Rapid advancements in technology have significantly impacted website design trends. Design components and features that were once considered cutting-edge have now become worn out, overused, and trite. The last thing you want when visitors land on your site is to lose potential conversions due to an outdated appearance or non-compliance with essential web standards.
Thankfully, our distinguished web design agency remains current with the latest website design trends, developing highly functional, user-friendly websites that perform exceptionally and boast an impressive aesthetic. We’d like to present some of the most recent breakthroughs, digital technology trends, standards, and projections for 2023.
2023 Web Design Trends
Certain aspects of web design will always remain crucial, such as user-friendly navigation, data security, and swift loading times. However, you can maintain your site’s cutting-edge status and search engine prominence by incorporating some of these inventive features and elements set to gain traction in 2023.
Modern Website Design Trends
- 1Captivating Scrolling
- 2Website Load Time and Page Speed
- 3Dynamic Cursors
- 4Intelligent Content Loading Techniques
- 5Geolocation & Browser-Specific Content
- 6Clean CSS
- 7Integrated CRM
- 8Chatbots
- 9Voice-Activated Interface
- 10Accessibility
- 11Interactivity
- 12VR
- 13Micro Interactions
- 14Art Deco
- 15Micro Animations
- 16Organic Shapes
- 17Thumb-Friendly Navigation
- 18Smart Video
- 19Material Design
- 20Text-Only Heroes
- 21Custom Illustrations
- 22Full-Page Headers
- 23Dark Mode
- 24White Space
- 25Data Visualization
- 26Full-Screen Forms
- 27Blending Photos with Graphical Elements
- 28Gradients
- 29Interactive 3D Content
- 30Frosted Glass Effects
1. Captivating Scrolling
Parallax scrolling is a widely embraced web effect that adds dynamism to specific sections of a webpage. It’s typically employed in full-width applications, accompanied by images, videos, or textured visuals that contribute depth to a page. As users scroll past the media, the scrolling action creates an illusion of the media being positioned behind adjacent sections, making the content more engaging.
An example can be seen below from the website: The Story of The Goonies
2. Website Load Time and Page Speed Are King
One of the most critical web design standards revolves around lightning-fast load times. Prompt loading speeds have been vital components of user experience (UX) and search engine optimization (SEO) for years and continue to be a top priority for high-ranking, high-converting websites.
Research indicates that over half of internet users expect websites to load quickly, within two seconds of clicking a link. If your site takes longer than three seconds to load, visitors are likely to abandon it and probably never return. Website performance directly affects a company’s revenue. For instance, Pinterest managed to reduce perceived waiting times by 40%, resulting in a 15% increase in search engine traffic and user registrations.
At TheeDigital, our mantra is “conversion, conversion, conversions.” We closely monitor website loading times to ensure a seamless user experience.
3. Dynamic Cursors
A creative way to enhance your users’ experience on your website is by customizing how they interact with your web elements, including their cursors. This 2023 web design trend has charmed users with its unanticipated subtlety. By altering the cursor’s shape or introducing cursor-triggered animations, visitors can enjoy engaging with diverse scrolling behaviors or on-click actions.
An example can be seen on the website: Pest Stop Boys
4. Intelligent Content Loading Techniques
A large number of websites today are laden with resource-intensive elements and external integrations, resulting in slower loading times. However, there are several methods available to create smarter websites that load only the necessary content for the user. Techniques such as lazy loading and infinite scrolling have been employed by major social networks for years and are particularly popular for lengthy single-page websites.
Adopting one or more of these technological approaches can provide a competitive edge and enhance the overall user experience, thereby improving conversion rates and search rankings. Lazy loading, for instance, ensures that web browsers like Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox download only the visible content on the screen, conserving server resources and reducing loading times for unseen content.
Since many users never reach the bottom of a webpage, it makes more sense to load content as they scroll down, approaching the lower sections of the page.
5. Geolocation & Browser-Based Content
You may have noticed that the content on certain websites changes when revisited after a short period or accessed from a different device or browser. Advanced websites leverage browsing history and location data to deliver dynamic, personalized content rather than generic information intended for a broader audience.
Customized content for repeat visitors can result in higher conversion rates. This is evident in search engines like Google, where location-based results are displayed for queries. For instance, people searching for nearby restaurants in Raleigh, North Carolina, will see different results than users in other locations.
An efficient directory website can also take user preferences into account, such as prioritizing Italian restaurants in search results for users who have previously reviewed or saved them. Personalized content is particularly crucial for e-commerce websites, where displaying recently viewed, saved, or liked products and highlighting abandoned cart items can lead to increased conversions.
As users increasingly expect personalized website content, it will become a more significant factor in achieving a successful online presence.
6. Grid System
In 2023, contemporary website designers are expected to favor asymmetric styles, with CSS Grid Layout gaining popularity as a powerful tool for bringing print layout capabilities to the web. This 2D grid layout system for cascading style sheets enables designers to create complex, responsive layouts while maintaining a clean and organized appearance.
