20 Nov 7 Emerging Website UX Trends You Will See in 2021

The new decade is just around the corner, and with it will emerge a new wave of digital design trends that you’ll need to know if you want your website to stay competitive. A full 55% of companies with a digital presence now incorporate user experience (UX) into their website strategy, according to the latest research from Design Advisor.

That means that any business website or blog that is serious about attracting and retaining loyal visitors needs to up their design game if they want to stay on top in 2020. We are already seeing the emergence of a number of innovative website trends as the year draws to a close, with some of the most popular sites on the planet taking the lead to maximize their user experience. Here are the top trends you need to look out for in 2021.

1. Motion Graphics

Until recently, concerns over retaining smooth mobile UX meant that motion graphics were often skipped over for landing pages. Thanks to increased mobile capabilities and data bandwidths, flawless motion graphics across all platforms have now become a reality. This can mean animated logos, video wallpapers, and elements that change when the cursor moves over them. There are lots of ways to incorporate motion graphics into your website, but the experts over at CG Society have the best collation of examples that will make your site truly pop.

2. Designing with Speed in Mind

As you probably already know, the speed and capacity of mobile devices are increasing exponentially. The rapid rollout of 5G, to the extent that the 2020 generation of iPhones is expected to come fully enabled for fifth-generation speeds, means that speed is becoming a top priority when it comes to website UX. User’s expectations have risen, meaning that a website offering anything less than instant loading speeds will quickly be dismissed. Before considering any visual UX, always conduct thorough user testing to ensure speeds are lightning fast across all devices.

3. Voice User Interfaces

Research from ComScore has concluded that in a year’s time a full 50% of all searches conducted online will be voice searches. This means that any website that wishes to retain an audience should begin considering how to set up a functional VUI (Voice User Interface) infrastructure as soon as possible. E-commerce giants such as Amazon already allow users to search for products via voice, whilst other smaller websites are rushing to follow suit.

4. Livestreaming Functionality

Livestreaming capabilities should be embedded into any website that deals with entertaining visual content. As sites such as Twitch have shown, users now expect to be able to interact with real people and consume content in real-time.

5. Device Synchronization

While web designers have woken up the importance of mobile-friendly content, one area where many of them are lacking concerns device synchronization. Nowadays a user will typically be using multiple devices at the same time, therefore they expect a consistent experience across all platforms simultaneously. One pioneer in this area is the ride-hailing company Uber, which has integrated its service so that you can begin ordering a ride on your laptop and finish doing the exact same thing on your mobile, without missing a beat. This continuous and uninterrupted flow will be vital to the user experience in the year ahead.

6. Searchable Visual Content

Machine learning may still be in its basic stages, but many designers are getting ahead of the game by formatting their visual content so that it can be identified by search engine algorithms. Since the majority of web content is now strictly visual, it is crucial that your photos and videos are correctly labeled and constructed so that they can easily be picked out by an algorithm. This means tagging your visual content with all of the necessary keywords, including text overlays on your content, and ensuring crystal-clear image clarity. This will allow your website to be more accessible in the future.

7. Hyper-Personalization

Finally, we are entering an age of tailor-made digital content, meaning that ‘hyper-personalization’ will emerge as the UX buzzword for 2020. The greatly enhanced availability of user data means that even mid-sized websites can ensure that all content is customized to fit the preferences of the site visitor. Consider how the streaming giant Netflix personalizes the thumbnails for their movies depending on who is looking at them. This is the kind of stuff that will set websites apart from the competition in the future. Even web copy will soon be fully customizable, as long as you have the data to do so.

–

These are the biggest emerging web UX trends for 2020, but they aren’t the full story. Make sure to stay tuned to find out more about what the best websites are doing for their visitors in the year ahead.