MIT neuroscientists found something interesting.
They found that something very curious happens in 13.1 seconds.
That’s all it takes for your users to dress down your site’s front page with their eyes. So, is your site dressed to impress in that amount of time?
If you noticed that your ads aren’t landing, or visitors are bouncing off your site at disastrous rates, then it might call for taking your website’s design to the back toolshed and throwing on some new layers of paint.
From ecommerce design trends, to current trends in website design, what are some top 2022 website trends that you can glean web design inspiration from?
Let’s start catching some eyes, and snapping some necks (not literally)!
Find Your Web Design Inspiration
Where’s Waldo? not only frustrated people the globe over in their hunt for the stripy, bespectacled traveler, but it’s also an exercise in how we can spot patterns.
Now, with the world firmly entrenched in 2022, we are seeing a renaissance in the world of web design, and in the battle for consumers’ attention. So, what current trends in web design are sitting there, ready for you to adapt to win the battle against short attention spans?
Sometimes it helps to KISS:
- Keep
- It
- Simple
- Stupid
So pucker up, here’s our first trend.
Trend #1: The One-Page Rise
It must be tough, as you sit there at your computer, hair graying, trying to figure out how you can upgrade your website before your massive ad campaign rolls out.
Well, sometimes simple, one-page websites, are the perfect way to craft a fresh website that fits all necessary information into a single page.
When you put a focus on accessibility, it packs a host of benefits: for your company, your user, and your sleep levels.
It’s a Dream for On-Site SEO
Google’s spiders love to crawl simple, easily navigable websites. If your website is trickier to navigate than misty Dagobah, then not even Yoda can save you from plummeting into the muck of Google’s search pages.
By converting your website into a one-pager, you can boost your search page prospects.
Great Mobile Speed
When a long-winded page crops up on our mobile devices, it can slow them to a creeping crawl. The magic of clean webpages is that they free up ram on mobile devices, which allows for a seamless browsing experience.
This trait lowers the bounce rate, keeping customers’ eyes on your product, gaining you more conversions, and losing more sleepless nights.
Now here’s the caveat – these are usually more for targeted uses, like a landing page or a promotion for a time-sensitive event. Many companies ax these one-pagers once their purpose has been fulfilled, such as the “event” ending.
By getting creative with your sections, you can portion out your one-page website to provide smooth transitions to the different parts of your company’s offerings.
So, start slimming down – your website, I mean – and start seeing the returns of better Google recognition, and a more seamless experience for your customers.
Your sales might thank you.
Trend #2: Creating a Welcoming Experience
With the news inundating us with nefarious malpractices of companies, many people would think that the digital ad space was manipulated by Emperor Palpatine. Well, propaganda is everything in the marketing world, and companies in 2022 are looking now, more than ever, to build trust with their customers right off the bat.
This trust is done by creating a warm, welcoming environment for your consumers.
How can you ditch the robes of the dark side, and embrace the light in your customers’ eyes?
Answer Their Questions
This should be a gimme for every website out there in the marketing jungle. But if you want to cut to the top of the tangled, twisting vines of other companies, then you need to speak directly to the customer.
After all, we don’t like it when unknown, pruned-up salespeople bang on our door, shoving products into our disgruntled faces. You need to establish a rapport with your prospects.
- Tell them who you are
- Tell them what it is that you do
- Tell them how you can help them
This should be done within the first page of the website. They shouldn’t even have to scroll to be able to see it.
Write Friendly Copy
We all appreciate a little edge, but you don’t want to be insulting to your customers. It’s always a good thing to try to agitate their problem, to rub some salt in it, but you don’t want to bind them and shove them in front of an inquisition.
Which one sounds better.
- Finally, become the person you’ve always tried to be
- Finally, become the person that you’re always trying to be.
One of these options insinuates that we are failures of some sort.
The other insinuates that we are always in a constant battle and that we never gave up trying. Just, sometimes, the cards didn’t play out how we wanted.
The second option is much more appealing, and just through some simple grammar usage, changes the whole meaning in the minds of the audience.
Don’t lecture them. Nurture them.
Make The Experience Simple
Don’t make your website front page a mishmash of creative design elements that belong more in the Louvre than on a customer’s tablet.
By using clean imagery that doesn’t distract, a font that doesn’t induce eye-squinting migraines, or navigation that is more Nascar and less Pacman, you can gift your audience a very inviting design that builds trust.
So, no small wonder that web developers have been ditching the practice of experimental websites, and opting for the profitable air of simplicity – you should too.
Even on websites that have a more experimental nature, the colors and design elements all tie together beautifully to guide the user along. Just don’t think that you should dump your whole bucket of paint on your site.
