by Elyssa Coultas

Technology changes fast, and website design trends are no different. Design elements and website features that were once modern and innovative may have become tired, overdone, and cliched in recent years. The last thing you want as people arrive at your site is to lose conversion because your website looks outdated or ignores critical web standards.

Fortunately, our award-winning web design agency keeps up with all the latest website design trends to create highly functional, easy-to-use websites that perform well and look fantastic. We want to share some of the latest innovations, digital technology trends, standards, and forecasts for 2023.

10 Website Design Trends and Standards for 2023 and Predictions for the Next Year

There will always be aspects of web design that are never going away – user-friendly navigation, data security, and fast load times should just be a given on your website. However, you can keep your site at the forefront of design and search engines by adding some of these innovative website features and elements that promise to be hot for 2023.

1.Animated Cursors

Another fun way to customize your user’s experience on your website is to design the way they interact with your web elements – which includes their cursor! This 2023 web design trend is delighting users with its unexpected subtlety. By modifying the form of the cursor or by implementing cursor-triggered animations, visitors can have fun interacting with different scrolling behaviors or on-click commands.

2.Chatbots More Like “Chatbuds”

Chatbots are another feature that has been popular for a few years and will continue to be relevant in 2023. As artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to get more sophisticated, we expect to see chatbots become the norm for simple customer service requests and “personal shopping.”

For example, if a customer visits your website, looking for phone support and the chatbot knows they have an available free phone upgrade. The chatbot can let them know about the upgrade. This can lead to a positive experience for the customer and save the business the customer support cost associated with talking to a live person.

3.Voice-Activated Interface

The way we access information is changing – instead of typing into Google, we now ask a question or make a demand. This means web design is adjusting to keep up with the prevalence of voice chatbots and virtual assistants. While a voice-activated interface isn’t commonplace for most websites, this emerging trend isn’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future.

We can expect to see more and more websites integrating voice search as an option to traditional text search.

4.Interactivity

Adding interactive sections to your website is a great way to provide value for visitors, get them to engage with your website, and learn more about them.

Suppose you were a realtor and added a mortgage calculator to your website. You’re offering value to your visitors while also learning more about them based on the data being inputted into your calculator. 

Examples of interactive marketing include:

• Assessments like quizzes
• Polls and surveys
• Calculators
• Contests

5.Virtual Reality

VR experiences on websites will continue to increase over the coming years. Think of sites like Airbnb that let you tour a rental before you book a reservation. Or the furniture site IKEA’s ability to showcase what a sofa would look like in your room.

VR can be a powerful tool for a website to serve useful, meaningful content to a visitor in a way that helps them make buying decisions.

6.Micro-Interactions

On a website, micro-interactions are small animations that offer subtle feedback to users. One of the most commonly used micro-interactions is seeing a link change colors when a user mouses over it. With the focus on micro-interactions, that same experience might be given more attention to stand out. Imagine a gradient slowly shifting hues as you scroll down a page, or a pop of color exploding from your mouse after you click an element. These are prime examples of elevated micro-interactions that you’ll see more often.

7.Micro-Animation

As you might have guessed from the name, micro animations are small animations. But in this case, small doesn’t mean insignificant. Micro animations are extremely helpful when it comes to guiding users through their interactions with your website. They can also add an element of playfulness to your site like Smashmallow did with the micro animations in their hero image:

Micro animations have been popular for a few years, but in 2023, it’ll be about using them organically. As our UI/production designer explained, we’ll be thinking about how things move, if they’re on a curve or wheel instead of on a flat plane.

One of the latest web design trends for ecommerce sites is using micro animations to enhance user experience and give shoppers a more dynamic vision of their products. This yoga clothing store is using micro animations to show shoppers how their clothes fit and move on real people.

8.Thumb-Friendly Mobile Navigation

Responsive design isn’t enough anymore. Your website should work well and be user-friendly on all mobile devices – regardless of the size! But in 2023, web design will continue to be focused on creating websites that are thumb-friendly.

What exactly is “thumb-friendly”?

We’re talking about the way we use our phones. If you’re reading this on your phone right now, look at how you’re holding it. Your fingers are probably wrapped around the back of your phone (or around a phone grip), leaving your thumb to do all the work. You probably look like this.

Spooky, huh?

Not really. That’s how most of us use our smartphones, and that’s why thumb-friendly navigation is essential. Putting the navigation bar, menu, and even contact buttons in the space your thumb can reach (the center of the screen) makes your site more comfortable to use and improves your UX tenfold.

Here is a great graph showing the thumb-friendly areas of a phone screen:

9.Smart Video

Video has long been touted as a must-have for websites. People love videos! Video is engaging! It’s the most effective online marketing tool!

While video is great, it needs to be thought out. That’s what smart video is about: video with a purpose and meaning. Gone are the days of embedding a YouTube video on your site just to have one. One well-thought-out, high-quality video is better than a dozen haphazardly assembled ones.

The way CEI uses video in their hero image is eye-catching but not intrusive. It is also a fun visual representation of what they do: provide affordable printers and copiers to businesses in Raleigh.

10.Dark Mode

Dark mode web designs serve a couple of different functions. On the practical end, they help reduce eye strain, a concern for many as we are spending more and more time looking at screens. On the aesthetic end, dark mode easily creates an ultra-modern look for your website while giving you the ability to highlight other design elements just by darkening the elements that surround it.