Upgrade your site with one of these web design trends 2022

Whether you’re sell­ing prod­ucts on your e‑commerce site, adver­tis­ing your ser­vices, show­cas­ing your port­fo­lio, or pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion about your real-life store, your web­site says a lot about your business.

Your web­site’s design is a key fac­tor in deter­min­ing what your poten­tial cus­tomers think of your com­pa­ny. If you want leads to trust you, find your site easy to use, or res­onate with your brand val­ues, you can achieve these goals with effec­tive web­site design. But which design choic­es should you go for?

Think your web­site is fine as it is? There’s no harm in dou­ble-check­ing if your site is due for an upgrade by run­ning through our arti­cle here. We go over all the main sig­ni­fiers that your web­site needs a makeover.

You can do so much to your web­site to make it stand out from oth­ers. But you might need a lit­tle inspi­ra­tion. So, here’s our round-up of web design trends 2022 to let you in on what’s fash­ion­able right now.

1. Single-Page Sites

We can all agree that some­times, in artis­tic mat­ters, less is more. Sin­gle-page sites cer­tain­ly tick this box, as well as pro­vid­ing prac­ti­cal sim­plic­i­ty for users. Plus, they’re a lot eas­i­er to make mobile-friend­ly. No won­der why this trend is so pop­u­lar with web­site creators!

If you’re think­ing about opt­ing for sim­ple scroll nav­i­ga­tion and jump­ing on this trend, remem­ber that it’s most suit­able for sites with less con­tent (ones that can go with­out nav­i­ga­tion and menus). For exam­ple, a sin­gle-page site works per­fect­ly for portfolios.

Both port­fo­lio sites linked below (Eggshell Stu­dio and Indi Har­ris) max­imise the poten­tial of sin­gle-page sites with their dis­played port­fo­lios. Show­cas­ing design col­lec­tions and work expe­ri­ence, respec­tive­ly, this trend does not lim­it either site’s aims.

Research shows that web­sites with one page can have an increased con­ver­sion rate because the process of using them is so sim­pli­fied and a lot faster. Don’t be fooled, though. If you have a more com­plex site, you won’t be able to pull this trend off eas­i­ly. Plus, sin­gle-page sites aren’t suit­ed to grow­ing companies.

2. Location-Specific Photos

With the recent rise in work­ing from home, peo­ple are becom­ing more aware of where they spend most of their time. Some remote work­ers are even mov­ing to dif­fer­ent coun­tries and becom­ing dig­i­tal nomads – just because they can!

With this change, our sec­ond item in web design trends 2022 isn’t sur­pris­ing: it’s become more pop­u­lar for the home­page of blogs and web­sites to be of a loca­tion. So, if you’re proud of where your busi­ness began, why not join the trend, and show­case a pho­to of its hometown?

Or, if you’re pro­vid­ing your online coach­ing busi­ness from the beach­es of Madeira, it would­n’t be unfash­ion­able to use an image of a gor­geous local beach.

Although most might think a hero page should con­vey brand val­ues, list prod­ucts, and ser­vices, or be a kind of site direc­to­ry, some com­pa­nies are suit­ed to this geo­graph­i­cal trend instead. Show­ing where your busi­ness comes from can express an authen­tic com­pa­ny image and encour­age leads to trust your business.

Grace Pot­ter’s web­site show­cas­es a stun­ning New Zealand beach, where she is based. The added grain­i­ness and pleas­ing cam­era angle com­bine to pro­duce an attrac­tive image, show­ing off her skills as a cre­ative that would be desir­able in any graph­ic design­er. She could have shown off this skill with non-loca­tion­al images or illus­tra­tions, but the fact that it’s where she is based adds the valu­able (and mar­ketable) ele­ment of human­i­ty. Thus, she uses the loca­tion trend to her advantage.

Based in Brighton, UK, Filthy show­cas­es its home­town with a pho­to of a bill­board (designed by them) that exclaims pride for its local foot­ball team. In fact, there are many shots of Brighton across the web­site. Though Filthy designs work for clients out­side of the town, much of their clien­tele is local. Much is the ethos in Brighton to ‘shop local’, Filthy show­cas­es itself to Brighton­ian cus­tomers as a home­grown com­pa­ny, and who bet­ter to choose than a com­pa­ny that under­stands the local spirit?

3. Extra-Large Footers

Who’d have thought that this prac­ti­cal sec­tion of sites would be exper­i­ment­ed with and make its way onto our list for web design trends 2022? If your web­site has lots of infor­ma­tion or pages, this trend is per­fect for you. Though they’re often just a direc­to­ry for all the seri­ous stuff, your foot­er does­n’t have to be boring.

