Web Design Trends for 2021

Broadly speaking, Broadly speaking, web design continues the dynamics of recent years. At the same time, and as access to new technologies becomes easier, innovations in the field of artificial intelligence are increasingly influencing web designers. However, 11 web design trends point to another improvement in the user experience in the platforms that today intend to design the internet of tomorrow.

Read our selection of trends in web design for the year 2021 below.

1. Interactive 3D elements

To date, 3D shapes and graphics have not played a significant role when it comes to web design. Those who have wanted to accompany their web project with 3D elements have mainly used videos. However,  a new trend in web design is about replacing static elements with three-dimensional content.

2. Neomorphism

In this trend in web design, the three-dimensional also plays an important role. With neomorphic realism is brought to web designs, some of them very abstract. Especially in flatter and card-based designs, this modern approach can bring movement to the web page. For this, the components of the user interface of a website can be presented in 3D by means of a CSS design in which shadows and lights are used. As a result, each of these elements appears to stick out of the screen until the user clicks on them.

3. High-Quality graphics with SVG

Although the SVG image format is not new, it has increasingly attractive advantages. it guarantees a small file size, it can be scaled flexibly and it can be formatted with CSS, which makes it a web design trend in 2021. Given that SVG is basically an XML  file format, the source code can be directly modified with CSS. This combination allows web designers to incorporate graphics on the web page.

4. Micro-interactions

Micro-interactions are small animation effects in UX design. This can be a “like” button, which rewards the user with movement or vibration of the phone when they click.

5. Social and Environmentally focused designs

Social and ecological issues have been gaining importance in recent years. More and more often this fact helps companies to have more direct contact with their customers and connect with them on a deeper level. The coronavirus pandemic has also demonstrated the importance and need to have active participation in the World Wide Web, either through social networks or on the website itself.

The efforts to promote sustainable development and social engagement are issues that now have a much greater influence on the design of the web a few years ago. Images, videos, photos, or simulations placed in prominent places are in trend when used to show the company’s involvement in a certain cause.

6. Long and scrolling and parallax effect

The mobile-first paradigm does not only affect the size of screens. The full presentation of web content on different terminals, but in the future, it will see its influence increasingly on the content itself. One of the most significant novelties in this sense is the passage from clicking and scrolling.

Infinite Scrolling

Infinite scrolling allows the user to discover new content by scrolling down the page instead of clicking. Blogs and social networks use this method to present the content to the user in a continuous informational thread. Infinite scrolling has also been applied in blogs for a long time and will continue to be current in the future.

Infinite scrolling is a suitable technique especially for pages with a very wide informative offer. While paging a blog with a hundred posts is not a big problem, structuring a project with an ever-growing volume of text like this does not make much sense. It is unlikely that a user would specifically want to read page 812 out of a total of 5782 subpages. Scrolling infinity is implemented with algorithms that filter the information prepared and presented to offer the most relevant texts first.

But implementing it also means taking care of SEO aspects. Although Google had its initial problems with the pages that applied it, today its use does not carry any risk thanks to the recommendations that the search engine itself offers to developers. In any case, don’t forget these four factors:

• An individual URL for each subpage
• Avoid content overlap
• Items the user is looking for should be easily found
• Adequate charging time

Parallax Effect

Parallax scrolling is not the latest trend in web design but will continue to be vogue. The parallax effect has been used in the most modern pages for some years, providing an effect of depth by making the different layers that make it move at different speeds. In the best implementations, this effect is accompanied by elements that motivate the user to take some action. This makes it such a good pair with interactive storytelling.

7. Personalized User Experience

The presentation of the content according to the target is integrated into the fundamental principles of modern web design.  both the content that is selected and the way it is presented visually should fit the idiosyncrasies of your target audience. If before you thought about abstract groups of people, in 2021 the individual user experience will capture all the attention.

A trend in web design in 2021 will be the personalized web page in which the user would obtain the content that fits his habits.

To determine the data on which to base the personalized user interface, web analysis tools such as Google Analytics.  This tool provides content providers with a very accurate picture of how internet users interact with web content.

8. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality with WebXR

Most users are already familiar with Virtual Reality (VR) in the entertainment industry. Above all, the video game industry is betting on this technology, investing in the development of virtual reality glasses and the corresponding games. However, in recent times applications have also been released in the smartphone in which augmented reality(AR) is not only applied as a recreational concept but is used for practical purposes.

With VR glasses it is possible to visit a website in three dimensions. As if it were a physical space, the user can navigate between the menu options and content. For e-commerce, this technology has great appeal, like online stores, for example, can mimic the physical store experience.

9. Chatbots

Programs that perform communication tasks are nothing new. Chatbots have emerged from the research field of artificial intelligence to integrate and today on corporate websites or online stores. Typically this is a small pop-up window that reads user queries and generates automatic responses that can be customized using machine learning algorithms. They usually have the ability to respond to inquiries without leaving the website. Since the success of Siri, Alexa and Cortana, it seems that mistrust towards AI-based interlocutors has decreased a bit.

10. Dark Mode

The dark mode not only is a trend in web design but is applied mainly in the software sector. More and more users consider it important to use an alternative to screens with radiant light, especially annoying in poorly lit space. For example, the Windows operating system offers a dark mode to its users. The Google Chrome search engine is not far behind, as it allows you to activate the dark mode for the screen. While in many programs and applications you can switch to dark screen mode without problems, most websites and web pages still opt for the color white. However, this is not necessary.

With CSS and Javascript, it is possible to offer this option to users. Each visitor can decide if they want to apply the dark or light mode on the web pages. For this, the home page may have a button where it can be configured. Although there is another more efficient option; with the CSS “prefers color schema” command, web pages react to browser settings. If the user turned on dark mode in Firefox, Safari,  Chrome, or Edge, the website is automatically displayed this way as well. This requires a second color schema that is stored in the source code, an extra effort that is rewarded by greater user satisfaction.

11. Speed and Performance are even more important in web design

More than a trend, it is a fundamental principle of well-designed pages: speed grows in importance. This is partly due to the mobile revolution because, after all, any web administrator aspires to make their page easily accessible from mobile terminals. The faster the page load, the better experience users have, although this was already the case 10 years ago.

Many other trends in web design start from here. So, increasingly popular minimalism avoids the heaviest multimedia files.

The trends in web design that ensure your success in 2021

Web design trends for 2021combine usability and stylish user interface with interactive optical elements. 3D display objects and three-dimensional control elements bring new life to a sometimes highly abstract online environment. Ensuring fast access and optimal presentation on any type of device should not be on the webmaster’s priority list this year, either.

The new techniques of web design offer new possibilities to increase the time of performance of the users, without affecting the performance of the pages. Therefore, it is very important to bear in mind that, even if trends change or new technologies emerge, the user must always be kept at the center. That is why the web must always adapt to the target audience and the content offered.