As a business big or small, freelancer or blogger, websites have become more than just a piece of digital real estate that informs the outside world where your business is located.  Rather, it houses your brand’s values, message, tone, and provides an opportunity to showcase your unique selling point. When it comes to building trust and credibility, a website also plays a big role here, with content that should relay that you’re the industry captain a prospect should choose when they want to make a purchasing decision.

That said to have a website standout amongst the many dazzling within your industry, makes web design a cut-throat and highly competitive business.  To make it a little easy, here are 10 design trends set to dominate 2021.

    1.    Three-dimensional colors

3D has been the craze for a while now, but with almost everything being 3D from movies to images, it was only a matter of time before colours followed suit.  For web design it means that colours are set to have a higher saturation than before, making them pop on the screen.  That, coupled with the 3D effect, expect more websites to look like the  fruit and vegetables you’d find in the produce aisle of a supermarket.  Bright, fresh, and ready for the plucking.

When used effectively, two contrasting colours can be made to retain depth, embedding the design well within the minds of website visitors.

2. Interactive 3d Content

Staying within the 3D vein is 3D content.  Due to its realistic feel for users, 3D content can be fun, exciting, and interactive, and when the goal is to keep a user on the site long enough to help them along their purchase journey, that’s not a bad thing. Web designers can play around with elements that weren’t available a few years ago that keep users glued to the screen.

3. Neumorphism in user interfaces

Neumorphism is a combination of material design and skeuomorphism.  Web designers have the opportunity of incorporating both a 3D design and minimalistic approach.  What appeals most to users is how it delivers an out-of-the-box experience  compliments the shadows on the neumorphic design.

4. Gradient color scheme

Gradient colour scheme has been around before 2021, but will still trend well into the future – for good reason. It’s a unique way of combining two complimenting colours.  Instagram incorporated this into their iconic logo paving the way for many other web designers to follow suit in beautiful and bold ways.

5. Dark Mode and Low Light UX Web Design Trends

Dark mode is edginess and sophistication embodied and, with how it’s easier on the eyes in low light environments, it’s a trend being adopted by web designers around the world.  Though it could have a negative effect on the emotions it evokes when used too much, when used properly, content can pop on the screen drawing attention to where it matters the most.

6. Hand-drawn elements

It’s no surprise, visuals attract faster than text and, where images play a vital role in catching the eye of users, hand-drawn elements add a different kind of touch (excuse the pun).  Hand-drawn elements are attractive because of how it changes what could be a cold, unrelatable site into a warm, website that appeals to the inner-child. Over and above that, using such elements is often associated with creativity and inspiration.

7. Web Accessibility

Google not only looks at ways to make sure that search intent and content on websites match, but also that disabled users are able to access the information with the same ease as those who aren’t disabled. For this reason, websites have adapted elements that help to optimize webpages specifically for that audience which makes up a whopping 2 billion people around the world.  This would include, fitting the colour contrast between text and backgrounds, focus indicators and functional alt tags for images to mention a few.

8. Data Visualization

Data visualization that’s displayed in an interactive and fun way keeps users on the screen a lot longer than boring analytics does.  Why?  No one really enjoys seeing graphs and charts for too long before the brain feels as if it’s busy with some serious manual labour.  Enter this 2021 trend, which communicates what’s needed while adding elements that spark interest and interaction and thus serving well for SEO.

9.    White Space

Also referred to as negative space, gives content a chance to breath, keeping the main thing, the main thing.  White space makes the message clear, doesn’t improvise on readability, and is relaxing to users making it a trend to try.

10.  Using videos

By now I’m sure you’d agree that visuals are what attracts a user.

Bringing us to the last element that’s trending in webdesign – videos. When done right, with the right video content, it is a powerful tool to showcase what the company does and how it can serve the user communicating your brand persona in a powerful way! 

There are many other trends going viral in 2021 and many more on the rise, and with how fast technology and how humans interact with it constantly changes, it’s no surprise.  The key to anything as fast-paced as webdesign is to always have one finger on the pulse, an open mind and a willingness to learn and adapt.  That said, is there anything you’d take away, if so what?

Here at JDC, we are committed to providing you with the necessary tools you and your business need to set you up for online success.  When you speak, we listen, and deliver top-quality digital marketing services so that you don’t have to worry about the nitty-gritty involved in the industry, allowing you to focus on whatever you need to so that we can secure a return on your digital investment.