Your SEO will be unsuccessful if your website’s User Design Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) are inadequate. Nobody will find you on the internet, and if your website is not discoverable, it will fail.
With approximately 200 algorithm variables that a search engine can index to assess a website’s SEO score, UI and UX are crucial indicators. Thus, UI and UX are critical for the company’s SEO and should not be overlooked.
Every year, new UI/UX design trends emerge based on the varying tastes of the users. Websites need to adapt to the most crucial ones to remain competitive.
UX refers to the whole process of buying and adopting a product, including branding, design, accessibility, and feature elements. Long before the consumer has access to the product, UX starts.
UX seeks to boost consumer satisfaction and engagement through the utility, ease of use, and comfort offered in their product or experience.
On the other hand, UI is a component of UX. An easy-to-use and accessible website is essential for UX, which offers the consumers the best possible experience when using your product or platform.
If you want to remain valuable, meaningful, and in demand, you must be aware of your UI/UX designs. There are 1.7 billion active sites, and to remain ahead, you must have something that distinguishes you from the competition. You must quickly catch the customer’s interest, as you usually only have ten seconds or less to allow a potential user to continue and explore your site more.
Here are the 5 most popular trends in UI/UX design for 2021.
1. Custom 3D or Realistic Illustrations and Animations
Image Source: Moon Bridge from Pixabay
Three-dimensional (3D) animations or realistic illustrations are often used as core site imagery, enabling users to understand critical concepts quickly. Integrating 3D architectures into web and mobile interfaces have seen rapid growth in recent months.
Custom 3D components are embedded in UI prototypes by UX and UI experts to spark customers’ curiosity and infuse brand personality. Complex animations pique user curiosity by offering immersive, memorable experiences, making web pages and displays more appealing.
Designers may use software to build flat 3D models quickly. Dimensions by Adobe Suite is one of them, and it can be used effortlessly when creating vectors with Adobe illustrator or pro-grade images with Photoshop.
2. Login Without Passwords
Forgetting passwords is one of the most common mistakes that users make when dealing with online web platforms. So the password resetting option is what prompts users to log back into their accounts.
Passwords are typically a combination of numbers, alphabets, and special characters. But one big issue is forgotten passwords. New UI architectural designs provide a slew of new ways for users to easily but securely log into their accounts to address this dilemma.
3. Rapid Cross-Platform Design
Cross-platform creation for interactive content is an ideal approach for releasing websites and mobile apps. You can use progressive libraries and frameworks to offer expressive UI to mobile, online, and desktop screens from a common code base.
Through reusing the same technology to support different platforms, cross-platform production dramatically decreases the time and investment needed to build an app or website. It ensures design continuity and optimizes design commitment while retaining the native look and sound.
In this strategy, UX and UI designers build with multi-device support in mind from the outset and then tailor their designs to individual platforms. Both of these advantages combine to make cross-platform production an increasing trend in 2021.
The cross-platform architecture will be one of the techniques that will become the standard in 2021. Businesses will streamline their activities more and more to simplify processes and increase productivity.
4. Asymmetric Layouts
Image Source: Six Degrees
Websites have been built on a grid for many years. It is an excellent technique for streamlining the structure and focusing on core components. On the other side, this lessens the site’s uniqueness. As a result, the asymmetric style is the upcoming theme.
Asymmetry is an opportunity to escape from convention and embrace unique and fun styles.
However, designers must strike a balance between conventional and unconventional designs. Do not sacrifice relevance just for uniqueness. Maintain a level of familiarity, where users would recognize you are trying to do something fresh without confusing them or making their experience more challenging.
Conduct user research to achieve a sense of equilibrium. The intention is to ensure that no portion of the website appears “heavier” than the others. The picture, for example, should not be much larger than the text block.
It is important to note that, regardless of the approach, the viewer’s attention is often drawn to the broad elements. As a result, asymmetric geometry is sufficient to maximize the size of the blocks you wish to concentrate on.
5. Minimalism
Minimalism opposes ultra-subjective architecture and abstract expressionism. Minimalism projects tend to showcase a design’s true essence by removing all excesses by distilling it to its pure material.
Minimalism has come and gone as a UI architecture theme over the years. It seems to be on the rise again in 2021. New visitors to websites are looking for simple, easy-to-use interfaces.
Designers can remove something that slows down the process of finding useful information, such as hundreds of pop-up windows and irrelevant warnings. For so many interruptions to the users’ surfing experience, you risk losing readers and increasing the bounce rates.
An eye-tracking test or a heat map are quick ways to assess which areas of the website you can work on and optimize. It reveals which websites people visit the most and generate the most engagements.
Remove any unnecessary details or others that are irrelevant to the material. Choose fast and smooth navigation to ensure the users’ usability and ease of navigation. Here are some examples of minimalist design:
Image Sources: Anti Logo, One Design Company, Send A Message To, La Boca: Adele
Focus on storytelling in your design.
Even in UI/UX architecture, storytelling is a common theme, as is personalization. It is for this reason that projects are gradually taking on the form of narrative. Storytelling is a design strategy that conveys a message to consumers in the most relatable manner possible.
When you tell the story behind your brand or product, it captivates consumers and audiences even more. Users are more likely to pursue a story than a product or brand. You would be able to engage with the user personally by appealing to their feelings and forming a personal connection.
You can also customize your U/UI design to follow a story as users and visitors go through your site. Let every page seamlessly tell more of that story.
It increases your conversion rate when you employ a convincing narrative not just through your content but through the entire user experience and user design interface. In this way, your brand story lives on through your users through word-of-mouth referrals that boost your brand.
Below are few more examples of how to incorporating storytelling in design:
Image Source
Image Source
Creating a visual narrative on web pages is not new, but we will see more of it in situations where out-of-the-box marketing is required in the digital space. However, if you learn from your consumers to outrank competitors, you will know which stories appeal to their emotions the most, allowing them to see your brand in a whole new light.
Conclusion: UX and UI Should Always be Relevant
Design is a cyclical process. Every year, new developments in UI/UX design emerge, so there will be many repetitions, and many things from the past will return.
Whatever movements come and go, critical thought and validity should remain a focal point. Since architecture is merely a tool, it must have a function.
Design is a visual language used to express the worth of a product or service. Maintain your relevance enough that you can do something quickly regardless of the design type you need to use.
AUTHOR: MAYLEEN MEÑEZ
Mayleen Meñez used to work in media before finding her true passion in NGO work, traveling the Philippines and Asia doing so. She homeschools 3 kids and loves reinventing Filipino dishes. She is a resident SEO writer for Softvire Australia and Softvire New Zealand.
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