good lasting first impression? It’s simple – make your website visually aesthetic.
To create a mesmerizing first impression, your website design should be top-notch. Website building techniques have come a long way, from eliminating excess unessential structures to subtle pastel colours. Colour, spacing, background, font, amount of text, and much more, you need to tick all these boxes.
A simple design can make or break a beautiful website. Website designers are always in quest of searching for new website trends that they can incorporate. These designs enhance the beauty of your website. So, here are the top 20 trending website trends of 2022.
Horizontal Scrolling
Horizontal scrolling is primarily used for maps, catalogues, portfolio websites. This trend discloses cumulative information like a photo gallery. Many designers have been experimenting with horizontal scrolls in the past few years. If you can get this trend right, it will make your website more appealing and fun.
McBride Design did a fantastic job while using the horizontal scroll. They managed to showcase large high-quality photos of their work by scrolling sideways. Also, the horizontal scroll did not take much space to incorporate extensive work examples. Pointing out clearly in the bottom right corner makes it easy to navigate.
Retro Fonts
The 80s and 90s retro fonts are making a blockbuster comeback in the website design space. Retro fonts are becoming more of a thing with a refreshed look.
As the popularity of retro fonts fluctuates, many designs that feature vintage typography have not held up well over time. However, they are coming up with more variations like artistry touches, different stylizations. Retro fonts give the website an edgy look.
A bit of experimentation brings new life to traditional bold fonts that would otherwise feel stale and cliche. Standard fonts are given a modern twist while maintaining the readability of the website.
Austin East Cider has made great use of these retro fonts for making the website look cool and edgy.
Light and Dark Mode Toggle
The dark mode is one of the most popular trends of this decade. In this competitive era, scrolling through the website should be an experience, and giving the user the power to toggle between light mode and dark mode adds that magic.
To effectively use this mode, you have to make sure that the colour palette you choose complements both light and dark backgrounds. As a result, switching between modes won’t affect visibility. Changing to dark mode at night saves your eyes from unnecessary blue light exposure.
DuckDuckGO is the best example of a light and dark mode toggle feature..
Modern Minimalism
Less is more” is the funda of this website trend. Minimalist design can uncover the extra featured elements in the design. Earlier, many people used to think that minimalist design meant fewer elements and more white space. However, in 2022 web designers are going unconventional with colourful minimalist designs.
There is less freedom to play with different textures in the minimalistic approach. But, on the other hand, it is soothing to the eyes and can make a mark in the user’s mind if created in the right way.
Nike did a fantastic job with minimalistic design.
Multimedia Experiences
If you want to incorporate videos, visual texts, and audio on your website, a multimedia web experience is a way to go. With faster internet connections, multimedia websites are trending nowadays as it is easier to load a high-quality video. Moreover, video playing on your website page makes it easy to gain engagement.
For web designers, managing multimedia experience is a bit tricky. If you go a little overboard, the user will be overwhelmed. Also, using multimedia on websites has many constraints. Web designers have to take care of numerous things, including video/audio formats, closed captioning for pre-recorded multimedia, etc.
The black yearbook is one example of a multimedia design website.
Brutalist Typography
When your hero text on the website makes a statement, you don’t have to look behind. Bold text on your home page does make your user’s head turn.
These bold texts essentially decrease or eliminate imagery to let the message itself carry the weight of the first encounter. Although these typographies are massive statements, they are simple in their unique way. Brutalist typography is a vibe in itself.
Automotive company website Mbition (part of Mercedes) is a great example of brutalist typography. It also incorporates dark mode web design trends.
Layered Effects
As the name suggests layering, web designers must take precautions while implementing this trend. This effect looks fun and is a treat to the eyes. Stacking, overlapping, and merging design elements can create a sense of depth and connectivity. But it is the designer’s job to establish connectivity in every varying aspect.
The website becomes more engaging with layered effects as the user spends more time finding the hidden gems in layers.
Dribbble shows some of the impressive examples of layered effects.
3D Illustrations
]With the introduction of the Metaverse, 3D illustrations will be the most remarkable design trend in upcoming years. As the line between virtual reality and the real world is getting thinner, every web designer is trying to get hands-on with this designing technique.
To create depth and dimension in 3D design, elements like shadows, overlapping effects, and animation can be used with a minimalistic background approach. The integration of high-quality 3D visuals into web design is becoming increasingly common. Instead of being distracting, they enhance the overall user experience.
Sennep shows exactly how the 3D illustrations can be done.
Parallax Scroll Animations
This trend is an old one compared to other trends in the list. It is an optical illusion effect. There are multiple effects designers can create with parallax. It makes the computer screen look more like a theatre stage. When users browse through the web pages, they find the performance fascinating.
Here are a few points a designer needs to be mindful of when incorporating parallax scroll animation in the website:
- Add an option for a user to turn off the effect.
- Keep the minimum number of Parallax effect
- Don’t compromise with the readability and user-friendliness of the website.
Alexdram is an excellent website to take inspiration for creating your upcoming website with parallax effects.
Custom Cursor
For this trend to appear, you need to engage with the website. The custom cursor is a new revolution for the most overlooked aspect of the website. This effect might be fascinating since we are familiar with the old-fashioned arrow cursor. However, many designers use this tiny piece to make a big difference in the whole website scrolling experience.
The oversized pointers and mouse hovers make the other design elements pop out.
Bullmonk has perfectly incorporated this fun trend into its website to look more appealing and engaging.
