ANIMATION IN WEB DESIGN

ANIMATIONS ADVANTAGES, DISADVANTAGES & TIPS IN WEB DESIGN

Introduction

In a today’s competitive world, the web design undoubtedly matters, because it can reflect how your brand is doing their business, and ultimately how your clients and potential customers see and feel about you. Making a great impression is crucial, as you can potentially gain and keep a customer for life. If you ask professional website designers to define what can be considered as a good web design, there are high chances that they will all give you a wide variety of different answers. However, the most well-designed things are based on a number of specific web design principles that result in useful, beautiful products that ultimately give consumers a deep level of satisfaction and enjoyment when used. One of those principles that we are going to discuss today is simplicity and the use of animation.  
  Auxesisinfotech explains that, according to web credibility research from Stanford, 75% of people admit judging the credibility of a business based on their web design. So for sure, credibility has a straight relation to how likely people are to make a purchase. That clearly means one is losing his clients if their site has a poor web design. One needs to ensure that his website conveys that they are in a genuine and trustworthy business, which is often decided by the caliber of the web design.

Animation | Do I need to use it?

Animation is one of the most impressive and effective tools that you have to use on your website design and development. The thought-out use of animation on your webpage can help you increase your targeted traffic in a way that ordinary text-based content cannot do for you. There are plenty of advantages of including animation in your web design plan. For instance, it keeps your visitors on your website significantly longer, reducing your bounce rate. As a result, it leads to the higher level of interest in your site and encourages relatively higher number of shares and revisits. However, it is crucial to always keep in mind that, even with animation, your website design has to be as simple and clean as possible. Below are the thoughts of famous SEO (search engine optimization) specialist, Neil Patel, on this matter: “One of the biggest problems with websites is that they become outdated quickly. It seems like, as soon as you’re about to finish with one update, it’s time for another. But it doesn’t need to be that way. Busy website designs lose their allure and become dated quickly.” For instance, “while most news sites are cluttered and distracting, the Los Angeles Times leaves its site clean. It draws focus to a small selection of headings and uses white space for the rest:  
    Despite the fact, designing with motion is a great way to draw user’s interest to a particular part of your website, as well as to lead the user’s eye to important areas of a web design, and make a website memorable, it can also cause some drawbacks, that have to be taken into account as well. Avatar New York states that, before you add a set of animations to your website design, there are potential drawbacks to consider, especially if animations are not implemented properly and negatively impact UX.  Getting overloaded with animations clutter the interface, which leads to a worsened user experience and a negative impact on the loading speed of your website. Slow loading is considered as one of the biggest causes of users abandoning websites, and animations can slow speeds down significantly if not executed with attention to the factors, such as quality, scaling, and minimal coding. Besides, un-optimized animations can also result in rendering issues. It is crucial to take into account that users do not want to wait for pages or animations to render, so make sure that rendering and loading take less than two (2) to three (3) seconds. One of the types of animation effects that will make your website design more eye-catchy, without making it too ‘heavy’ is a parallax effect. Parallax scrolling design refers to the use of visual effects combined with 2D scrolling to create the illusion of depth and layers in a user’s experience.  
  IQ Computing states that, there are the following benefits of using parallax scrolling, which are:

• Stimulate users with different levels of depth and a sense of animation Encourages longer page visit time as user curiosity leads to scrolling through the entire design (including the highlighted call to actions)
• Emphasizes professionalism and higher level of creativity of your company/organization (this can vary depending on the industry and size of the website involved)

The practical approach of using parallax effect is explained by WPVortex, which specifies that from the customer perspective, one of the best things about parallax web design involves function – it helps users overcome the barriers presented by being a new user, for instance, and consolidates information in a visually pleasing way. When a new visitor enters the website, they need to get a sense of what the site offers but clicking around a dozen different pages cannot be considered a great way to do that. Parallax websites allow designers to set up content so that all of the key information is in one place – on the homepage – and that information has a narrative structure, i.e. one-page websites. The long scrolling format also allows readers to move through it at their own pace. Finally, parallax is relatively popular compared to other animation effects, as it offers extraordinary web marketing appeal, largely through the experience of dynamic motion. Rather than a flat website design, where readers are faced with big blocks of text and static images, parallax sites offer a high level of interactivity that can make it seem as though the user has climbed inside the webpage. As a conclusion, animation does not need to be overwhelming in your website design, as there is a high chance that the user might just ‘get tired’ browsing throughout the website. Customfitonline states that animations need to be used in the following cases:

• to add visual interest (i.e. web page slides in from the side of the screen),
• act as a response (i.e. hovering your mouse over an item and something happens),
• act as a notification (i.e. a bouncing icon might mean attention is required).

Conclusion

The web design is a tool that should be wisely developed and implemented, taking into consideration the characteristics and preferences of your client base. Who are they? What do they like? How can their attention be attracted? Consider your website design as a part of a big mechanism: every detail matters, and if something does not work, the entire business will be affected. Despite of many opinions, it is not compulsory for the web design to be complex. If your graphic designer is capable of implementing amazing 3D graphics and animation on your website, yes, it is good. However, it is not the most important factor. As in any marketing effort, the ability to understand and address the needs and preferences of your customer is what makes your business a market leader! Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Web design and Website Development? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing (SMM) are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article! With creativity in heart, with an idea in mind!