Since the pandemic, web design trends have shifted to accommodate higher demand and savvy stay-at-home visitors. With more people working and shopping from home than ever, COVID-19 has resulted in huge societal shifts that include how much time is spent on the internet.
That’s why it’s essential for businesses to move forward by updating their current website in order to capture the attention of millions of new online customers.
If that wasn’t enough, Google recently launched its Page Experience update this past May, which has increased the importance of user experience when it comes to raising or maintaining your current search result rankings. This means your website needs to be fast, interactive, and visually stable, or you might see your website disappear completely from the first page of search results. That’s why Thrive Web Designs would like to provide you with the following web design trends heading into 2022 to keep you informed of things to consider when it comes to updating your existing website.
Fun & Cheerful
Throughout the 2010s, minimalism with pure functional interfaces was a popular web design trend. Why? Smartphones and devices were pretty new to the web. That’s why it was important to make websites easy to use, understand, and navigate. However, the side effect of minimalism was a decrease in the more fun and cheerful side of the early web. Now, most people are used to navigating the web using their smart devices to access digital platforms. This means there is more space for creativity, especially during the pandemic, where people are looking for additional ways to be entertained.
From the looks of newer websites, most web designers are starting to embrace this trend. At Thrive Web Designs, we are starting to see a boost in visual entertainment that includes bold colors, fun features, quirky typography, tons of positive content, and enjoyable interactivity. This fun, cheerful approach is a wonderful way to ease people’s minds from more serious issues and make them feel like things are getting back to normal.
Conscious Web Design
For most people during the pandemic, the world got a lot smaller, simpler, and quieter during lockdown. And while the internet remained a loud, busy, stressful place, it was easy to see a retrained calm in certain areas of web design. That’s why a clean design with plenty of white space remains a popular web design trend that allows people to take in the content they are viewing easily. We call this conscious web design – an approach that doesn’t overwhelm the visitor with excessive information or distracting graphics.
The best part? This popular trend links neatly with Google’s recent Page Experience update because most conscious websites equal faster loading times, thus boosting a website’s search results ranking. After all, the simpler the design, the less content there is to load, making it a win-win situation. This trend also coincides with Google’s mobile-friendly requirements. In a world where most people access the internet using their smart devices rather than a computer, it’s essential that websites load fast and work well on smaller devices. Simply put, the simpler your design is, the easier it is to achieve a highly functional website.
Muted Earth Tones
Life in lockdown restricted most people’s options. However, it also brought us back to nature as outdoor spaces became a safer alternative compared to indoor spaces. This means people have been spending more time at their local parks or driving to remote locations to hike, bike, or swim. In turn, this has renewed our relationship to the environments around us, which has influenced contemporary web design too.
Now, everywhere we look, we’re starting to see websites with muted earth tones that promote the same sense of calm through the use of natural background colors and illustrations. By providing visitors with something restful to look at, this modest approach has grown in popularity, increasing the time visitors want to spend on a website. Additionally, this popular web design trend goes hand-in-hand with Google’s new algorithm due to its less-is-more approach. Even more, it’s a nod to a higher societal awareness of the natural world around us and the impact we have on it.
Multimedia & 3D Design
Evolving technology has always influenced the direction of web design, and today is no exception. One of the most popular trends right now is more detailed resolutions. Why? Picture qualities have shifted from HD to 4K and up. Aside from TVs, we’re also seeing people shift to higher resolution phones, monitors, and laptops. This, in turn, has increased the need for higher broadband and mobile data speeds to keep up with these detailed resolutions.
Therefore, many websites have moved beyond standard text and images by embracing more 3D and multimedia designs that make use of animation, high-resolution images and video, and interactive features to engage and entertain their visitors.
Websites That Tell A Story As Users Scroll
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have exploded with popularity over the years. Why? People love the entertainment of the storytelling process as they scroll through their feeds. But how does this impact current web design trends? Well, narrative visualization, also known as “scrollytelling”, is a growing trend that allows users to scroll and read long articles while getting fun visual treats along the way. These include quirky, attention-grabbing images to subtle animations and more. This popular, new web design trend is a lot like reading a printed magazine but with interactive media and eye-catching images that move.
Thrive Web Designs
In this article, we’ve provided some of the most popular web design trends going into 2022, which we expect to see grow in the years to come. Why? With the societal shift that’s come from the pandemic, people are looking for additional ways to be entertained and connect with the world around them without being overwhelmed. Secondly, Google’s new requirements have increased the need for effortless functionality and faster loading times, especially when it comes to mobile devices.
While no one can predict the future, it’s important to be aware of these current trends and what’s influencing them to make educated guesses as to what’s next. That said, web design is often unpredictable, which makes it a fun and exciting sphere to work in.
At Thrive Web Designs, we’ve been creating cutting edge websites that convert for over a decade and are proud to provide the latest trends and technological advancements in website capability. In fact, we’ve created websites for companies of all industries throughout the world. If you’d like to learn more about ways to take your current website to the next level, contact us by filling out our online form or give us a call at 208.391.2504 for a free quote today.
