User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) are a perfect synergy of technology and design. In a quality example of effective web design, both prop each other up and just like technology, design trends change quickly. As we steam-roll into 2023, the design trends that have defined the past couple of years of digital design are on track to change once again, prompting many eCommerce businesses to start looking at adapting to them.
It is great to get ahead of the curve and set your brand as a trendsetter in your industry. But what should you look out for? How should you prepare to be ahead of the design curve? We looked at the five key web and digital design trends that are coming over the horizon, so you can wonder no more.
Old is new! Many current UX/UI trends (especially in web design) are based on revitalising long-extinguished from yesteryear, and one of those is brutalism. A design language first concocted in the 1950s, brutalism is defined by a minimalist approach that exposes the bare bones of design work. With the wave of nostalgia hitting the internet at the moment, web design is responding with neo-brutalist designs that are less corporate-feeling and more personal and organic. Use browser-default fonts, high-contrast colours and visible boundaries to achieve this look, and the result is not only a quirky image for your website but baked-in ease and accessibility for more users.
With the design, music and fashion trends of the 80s and 90s coming back in recent years, it only seems right that the adoption of colourful gradients will come to define website design in 2023. Colour gradients are smooth transitions between two or more shades, and you can find them in far-reaching, multi-coloured swirls of gradient colour or in simple smoothing out of similar shades to add depth to a website’s colour scheme. The practical benefit of gradients is how they can enhance flat designs and add a colour overlay to photos as well as texture to backgrounds. In a more philosophical sense, gradients are perhaps a bright and happy response to the exhaustion that the pandemic has caused us all in the last few years.
Taking your design to three dimensions could be just the thing to separate your eCommerce business from the pack. As the squeaky-clean friendly and corporate designs of the past few years start to fade away, 3D objects will allow brands to decorate or complement information with high-quality imagery. Best of all, it’s never been easier to produce 3D imagery thanks to easy-to-access software. 3D design is at the very forefront of visual design to the point of being almost avant-garde, so if you want to present yourself as an ambitious and groundbreaking eCommerce business, this is an excellent way to project that ethos.
Why settle for traditional site scrolling when you can opt for an immersive scrolling design? With advancements in Javascript, animation libraries and native implementations, brands are now able to create incredible website designs that take the user on a journey that will leave them impressed. It can allow you to tell a narrative about your brand in exactly the way you want it, controlling what, when and how content will appear before your users’ very eyes. Not just as a storytelling tool but as an all-around tool for generating website design ideas, immersive scrolling will surely be used by many companies to sharpen audience engagement.
Remaining in the world of animation and complex graphics, motion design is becoming more of a possibility with the increased potential for sustainable website performance. Bandwidth changes to 5G and the assimilation of libraries such as Lottie Files now allow designers to create top-drawer animations that wow audiences while keeping everything optimised and smooth. The advantage of these motion-heavy additions is that they take turn eCommerce websites to a new level with even more dynamic and visually appealing elements. Find a way to make them seamless, and your audience will be delighted with just the smallest of interactive elements.
With design language trends set to change in 2023, your business should consider looking to collaborate with a team of dedicated UX designers to help take care of your website rebuild or rebrand. Our web design team at Brave Agency are masters at balancing function and form, delivering stunning and intuitive website designs that your audience will find engaging and easy to navigate. Brave Agency is the best web design agency in the Cambridgeshire area, so start capitalising on the sea change in the UX design world and contact our team of experts today.
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