Future website trends and what to expect in 2021 and beyond

Part 3 of 3

11. Interactivity / Micro interactions

Another example of mobile apps having an effect on website UX/UI trends; tapping a screen with your thumbs or fingers is considerably less precise than a pixel-precise mouse click, and as such, apps have started adding some subtle, but effective, feedback animations to confirm to the user that they have tapped, scrolled or swiped, etc. This is by no means a new feature to come to websites; there have been rollovers, and hover effects for many years now. However, we are starting to see in an increase in designers and developers smartly utilising these micro-interactions to provide a more pleasant experience, and to guide their users around their website.

12. VR / AR

Reality altering technologies are still very much in their early stages… mostly… the first was patented in the ‘60s, but only recently has it seen the mainstream attention required to keep it a viable option. The equipment required to run such things is expensive, and until recently, they’ve lacked any real world-application. However, longer term, we expect businesses to become more innovative in the ways they can integrate virtual and augmented reality in to what services they already provide.

13. 3D content

Due to the nature of the screen with which you see a website, everything you see is flat. We seem to be on the tail end of the trend of using drop shadows to demonstrate depth on design elements, preferring a cleaner, simpler, flatter design style. But design trends are often cyclical, and when we want more depth again, what better way than with faux three-dimensional elements. And with more powerful machines the near future will bring, rendering such elements will be easier than ever.

14. Hand-drawn illustrations

It’s easy to make everything look nice and accurate. Alignments, colours, angles, positioning; all of it can be adjusted to create something that is pixel perfect. But how do you then stand out when every website has this beautifully crisp aesthetic? We have found that using hand-drawn illustrations adds an almost-unusual dynamic to a page, the smallest of imperfections in the drawing contrast with the perfectly accurate lines in the website around it. We believe we will start seeing this effective technique more and more over the next few years.

15. Imagery combined with shapes, colour, and text

Balance is key here. Overlap too many elements and the site will become too abstract (returning full circle to trend number 1!). However, a smartly designed, well-balanced page with coloured shapes and/or text nicely overlapping image elements can have an impressive aesthetic that will stand out against a plain layout. Combining the whitespace (trend 4) of a unique shape with an image can also enhance the brand or theme of a website too.

We hope you found these insights useful, or at least interesting. No doubt there will be other trends that emerge in the coming years, but these 15 should be a good indication of what to expect. At Geo, we don’t just blindly follow the trends, attempting to capitalise on their popularity, but we do explore interesting ways of incorporating them when it benefits our clients to do so.