Don’t fear! Mak­ing your foot­er over­sized just means you have lots of room to play with to make a state­ment. Plus, if this is what it takes for your exten­sive site to be organ­ised, then it’s worth it! Users will thank you for it because their expe­ri­ence will run more smoothly.

If you’re going to join this trend, just make sure your foot­ers are clear­ly struc­tured. Wild Souls and Wix are great sites to take inspi­ra­tion from: they’ve both organ­ised sim­i­lar infor­ma­tion into dif­fer­ent groups under sep­a­rate headings.

4. Split-Screen Sites

That’s right. Split-screen sites are back! In the past, this lay­out was pop­u­lar pri­mar­i­ly for its prac­ti­cal­i­ty. Where­as now, it’s made a come­back onto our list of web design trends 2022 as an aes­thet­ic fea­ture too.

Whilst this lay­out can pro­vide an eye-catch­ing con­trast with shape and colour, its use­ful­ness can’t be ignored. Split­ting your screen gives the func­tion­al­i­ty of sep­a­rat­ing infor­ma­tion and click­able con­tent, mak­ing it eas­i­er for users to nav­i­gate your site.

Although Infrared has used the split-screen lay­out pure­ly as a visu­al­ly attrac­tive fea­ture, its prac­ti­cal poten­tial can be seen in EngineThemes’ hero page.

Fea­tur­ing a hum­ming­bird with sev­er­al but­tons, the user can click around the page to learn more about the com­pa­ny. When each but­ton is clicked, the split-screen changes its posi­tion and infor­ma­tion about ser­vices pop up.

The inter­ac­tive ele­ment that EngineThemes has incor­po­rat­ed into its split-screen has a lot of UX poten­tial, as it pro­vides an engag­ing inter­face for cus­tomers who are just learn­ing about their business.

5. Horizontal Scrolling

This trend is bril­liant for web­sites show­cas­ing cat­a­logues, maps, or port­fo­lios. When exe­cut­ed well, it can pro­duce high­ly engag­ing visu­al effects through the com­bi­na­tion of text and images. With these ele­ments play­ing togeth­er, the result can be unfor­get­table for site users, who are encour­aged to con­tin­ue scrolling.

SIRUP, a site for lis­ten­ing to playlists, show­cas­es hor­i­zon­tal scrolling beau­ti­ful­ly. It echoes that of Spo­ti­fy’s app func­tion of scrolling hor­i­zon­tal­ly through an album or playlist, but with the addi­tion of tex­tures, album and artist infor­ma­tion and art­work. As you scroll across to dif­fer­ent songs, the huge, over­sized cur­sor changes to a pho­to of the artist who is playing.

Fur­ther­more, the site has the sur­face delight of the screen chang­ing colour when a dif­fer­ent song plays, mak­ing it even more mem­o­rable, visu­al­ly pleas­ing, and sat­is­fy­ing to use.

6. Simplified Heroes

Our sixth web design trend is sim­pli­fied heroes: these home pages are all stripped back but in dif­fer­ent ways.

Design­ers are choos­ing to sim­pli­fy their home pages by remov­ing images and replac­ing them with stylised typog­ra­phy or min­i­mal­ist illus­tra­tions. Or they’re going all out and opt­ing for just text.

Sim­plis­tic design choic­es can often be stun­ning and high­ly mem­o­rable for site users. How­ev­er, one risk that this design choice pos­es is the ele­ment of mys­tery. If your typog­ra­phy or illus­tra­tion does­n’t con­vey a clear enough mes­sage, users might be con­fused about your com­pa­ny’s purpose.

If you’re going to jump on this trend, first make sure you can get across your site’s pur­pose in sim­ple terms. Check out what SVZ and Go Radar have done with their site headlines.

7. Brutalist and Oversized Typography

This year, pre­pare for font styles and sizes to go wild.

Rather than the mod­ern, pol­ished, and min­i­mal fonts and styles that have been so pop­u­lar for years, bru­tal­ist and over­sized fonts are mak­ing their way onto our list of web design trends 2022.

Bru­tal­ist and over­sized fonts are being cho­sen by design­ers to fill site hero pages from top to bot­tom and side to side. Tak­ing up the whole screen, these fonts are intend­ed to leave an impact on site users. They’re dis­tinc­tive, proud, and chal­lenge site own­ers to get a mes­sage across in a few words.

It does­n’t mat­ter whether the rest of the site is min­i­mal­ist or max­i­mal­ist – all kinds of brands are using large fonts. Lan­guage LA com­bines an over­sized head­ing with cur­sor-sen­si­tive fea­tures. This com­bi­na­tion results in the site being fun to use, and there’s no doubt its users will remem­ber it.