Sometimes the simplest use of black and white, with large and bold fonts, can be something fresh and exciting.
This dovetails beautifully into our next trend.
Trend #3: Noir it Up!
Black and white are the two starkest colors. In 2022 website trends, they’re fast becoming the most glamorous option for web developers, because your site needs to fling out from the computer and yank your viewer into the screen before they even realized what hit ’em!
You might only have, at most, 50 milliseconds. So, stark is good.
But if you want to avoid the fate of Ed Stark, and not have your site’s head lopped off by customers bouncing off your site, then heed these tips when deploying black and white in your design.
Commit To It
The sheer beauty behind this two-color pallet is that it provides minimal distractions.
Due to this, it helps to keep the use of other colors to a minimum, as the stark black and white nature of the design should be drawing your customers’ attention to the main message.
Anything off to the side will only distract the viewer. This could be a benefit if motivated.
The most popular example of this in cinema is in Spielberg’s classic, Schindlers List. In that famed scene, a lone girl is spotted by Oscar Schindler in the mass of humanity being shipped out to death camps in WWII Poland.
Filmed in black and white, the girl, wearing a red coat, is the only time that we see color in the film.
An overall back and white design not only smacks the viewer over the head with a clear message, but, with minor additions in color, can complement a theme.
Be warned that, with black and white, your typography will have to carry the show – or play a leading role.
Trend #4: Line It Up!
Lines are back in style! Perhaps once looked down upon, now they are being seen as more vital to help play into the illusion of app usage.
Apps dominate the world. Studies bear out that users’ eyes are more glued to their small screens than to their laptops or desktops.
Web Developers are picking up on this, and all over the world, they’re employing brilliant tactics to trick users into thinking that they’re looking at an app experience, and not a browser one.
So, don your Houdini hat. It’s time to pull a trick or two.
Line Art Logos
Minimalism is bliss in the design realm. Due to that, logos are an ideal spot to incorporate some line art.
These are generally flat logos, where a single line, or series of lines, form a shape for the logo. This creates a very clean design, that can work well on just about any color scheme.
Pro Tip
To make sure that you can pull off this magic, it helps to keep the weight of the lines, in both the logo and the typeface, the same. This evokes a beautiful sense of uniformity, with neither aspect of the design pulling away from the other.
You don’t want to create a debilitating sense of tug of war for your customers’ attention – that worked out well in Squid Game!
*squish!*
Line Art Section Dividers
In the past, and now, a common way of denoting sections is to do it by color. But the rise of apps is challenging this notion, and more and more web developers are using lines to cordon off sections.
This creates a fantastic illusion, tricking the site visitors into thinking that their on an app, especially if they’re on their mobile devices.
This little trick can be a great way to bring them back to your site, especially as more and more websites develop complementary apps. To continue to swim above the surface, you need to start optimizing your website not only for mobile functionality, but also stylistically.
Some more gray hair might’ve fallen out at the notion of igniting this change within your company. Good thing for you – and your diminishing hair strands – you have a game plan to follow.
Begin a Content Audit
Much like with your copy, you need to bring your website back around to the tool shed, break out the magnifying glass, and start cutting away elements that are long and unnecessary.
Apps are about bite-sized, digestible pieces. That’s the standard that you should be shooting for.
Craft and Outline for Each Web Page
You want your website to be more 1984, and less Lord of the Flies.
Structure and a clear sense of hierarchy will be vital to ensuring that your customers are led by only the information that they need. Everything needs to be crisp and concise, from your headers, down to the placement of images.
Then, by creating simple wireframes, you can start planning a design around the content hierarchy that you had just laid out.
But of course, you don’t want to sit back and admire your beautiful new design. It needs to be put through the wringer and tested. So, run your website through on a desktop, to see how the design elements fit with the mobile experience.
You want as much consistency as possible between the two formats. Lastly, the more important point.
Them Not Thee
Build around the user’s needs, not what your company wants.
After all, we don’t say “buy this car” in our copy. The user doesn’t want a car; they want the freedom the car provides, or the status symbol the car lays on you.
The same goes with design.
Users don’t want more lines. They want ease of use. If you plan to only make your website the prettiest belle of the ball, then you’re missing out on what the users really want – a simple, fast, app-like experience.
The prettiest dress won’t amount to much if the girl inside it trips in front of her snickering best friends.
Speaking of glam, and glitz, this next trend looks to buck color overload, and revisit more stark sensations.
Trend #5: Serifs and Sans, Oh My!
If you’ve been sitting back, gazing at your computer, and noticing that your zinging copy doesn’t quite pull off the same energy, then it might have something to do with your font.
