Website Animation Techniques to Influence User Experience

There has been a lot of progress made over the past couple of years as far as website appearance is concerned and website animations have been a big part of it. In the old days, even the most professionally made sites had maybe one or two-page layouts with some unique features, but today’s websites incorporate animations into their designs which make the websites themselves easier to navigate and more attractive to the users. Let’s take a look at some web page animation techniques and the effects they have on the users.    

Navigation   

This is perhaps the most widely used technique used today. Web designers nowadays use hidden navigation in order to improve the website’s usability where the user is directed to the next page after clicking on an icon. This is great if you are looking to save some room on the screen. The main goal here is keeping people locked in on a certain portion of your website for as long as possible. They also offer to give you some advantages as well:  

• Make your site look more organized 
• Offer a more professional look 
• Help categorize the site 
• Makes it easier for a customer to find the content for a specific category 
• The webpages are more accessible 

By incorporating such website animation effects, you are adding credibility to your business and the user will be more confident in browsing through more sections of your website and it will give you a better opportunity to convert online visitors into leads.  

Hover Animation 

All sites need to give feedback to the viewers and hover animations are great for this. You can use JavaScript to create CSS animations to give feedback to the users on any action they perform. This is good for the user since they will know what they will see if they decide to click on something. The downside is that it will not work on mobile devices, but you can use elevation animation as a substitute. This keeps the user aware of an action they did which caused a certain interaction and will, therefore, be aware of why they received a particular response.   

Progression

Everybody hates websites that take forever to load. However, there are times when the load time is pretty fast, but it may seem slow to the user. In order to solve this problem, website development services created progression animation.  Such animation on websites distracts the user from the actual time it takes a page to load, effectively offering a perception that the site is loading faster. However, be sure to keep it simple. If you try to overdo it then it will be obvious to the user that you are stalling for time, but, at the same time, it still has to be engaging since you are trying to keep the user’s attention.   

The progress from one page to another will be displayed and thus giving yourself a better chance to keep the user from leaving. It is a win-win for both.  

Attracting Attention

Adding motion will automatically attract attention, therefore you should take advantage of it to tell the users what you would like them to click on. Animations that have a goal of attracting the user’s attention are trying to nudge them to perform a certain action. This can be a very basic animation such as a nod or a handshake and can be used in almost any aspect of your design such as:   

• Call to actions 
• Forms 
• Menus 
• Offer feedback 

By adding motion into the mix, you are making life a lot simpler for the users since you are making it much easier for them to find the information they are looking. 

Skeleton Screens

A lot of animated websites use this technique to encourage users to interact with your site. These are basically separate, stand-alone sections of the site into which information is filled as the site is loading. The main benefit of skeleton screens for you is that the user will be more engaged and for the user, the website is more organized and readable.   

Website design animation is a very effective tool companies can use to improve the user experience. A lot of people try to come with a creative call to actions and all kinds of interesting headlines and other texts, but that is not nearly enough.  

Nowadays, you have to bring some excitement and creativity along with valuable content if you would like the user to remain engaged. You need to distinguish yourself from your competitors and keep users on your site, therefore you not only need to provide a great user experience, but you also need to build emotional connections. This is done via storytelling. Every section of your site is not simply dry information but a piece of a story that the user needs to put together in order to ultimately decide to click on CTA or fill out a contact form. Try incorporating some of the techniques that we mentioned in this article and conduct some testing in terms of whether or not they work for you. Each industry has a different group of customers that they are trying to target, and each individual audience will have their own tastes and preferences in terms of which animations, styles, and designs they prefer.  

You can be sure that your competitors are doing everything they can to keep potential customers on their site, therefore you can use website animations as a powerful tool to improve interactions and guide users to take the next step in the customer journey whatever it may be.