It was once said that “content is king”. In 2021, content alone is not enough. Competition is fierce and whatever product or service you offer, someone else does too and they are doing everything they can to steal your customers’ attention away from you.
Great content, products, and services aren’t enough to maximise your conversions. You also have to make the user experience as seamless as possible.
Here are some of the top UI and UX trends 2021.
Table of Contents
1. Mobile first
For a long time, websites were designed for desktop browsers with mobile as a distant second thought. To do that in 2021 is a fatal mistake. Increasingly, people access the web through their mobile devices, so take that into account or see your interactions and conversions plummet.
Mobile responsive design is not only an integral element of user experience, but it is also essential for maintaining good SEO. Mobile-first is the next big trend in UX design.
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2. Values and wellbeing
In the past, companies would take advantage of users’ naivety, creating addictive websites and bombarding them with calls-to-action (CTAs) as a way of increasing conversions. As we move into 2021, users are becoming far more sophisticated and selective.
Before someone will click on a CTA, they want to know not only the details of the product being offered but also the values of the company selling it.
People want to know that the website they are buying from is inclusive and takes environmental concerns seriously. Users are increasingly aware that their digital behaviour has real-life consequences, and this needs to be reflected in UX design.
3. Simplicity
The user experience should be streamlined as much as possible, providing an efficient customer journey. As far as possible you want users to go to the minimum number of pages to get the information they want and each of those pages should have as few elements as possible.
Try to reduce the number of fields your users have to fill in to provide a more straightforward experience.
In the past, this would come into conflict with SEO best practices, which tended towards complex site architecture. However, recent studies have shown that this is no longer the case.
Having fewer pages that are content-rich and provide excellent UX design can be a significant boost to your SEO. Simplicity is one of the most important UI design trends.
4. Voice
Voice has been one of the key interaction design trends in recent years and one that looks set to continue. Voice interfaces have become popular ever since the iPhone introduced Siri. Now with Google Home and Amazon Alexa, more and more people expect to access digital services through voice alone.
Hardware limits many companies in how far they can go to integrate voice UI into their services. However, in 2021, there will be an increasing range of options for voice, and it will soon be an integral part of UX.
Also Read: How to Learn Basic SEO?
5. Icons
In order to prevent your pages from becoming cluttered and difficult to navigate, you can use icons to replace text. These visual representations can convey meaning better than words, as they are quicker to interpret and take up less space.
The most obvious example would be how a magnifying glass icon replaces the word ‘search’ and is instantly and universally recognized.
This universality is important. If your users have to puzzle over your icons to figure out what they mean, then that defeats the purpose. Presenting them with a similar aesthetic to each other with uniform size and dimensions will give your site a sleek and professional appearance.
By staying up to date with these UI and UX trends, you can stay one step ahead of the competition.