Examples of Grids in Use: Shrine from Google’s Material Studies
7. Progressive Lead Nurturing Forms Integrated with Your CRM Tool
Online lead generation forms are one of the most important elements of a marketing website. We want to get to know a lot about our website visitors, but we can’t ask too many questions at any particular time. We place progressive/dynamic contact forms on the landing pages and display fields according to the lead’s journey.
Ideally, we don’t want to display too many fields in a form, but we can always adjust the form fields according to the data that we already know about our leads. We might ask the name, company, and email address at the first conversion and then ask for the phone number, title, company size, and company revenue fields at the next conversion opportunity.
Our CRM, like HubSpot, stores the information of our leads. By integrating it with our website. The CRM can recognize the lead when they come back to our websites and display form fields on the landing pages that we don’t know about the contact.
8. Chatbots More Like “Chatbuds”
Chatbots are another feature that has been popular for a few years and will continue to be relevant in 2023. As artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to get more sophisticated, we expect to see chatbots become the norm for simple customer service requests and “personal shopping.”
For example, if a customer visits your website, looking for phone support and the chatbot knows they have an available free phone upgrade. The chatbot can let them know about the upgrade. This can lead to a positive experience for the customer and save the business the customer support cost associated with talking to a live person.
9. Voice-Activated Interface
The way we access information is changing – instead of typing into Google, we now ask a question or make a demand. This means web design is adjusting to keep up with the prevalence of voice chatbots and virtual assistants. While a voice-activated interface isn’t commonplace for most websites, this emerging trend isn’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future.
We can expect to see more and more websites integrating voice search as an option to traditional text search.
10. Accessibility and Availability
Inclusivity and accessibility are more than a trend, but there is a growing need for web design to factor in the needs of people with disabilities. Having a site that every visitor can navigate and interact with is more than just part of good customer service and providing an excellent experience. It can increase conversion, boost your SEO, and help you reach a bigger audience.
Elements that improve accessibility include:
- Creating strong color contrast between text and backgrounds;
- Adding focus indicators, such as the rectangular outline that shows up around links when using keyboard navigation;
- Using labels and instructions with form fields rather than low-context placeholder text;
- Using functional alt tags for images (which also boosts SEO!);
11. Interactivity
Adding interactive sections to your website is a great way to provide value for visitors, get them to engage with your website, and learn more about them.
Suppose you were a realtor and added a mortgage calculator to your website. You’re offering value to your visitors while also learning more about them based on the data being inputted into your calculator.
Examples of interactive marketing include:
- Assessments like quizzes
- Polls and surveys
- Calculators
- Contests
12. Virtual Reality
VR experiences on websites will continue to increase over the coming years. Think of sites like Airbnb that let you tour a rental before you book a reservation. Or the furniture site IKEA’s ability to showcase what a sofa would look like in your room.
VR can be a powerful tool for a website to serve useful, meaningful content to a visitor in a way that helps them make buying decisions.
13. Micro-Interactions
On a website, micro-interactions are small animations that offer subtle feedback to users. One of the most commonly used micro-interactions is seeing a link change colors when a user mouses over it. With the focus on micro-interactions, that same experience might be given more attention to stand out. Imagine a gradient slowly shifting hues as you scroll down a page, or a pop of color exploding from your mouse after you click an element. These are prime examples of elevated micro-interactions that you’ll see more often.
14. Art Deco
Art Deco is anticipated to be popular in 2023 website design aesthetics. Art Deco relies heavily on symmetrical and geometric shapes. This style is often patterned, decorative, and ornamental. Geometric shapes will help to reduce visual stress.
15. Micro-Animation
As you might have guessed from the name, micro animations are small animations. But in this case, small doesn’t mean insignificant. Micro animations are extremely helpful when it comes to guiding users through their interactions with your website. They can also add an element of playfulness to your site like Smashmallow did with the micro animations in their hero image:
Micro animations have been popular for a few years, but in 2023, it’ll be about using them organically. As our UI/production designer explained, we’ll be thinking about how things move, if they’re on a curve or wheel instead of on a flat plane.
One of the latest web design trends for ecommerce sites is using micro animations to enhance user experience and give shoppers a more dynamic vision of their products. This yoga clothing store is using micro animations to show shoppers how their clothes fit and move on real people.
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16. Organic Shapes
Geometric shapes were a big website design trend in 2020, but in 2023, it’s all about organic shapes. Organic or fluid shapes are anything that doesn’t involve straight lines. Think of the shapes that happen in nature, like hills, and the edges of a lake or river, and how they are asymmetrical and winding.
Fluid shapes are a great way to break up sections of a website without harsh lines or angles. They’re also great to use in the background, like how Android uses circles behind products on their homepage:
17. Thumb-Friendly Mobile Navigation
Responsive design isn’t enough anymore. Your website should work well and be user-friendly on all mobile devices – regardless of the size! But in 2023, web design will continue to be focused on creating websites that are thumb-friendly.What exactly is “thumb-friendly”?