Color-less Designs
This “back to basics” trend is gaining prominence in website design. Many designers prefer muted colours over colourful pages. The key reason for this is that the low saturation colours are pleasing to the eyes, giving a premium look. Something as simple as a plain design can remain engaging with micro-interactions, animations, and other dynamic effects.
The colourless designs can give you a canvas to showcase your craft. Also, it can be liberating and kickstart creative thinking which will result in a beautiful website.
H&M’s website utilized this colourless design and pulled it off quite well.
Scrollytelling
If you want to tell an intricate story on web pages, you must go for scrollytelling. Incorporating scrollytelling on the website allows you to adjust its flow at your own pace in the same way you read a book.
The audience is served engaging content as part of these visual effects to capture their attention. As a part of narrative visualization, scrollytelling involves the sequence of optical elements arranged chronologically to convey a specific message to visitors.
Inception explained is a great website to take inspiration from for scrollytelling.
Adding Real Images
People connect with people! Adding real people images is the simplest way to tell any message or story through a website. For example, many cosmetic and clothing line websites use real human pictures as their primary design element.
Significant research has been done on this topic, and it has been proven that people are likely to believe when they see accurate images on websites. The main issue on the eCommerce website for making purchase decisions is trust. When we see somebody has already experienced it or used it, we tend to believe it, leading to more conversion rates.
Inde Wild is the most authentic gem while using real people’s faces. They have also added an actual video to the website.
Smart Content Load
Websites are often slow because designers incorporate heavy graphics and third-party elements. Fortunately, you can develop a website that only loads what users need to see.
Therefore, intelligent content load only loads the explicit, graphic content which user wants to see, eliminating excessive loading or slowing of the website. It is often known as lazy loading.
Social media platforms have been using this technique for years. If you include it in your development plan, it will help you increase your website loading speed. So, besides creating resource-efficient websites, you will also get a better return on your investment.
Instagram effectively uses smart content load to get the best user experience.
Cartoon Illustrations
Your website design doesn’t have to be bland when you can use doodles, hand-drawn illustrations, or even comics to make it more exciting and fascinating! There was a time when the websites were just plain text and a few graphics.
Nowadays, we can transform websites by using cartoon illustrations to connect with people in an entertaining way. Designers are now experimenting and pushing their limits to connect with the audience on a personal level.
Bonsai used this cartoon illustration and made their website looks so much fun.
Gaussian Blur
Gaussian blur is the effect you probably see everywhere but don’t know the exact name. Gaussian blur means the technique that fades and smoothens parts of images to get highlighted focus on the particular region.
Photographers have been using this approach for a while by using tools like adobe photoshop. As the Gaussian blur size increases, so does the indiscernibility of the image behind it.
Gaussian blur can be applied to many aspects of design like sharpening or enhancing the detail in a foreground, softening background noise, creating a background, and blurring out elements in an image.
Ricardo Seola’s portfolio website is worth taking inspiration from.
Glassmorphism
Glassmorphism is a new vertical design trend that includes the following core elements:
- Light minimal borders
- Background enhancing bright colours.
- Transparency in the sense of glass background.
- Slight drop shadow to create an illusion of space
- Layered effect.
By its verticality and the fact that it is transparent, users can establish hierarchy and depth. The layers are seen as virtual pieces of glass stacked one on another.
Organic Shapes
Any irregular or uneven shape is considered an organic shape in website design. Because the shapes are irregular, they tend to provide more depth to the website. Generally, organic shapes display humanistic visuals that draw a user’s attention and enhance your website’s customization. The organic shape does not include a straight line. These are the shapes that naturally occur in nature, like leaves, mountain edges, etc.
These shapes are slowly replacing conventional shapes like squares and circles.
In addition, designers are experimenting with regular shapes like circles, rectangles to give the website a natural appearance.
Minidil gives goals to create your website using organic shapes.
Augmented Reality(AR) Experiences
AR is a technique in which you experience digital objects in the real world through smartphones, tablets, or AR glasses. As Metaverse is approaching, augmented reality is becoming the talk of the town. As a result, AR will be a great addition to existing websites. In the current marketing scenario, many brands are deploying their AR implemented websites. AR websites are the best way to engage with customers and give them a best-in-class user experience.
Many automobile and eCommerce websites add AR to their existing website to provide a great user experience. To view this webAR content, you are required to download Instagram or TikTok. However, webAR is still in its initial phase and runs less smoothly on older devices.
There is no better example of AR in today’s date than Jeep.
Brutalism
Raw and experimental appearances in web pages are known as brutalism in web design. The name originated from the french word “béton brut,” meaning bare concrete. The designs are unapologetic and unique in their own essence, and it leaves a strong impression on the user’s mind. This raw and edgy aesthetic provides an enjoyable experience to the end-users.
This rebellious style is established against the traditional website design trends. The brutalism work usually appears on cursor hover. Although the typography is bold on these sites, there are so many micro-interactions and raw elements that totally enhance the overall beauty of the site.
On brutalist, you will find 100s of examples of great brutalism.
Bottom Line
There are hundreds of millions of websites in the online world today. So, to be successful, you must stand out from the crowd.
In the above list, we came across some noteworthy trends in the website industry. A good website design can set you apart from your competition and tempt the users to spend more time on the website. The future holds so much more for web designers. So buckle up and never stop experimenting!
Eiosys is a leading website design and software development company in India. You can follow us to get more information about website development, designs, maintenance, and marketing. If you have any website development requirements, you can reach out to us at sales@eiosys.com.