In these cas­es, there’s no need for images or graph­ics because the font itself is the cen­tre­piece. The catch with bru­tal­ist and over­sized fonts, though, is – how will it look on a mobile?

The Flat Head pairs its huge head­ing with sub­tle, black and white mov­ing pic­tures behind. The words con­vey the cloth­ing brand’s val­ues whilst its bare­ly-there videos give an insight into their pro­duc­tion process. In this way, The Flat Head cap­tures the atten­tion of two kinds of users: the one that has time to wait and watch and the one that only has time for a snap­shot of the site’s values.

8. Interactive fonts and cursors

Mak­ing web­site copy even more excit­ing are design­ers using inter­ac­tive fonts. They’re cre­at­ing effects where­by ele­ments on your screen change colour, size, or tex­ture when the cur­sor touch­es them.

Dillinger TV is doing this in large but sim­plis­tic terms: its hero page is its menu, offer­ing the user either Direc­tor, About, or News. You might think that inter­ac­tive fonts will be wild and chaot­ic, but Dillinger TV exe­cutes this in a gen­tle way that’s extreme­ly easy to nav­i­gate through.

On the oth­er hand, Jade Sheng’s inter­ac­tive design is burst­ing with fun and colour. When touched by the cur­sor, every­thing either changes colour or moves. Users will find this design fea­ture extreme­ly sat­is­fy­ing and memorable.

How­ev­er, if you want to do this to your site, remem­ber that some peo­ple might strug­gle visu­al­ly if the effects are too sig­nif­i­cant. Chang­ing colours and mov­ing shapes can dis­tract the eyes and result in users not get­ting your message.

9. Delights

Delights have been steadi­ly becom­ing more pop­u­lar over recent years, with Airbnb being a text­book exam­ple. Users can see which map tags they’ve already viewed, mak­ing the process of search­ing for a place to stay a lot easier.

Airbnb also asks a lot of its hosts: high-qual­i­ty pho­tos and clean­ing cri­te­ria, to men­tion a cou­ple. These stan­dards ensure the site is attrac­tive to look at and that Airbnb isn’t allow­ing its users to stay at poor­ly main­tained homes or inter­act with sub-par hosts.

There’s no won­der that delights are trend­ing amongst UX design­ers: delights improve user expe­ri­ence by pro­vid­ing usabil­i­ty, func­tion, and, let’s not for­get: a plea­sur­able expe­ri­ence. If you’re keen to get aboard the delight train, con­sid­er the dif­fer­ence between sur­face delights and deep delights. We’ll run you through them now:

Sur­face delights include sound inter­ac­tions, ani­ma­tions, high-res­o­lu­tion images, tac­tile tran­si­tions, and micro-copy. These fea­tures can be super effec­tive when the rest of your site’s design looks good. Oth­er­wise, sur­face delights can seem a lit­tle tacky. There­fore, it’s best to only embark on sur­face delights once your deep delights have been estab­lished. Here’s what we mean by deep delights:

A site with deep delights is easy to use, very func­tion­al, free of errors, and has clear user paths. Essen­tial­ly, users will achieve a sense of deep delight when the inter­face acts smooth­ly at their fin­ger­tips. They won’t run into trou­ble on your site because of some­thing con­fus­ing. Instead, they’ll be in a “flow” state, oper­at­ing your site flaw­less­ly and find­ing what they need.

Some­times, a site isn’t very flashy or beau­ti­ful but works excep­tion­al­ly well due to its deep delights.

10. Inclusivity

With the increased dis­cus­sion about gen­der we’ve had in recent years, it’s no sur­prise that brands are pick­ing up on the need for gen­der-neu­tral designs. Even if you don’t intend to make a polit­i­cal state­ment, there is a grow­ing demand for gen­der-neu­tral design. Going for this opens up your mar­ket scope even wider so that you can reach more cus­tomers than ever before.

A great exam­ple is Déplacé Maison’s web­site; not only have they got a uni­sex range of prod­ucts, but their choice of colour for their site is neu­tral too. The brand con­cen­trates more on futur­is­tic streetwear rather than any gen­dered demo­graph­ic, result­ing in a mod­ern and min­i­mal­ist effect.

The design choic­es you make will have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on your site’s suc­cess. We’ve touched on a lot in this arti­cle, but that does­n’t mean you have to go mad with incor­po­rat­ing each design trend into your site. Pick the ones that are suit­ed to you.

Remem­ber: it does­n’t hurt to stay cur­rent, but it might hurt if you’re not cur­rent at all.