What does it take to build a website that would engage customers? There’s a set formula that works at all times. You need to cooperate with a professional team and be aware of the latest trends in the web design industry.

You can approach hiring the right people for the task in two ways: by setting up an in-house team or employing a dedicated development team. Your choice will depend on the budget and resources available at your disposal.

Keeping up with the latest design trends is way easier as we have collected all of them in this article. Most of the concepts are old ones made new. They have been in existence for a long time but could not be effectively used due to technological limitations.

Retro Webpages Are Making a Comeback

People like old things because they bring a sense of nostalgia. This is true in website creation, too. Web designers are now using retro fonts and typography that have been stylized and reimagined in ways that make them unique.

Spotify’s Carnival promotion is based on these web design ideas. It combines older fonts with a modern look and feel. The retro aspect of this page is the staticky-looking background reminiscent of the old MySpace profile backgrounds. As 2021 unfolds, expect more companies to incorporate these styles into their web pages.

Increased Focus on Grain

There is such a thing as going too much in the retro direction. One of the ways people do that is by making their grids too rigid or implementing overly solid color schemes. Adding some graininess to the page can make it look more attractive and give it that retro look you were hoping for.

A good example of this is the website of the Kettle Restaurant in California. They add grainy texture in the background to great effect. It helps plain fonts and grids to stand out and catch the viewer’s eye.

Horizontal Scrolling is Gaining Traction

This is a controversial choice because many people do not like websites that scroll horizontally. One of the reasons for this is that people have been reading books from the top of the page to the bottom for thousands of years. However, paintings in image galleries are set up so that visitors can see them from one end of the wall to the other.

Web designers who build their sites the way one would set up paintings in a gallery can enjoy a lot of success. To achieve the desired effect, incorporate labeled arrow buttons, clearly displayed visual cues, and eye-appealing content. This may keep users on the page longer.

However, this technique does not work well for text. The text needs to be written on the page so that it is scrolled up and down. Horizontal designs can work great for pages that use photos and infographics with short bits of text at the bottom.

More 3D Visuals

Computers, phones, and TV sets utilize high-resolution screens that are able to handle three-dimensional graphics. Additionally, 3D graphics are not as blocky-looking and distracting as they were in the past. The combination of better graphics and HD screens has given web designers new ways to be creative.

A perfect example of a company using 3D graphics to great effect is the site for selling Campo alle Comete, an Italian wine. Their homepage looks like something from Star Trek. It depicts a floating city that vividly stands out over a desert plain. Using the mouse allows the viewer to spin the floating city and see every side of it. Also, the designers did an excellent job of not putting too much into the page.

More and Better Multimedia Experiences

The page for Campo alle Comete also engages and captures the viewer’s attention with impressive effects and sounds. The floating city is in motion, and the music sounds as if it could have come from a children’s fantasy film. The site does this without being too overtop. It is a smooth and clean page that is a work of art.

There are several things a web design team can do to make a page engaging. Perhaps, the most important is to keep it simple. Do not overload the page with too much motion and audio. All that may distract from the page’s true intent: to sell something, not make a statement. If the web page surfer sees or hears too much, they will miss the point of the page altogether and click back. Remember that multimedia aims to capture the viewer’s attention and keep the person on the page for as long as possible.

It is also good to use closed captioning for any audio if it includes someone speaking. Finally, do not allow videos to autoplay, as doing so can annoy the viewer and cause them to click back to the search engine results page. Also, including a lot of videos that autoplay can cause browsers to crash.

Closing Thoughts

The examples cited here are only a few of the ways people make their websites appeal to customers. Whether you implement 3D visuals, motion graphics, or non-standard content layout, remember to keep the design balanced. After all, the key goal of any website is to encourage the visitor to stay for longer and take the desired action. If they are too overwhelmed with effects, they will likely miss your website intent and leave for a competitor’s site, which is neat and straightforward.