Website Design Trends to Watch for 2022

Believe it or not, 2021 is coming to an end soon. Crazy, right? These past few years have certainly flown by. Unlike previous years, website design trends have been changing faster than ever. And to make matters even more challenging, this past May, Google launched a Page Experience Update, which put a stronger emphasis on user experience when it comes to ranking websites in its listings.

Basically, if your small business’ website isn’t top-notch when it comes to UX/UI, we’re willing to bet it isn’t on the first page of Google. That’s a serious problem when it comes to reaching your target audience (or any audience at all, for that matter).

In order to effectively and efficiently promote your products and services while also fitting within Google’s page experience update is to make sure its design is up to speed. Not only that, but a kick ass website design will help you stand out from your competitors!

While there is no shortage of design trends going around to look at for inspiration, there are quite a few that have stood out to us. If you’re eager to learn the latest on website design trends to see if your small business’ website meets the mark, read on.

Website Page Speed

At this point, this isn’t even a website design trend. It’s an essential element to incorporate into your small business’ web design.

If you don’t integrate lightning-fast page speed into your website, you risk losing quite a few things:

We live in a digitized, modern age. People have shorter attention spans than ever before—it only makes sense to design your website to operate as fast as possible. That way people don’t have a moment to lose interest when they’re browsing your page.

Mobile-Friendly Web Design

You had to know that this one was coming! Mobile friendly design is crucial to making sure that more users can surf your site and learn about your business. Think about it—people truly can’t keep their hands off their phones, so it’s important that they can access your website, and all of the information on it, seamlessly from their mobile devices.

Most importantly, mobile responsiveness is a critical web design trend for 2022, especially in the wake of Google’s mobile first index that was released this past July.

Mobile-first indexing is exactly what it sounds like. It just means the mobile version of your website becomes the starting point for what Google includes in their index and is thus the way Google defines its rankings.

However, rest assured that mobile-first does not mean it’s a mobile-only index. For example, if a site doesn’t have a mobile-friendly version, the desktop site will still be included in the index. But there’s a catch—the lack of a mobile-friendly experience could negatively impact your site’s ranking, and in turn, a site with a better mobile experience will rank higher than yours.

3D Design and Animation

Website design trends come about and evolve as new technologies do. This relationship has lasted since the beginning of web design and the internet.

How does this apply to the here and now? Well, since there are generally higher broadband and mobile data speeds to feed visual detail in this day and age, many businesses have committed to utilizing interactive 3D design, animation, AR, VR, and large-scale video and imagery to boost their website’s engagement.

One of the boldest examples we can think of is a French event engineering company called Goliath. Using a pop-art style, scrolling effects, animation, and more, their fun and innovative website immediately lets their customers know that they’ll bring originality to every event they engineer.

Animation and 3-D design can work for a variety of websites—it doesn’t have to be all bright colors and in-your-face animations. Consider the UK Web Designer, Shape, who’s minimalist web design includes slick, simple 3D illustrations that perfectly align with their brand and target audience:

Mindful Website Design Trends

While 3D graphics and interactive design fits perfectly within certain brands (especially for businesses in the creative sector), mindful web design fits a bit better with others.

Essentially, mindful design is straightforward, clean, and uncluttered website design. It’s minimalism at its best. And even better – the simpler your design is, the easier and faster it will load, which is great for ranking higher on Google.

Need an example to put a picture to all these words? Consider Tinker, a luxury watchmaker website.

No fluff, no fuss—just their latest product, high-quality photography, and a simple call-to-action button. The controlled sparseness of the design combined with the straightforward copywriting instantly puts audiences at ease.

Scrollytelling in Web Design

We know, we know. It sounds a little weird. But hear us out. Scrollytelling a pretty cool way to display long form content, especially if your website copy is text heavy.

Scrollytelling, or narrative visualization, has exploded in popularity as of late. If you have a detail-oriented company or brand voice, this may be one of the best web design trends to harness in your next website redesign project. With this kind of design, your long-form copy can be turned into an interactive experience. Audio, visual, and text content work together as you scroll to communicate your message in a more well-rounded way.

Apple’s AirPods webpage is a great example of scrollytelling. As the user scrolls, the story of what makes Airpods so special is told. What makes it even better is that it’s a wildly different experience than simply scrolling down the page. Oftentimes, properly selling your product or service is about not only cultivating a strong connection with your audience’s needs, but it’s about telling a story. That’s what makes scrollytelling such an interesting and creative way to promote certain aspects of your business.

After all, good storytelling is about showing, not just telling.

Denver Web Designers

Web design is a powerful tool, and it can make or break your small business. Keep up with website design trends to inform your online efforts and digital marketing decisions. You don’t want to be left behind.

Start this new year fresh. Whether you’d like to totally re-design a website, or you’d like some design updates to be made, Red Egg Marketing’s web developers and designers can help your small business’ website shine.