10 Compelling Web Design Trends for 2022

One-page websites aren’t a new concept. Its been around since 2015. The idea sparks the trend that less is more and the ability to tell your story quickly. Usually, these sites forgo menus and navigation. It’s hard to tell a story if you have to click around too many pages. It’s much easier to keep scrolling a page and answer top questions. Often, these are an excellent fit for microsites that may want to highlight a company’s big milestone anniversary, a portfolio site, and an advertising landing page for marketing a product or service.

When to use it?

Hero images are the first image banner you see on a web page. In 2022 web designers will use typography and design to communicate their stories rather than relying on photography. A nice image brings visual interest, but resorting to stock photography is often a poor choice. Communicate your ideas with more clarity using text. Interlace it with design treatment and layout for truly a captivating experience.

How to use it?

A larger web design trend of 2022 is the use of mega footers. The footer carries over this concept, similar to a mega menu, typically with 3-4 columns of menu links grouped by categories. Things to include are copyright information, a link to your privacy policy page, social profile links, an opt-in email form, and menu links grouped by categories.

Are Footer links important for SEO?
Internal linking for your website is important for helping your users navigate your website naturally and SEO. Search engines want to understand whether you’ve added footer links only for SEO purposes or if they exist to help the end-users as they navigate your website.

For example, if you have 80+ footer links pointing to various location pages, Google may notice and penalize you as these links are clearly set for SEO only and not the end-user.

Why use it?

Gender-neutral design is becoming a standard trend. Creating access standards for male and female users is the first step in looking outside societal assumptions. When writing content, the new normal is to opt for they rather than him or he when a gender is not specified.

Try not to make assumptions about the people who visit your website. Such as their interest based on gender.

How to use it?

Often we think of animated photos, icons, UI elements, and transitions. Animated text is another strong trend in 2022. Show your creativity, and emphasize what you’re trying to communicate. These small micro animation touches allow text to be in the spotlight without overwhelming your audience. This trend can go hand and hand with trend #2, No Hero Images, to evoke an emotion, bring attention and create a memorable experience.

Why use it?

This web design trend feels edgy and modern. Linework breaks up the header, footer, and content sections to create a distinct look and feel. You can take it further by adding illustrated line art. The linework is a branding choice. Choose wisely!

When to use it?

Gradients aren’t new, but this format is for 2022 in a new, more mature format. Rich gradients are becoming one of the dynamic web design trends in contemporary web design and are often used to add deepness to flat images. In 2018 Instagram brought the trend back with its gradient logo. Since then, gradients have evolved with interactivity and imagination. Using rich gradients is a very good option if you are designing a minimalistic design.

Why use it?

A great way to show off a custom design is by creating a layered effect with design treatments, photography, and icons that stack and overlap. This effect frequently draws the desired impact of visual interest in a meaningful way.

Using the example of InVision, you can see they have done a beautiful job of combining product screenshots with icons and photography to create an immersive experience to telling the website story.

When to use it?

Dynamic content is the content stored in the website database, which can be used on any page on your website. You can, for example, display a featured blog post on your product or service page without having to go into the page to update the content. This content can be automatically populated and updated as you add a new featured blog post.

The content must be added once into your content management system but could be displayed on multiple pages dynamically. Dynamic content is excellent for anyone developing a website with constantly changing content like blog, portfolio, projects, team members, products, press releases, news, or events.

When to use it?

Glassmorphism is a new trend on the block that is quickly growing. Glassmorphism is a trend used to describe UI design that emphasizes light or dark objects placed on colorful backgrounds. A background blur is placed on the objects, allowing the background to shine through, giving it the impression of frosted glass.

The main thing about this technique is diffusion, reflection, and shadow, which create an optical illusion. The glass effect can make a site feel 3D when combined with subtle movement. The “frosted glass” diffusion within the image allows you to incorporate transparency into your design without feeling too visually cluttered.

Here are some inspirational Glassmorphism designs to get your creative juices flowing.

When to use it?