We’re talking about the way we use our phones. If you’re reading this on your phone right now, look at how you’re holding it. Your fingers are probably wrapped around the back of your phone (or around a phone grip), leaving your thumb to do all the work. You probably look like this.
Spooky, huh?
Not really. That’s how most of us use our smartphones, and that’s why thumb-friendly navigation is essential. Putting the navigation bar, menu, and even contact buttons in the space your thumb can reach (the center of the screen) makes your site more comfortable to use and improves your UX tenfold.
Here is a great graph showing the thumb-friendly areas of a phone screen:
18. Smart Video
Video has long been touted as a must-have for websites. People love videos! Video is engaging! It’s the most effective online marketing tool!
While video is great, it needs to be thought out. That’s what smart video is about: video with a purpose and meaning. Gone are the days of embedding a YouTube video on your site just to have one. One well-thought-out, high-quality video is better than a dozen haphazardly assembled ones.
The way CEI uses video in their hero image is eye-catching but not intrusive. It is also a fun visual representation of what they do: provide affordable printers and copiers to businesses in Raleigh.
19. Material Design
Material design is a design language that was introduced by Google back in 2014. Traditional web design looks flat. Material design is about using color and shadows to mimic the physical world and its textures.
Google’s icons for its software suite are an excellent example of material design:
The shadows on the Gmail envelope and the calendar are especially good examples of material design. It’s very subtle but goes a long way in making the icons look three-dimensional. We expect to see a lot more material design in 2023!
20. Text-Only Hero Images
Newspapers always put their most eye-catching, important information “above the fold” to increase sales. The website equivalent of this is at the top of a page and is called the “hero section.” A current trend to catch internet users’ attention who are bombarded by different web pages every day is removing the typical background image in the hero section and replacing it with eye-catching typography. A bold, unique font could be just the thing to get a user’s attention quickly.
21. Custom Illustrations
Stock images are out, custom graphics are in! Illustrations help to bring your company’s image to life. Custom illustrations are expected to lead the way as cookie-cutter stock graphics take a backseat.
22. Full-Page Headers
Full-page headers are expected to be popular in web design in 2023. A common approach includes placing important text or call-to-action buttons on the left of the header and using enticing graphics to the right. This is because visitors tend to spend most of their attention on the top-left portion of your page.
23. Dark Mode
Dark mode web designs serve a couple of different functions. On the practical end, they help reduce eye strain, a concern for many as we are spending more and more time looking at screens. On the aesthetic end, dark mode easily creates an ultra-modern look for your website while giving you the ability to highlight other design elements just by darkening the elements that surround it.
24. White Space
The use of white space is about giving content room to breathe, not trying to cram the most information possible on the screen. The experience is more relaxing for your website visitors, the content stands out better, and readability is improved.
White space is just the term for the spacing we give between elements. It does not have to be white, as long as the area is empty. This is why it’s also known as “negative space.”
25. Data Visualization
Communicating data in an engaging way is a struggle. But the struggle is worth it because using data visualization takes advantage of the fact that humans are visual creatures, and still conveys the message you need to get across. Data visualization creates images out of your data that engage your reader and makes them want to learn more about your brand. Infographics and graphs are some of the most popular ways to bring data to life.
26. Full Height Homepage Hero
Like a giant billboard, making your homepage hero section full-height can focus your users’ attention and serve as distraction-free messaging.
Think of full-screen hero sections as an opportunity for great storytelling. Just keep in mind that images will crop differently based on browser dimensions. You should use an image that will accommodate the design accordingly.
27. Blending Photos with Graphical Elements
You might have noticed overlapping graphics on images in your social media feed. This mixing technique brings a level of creativity and fun to a typical image.
The trend is also catching on with websites. Mixing photography with graphics can reinforce your company branding and keep website visitors engaged with your content.
28. Gradients
Gradients are a long-time trend that has evolved from subtle color overlays to eye-catching backgrounds.
Gradients can be used to add depth, serve as a striking background, or subtly to add texture to an illustration. We increasingly see it used in bigger and bolder typography.
This trend has staying power. We’re excited to see the continual evolution of its use on websites.
29. Interactive and Static 3D Content
Thanks to maturing web technology and web designers wanting to stand out from the average webpage, 3D elements that users can interact with have been increasingly used.
The results can be breathtaking – like the use of interactive 3D content on the Campo Alle Comete website.
30. Frosted Glass Effects
Recent advances in web technology have allowed the easy implementation of the frosted glass effect on websites. The blurry appearance of elements behind the frosted glass overlay helps add color to an area while also allowing text or objects to appear over the image and remain readable.
The effect has become a popular option in a designer’s tool belt and has increasingly been used as a background in place of gradients.
The Latest Web Design Trends and Standards for 2023 in Three Words: Fast, Clean and Eye-Catching
When you think about web design trends for 2023, think of custom illustrations, animated cursors, and blending photos with graphical elements. All of these and more will help to keep your site fresh in 2023. Updating your website’s design can positively impact your brand and revenue. If you want a modern and user-friendly website, contact our team today. Call 919-341-8901 or schedule a consultation today!