So, bring some energy into your website by simply investing in styling up your font. More and more, 2022 website trends have seen the rise of bold and creative typefaces, that not only brig the decorative goods, but also are enhanced by hover effects.
This lets your fonts become more expressive, and help drive home the tone of your brand. So, start giving your brand a facelift with these hints.
The Comeback Serif
That’s right, the granddaddy of fonts is back in 2022, and it’s throwing out the old jumpers and sneakers, for a new pair of dazzling kicks.
Don’t be afraid to start using this once dinosaur of the font kingdom, because it’s back in style!
Hero Fonts and Large Paragraph Letter Sizes
If you want your fonts to play a part in the design, then using them in different sizes can express the personality and tone of your brand. By contrasting two, drastically different fonts together, you can create a strong delineation, for example, by having a team member’s name next to a title.
There’s another style that’s surging ahead in 2022, and it’s a blast from that past. If you’re looking to buck the conventional angles and tones of today, then it’s a good one to follow for your web design inspiration.
Trend #6: Art Deco Motifs
Born and bred from the social and political clashes that out of the muck and grime of WWI trenches, Art Deco became a staple of art in the early 1920s. For good reason, too.
From the stylistic angles of the font to the stylized interpretation of life, this style epitomized the energy of this jazz-infused time period.
It’s that energy that this syle is gifting web developers in 2022. The hallmarks of this style are as follows:
- Bold
- Glamorous
- Functional
It’s certainly not a one-size-fits-all style, but for industries that carry a little glitz with them, then this is the perfect marriage for them.
Characteristics
To know how you can adapt this style to your own website, let’s explore some of the common characteristics that weave this style together. It’s a glorious mish-mash of style, color, and energy!
Art Deco Color Pallete
Since Art Deco is a brainchild of the flashy style of post-WWI Paris, then you would expect nothing other than rich, bright tones. What color screams fab and glamorous? It’s something that resonates in the spirit of Art Deco…
Gold, gold, gold!
Whether in the font or as highlights in the background images, this color helps your Art Deco website strut its vibrant style.
Art Deco Font
This is perhaps the signature calling card of this in your face style – the typography. It features an exhilarating mix of both exaggerated curvatures and sharp angles.
But the font can’t help an Art Deco design stand on its own. Not without this next crucial geometrical element.
Art Deco Shapes
Bold. Geometric. Symmetrical. These are the three pillars of a successful Art Deco design.
It’s for this reason that the design holds so much appeal. Where geometrical sites have a conception – however unjust – of being unimaginative, Art Deco flips that notion on its asymmetrical face.
By using perfect balance, while at the same time melded with an energetic zigzag of lines, trapezoidal shapes, and chevrons, the design dishes out intoxicating energy that flows within its containers.
Trend #7: To 3D, or Not To 3D?
That is the question, isn’t it? In an age when our faces are constantly glued to Pixar films, it makes sense that this is a rising trend in 2022, and for the foreseeable future.
It’s much like the app dilemma. We expect certain standards now, across all mediums. And with the great depth that films use, we are starting to hold websites to the same lofty ideals.
What are the payoffs to making sure that your website looks less like your high school flipbook, and more like Elsa belting out “Let it Go”?
Perks of 3D Design
Well, you’d be one of the few to have such a design! While it’s certainly the case now that anyone can edit a photo in a flash, it’s much more difficult for the average joe to morph that picture into a 3D image.
So, by working 3D into your website, you stand out from the 1.17 billion websites hogging the digital space, allowing you to let your design work advertising magic for you.
Gift Your User With More Engaging Interfaces
Are you seeking to showcase your products in a bold way? What’s better than zipping your clients in on finer, 3D details? By utilizing the third plane, you can break free of the dull X, and Y. When you deploy the Z-axis into your site, your customers can interact with your brand like never before.
That makes this style a go-to amongst current e-commerce design trends.
Yank Them Into the Experience
Whether it’s an event promotion or a trendy line of shoes, 3D can connect that experience to your customers in intimate ways. By doing that, you help boost your conversions, your sales, and your amount of stress-free nights.
So, stop the worry train. With these styles and trends, you have a wide palette of options to paint your website with.
Upgrade Your Website Today
Just know that you don’t have to paint the canvas alone.
After all, your current innovative web design might call for only limited use of some of these styles, or they could be a match made in heaven. But, if you don’t begin painting a new web design inspiration, then your gallery will continue lagging behind progressing 2022 website trends.
Don’t be the business that reeks of ho-hum conventional — customers will sense that in 13 milliseconds.
So drop us a line, break that barrier today, and push them into conversion territory!
