Although some people might not want to add web animations to their sites due to concerns about loading speed and overfilling their space, they might lose some valuable ways to keep the user engaged and interested. Of course, animations are one of the most complex parts of graphic design. Still, when properly used and optimized, they become a crucial part of the user experience, client engagement, and digital strategy.
This article will cover why you should use animations, the advantages they will bring, and some of the different types of animations there are:
Why use them?
So, if you go through the technical challenges of using animations on your site, what advantages will it bring? Is it truly worth all the effort?
Of all the interactive elements you could design and add to your site, animations do an exceptional job at standing out. They are a very attention-grabbing way of telling the user how to do things, drawing the user’s attention to a particular webpage element, and guiding visitors throughout their experience.
In the rise of minimalistic web designs, some visual cues to guide users have been eliminated. Animations are a clever way to make your website look minimalistic while letting the user know what to do precisely. And all of this is done by keeping the user engaged and interested in the animation’s story.
However, you must constantly assess what you need animations for and if they will be worth it for your case. Will they influence users’ behavior and help CTA clicks? Are they genuinely aimed at your target group? How will they add to the overall user experience or take away from it?
Using animations properly can bring your site many benefits, but it can only be done once you have asked these questions and researched.
Why are they essential in web design?
The correct number of animations can have a powerful impact. For example, the little box-shake that indicates you entered a password wrong imitates the same side-to-side movement that we tend to do when we make a mistake. Or a pop-up button that brings your attention to a call-to-action is much more convincing than a lonely button at the end of the page.
With animations, you can improve the interactivity of your website, something that is the goal of any website. Although using the right color palette, element design, and copy text will significantly help, adding clever and entertaining animations can be the deciding factor for your user to complete an action.
How do they work?
How did we end up with such crisp-looking animations like the ones we have today? As with everything, they started from the bottom. GIF animations were the first ones to be developed, but their heavy 8-bit vector images made them low in resolution and gave them a very pixelated look that made them not be up to everyone’s liking. They then moved to Flash animations, which soon changed as Apple devices did not support them. And now, they are CSS and JavaScript animations.
CSS and JavaScript animations work just like standard animations, like the ones you see in animated videos or films. When designing CSS animations, you can choose the number of properties you want it to change and the timeframes you want to allocate each energy. They are constructed with a start-state, end-state, and timeframes. These animations tend to be short but visually pleasing, and although they are a great addition, they tend to have some restrictions within the development.
On the other hand, we have JavaScript animations with much more flexibility on the preferences to vary, allowing the designer to control the animation. This will enable developers to produce animations with smooth performance that are eye-catchers without restrictions.
Features and Techniques
Keeping users’ attention in today’s world is paramount for survival. And animations are a great way of achieving this, keeping the user engaged, entertained, and knowing exactly what to do and where to go on your site. Due to their importance, development and web design firms use many features and techniques to reach their animations’ complete potential daily.
Hover Animations:
As the name indicates, they are animations that ‘activate’ when the user hovers over them. They are a great way to engage the user easily and quickly with the page. Additionally, they help make the overall design layout more entertaining.
Progression Animations
When a user is waiting for an action to be completed, for example, a loading page, it is always good to keep them informed and entertained. To do this, animations are a great tool. Allowing them to see the animation, they won’t feel uninformed or think the site has crashed if it takes too long and leaves your site.
Scroll Effects
These animations can feel a bit generic and dated if they are too basic. To capture their benefits, you have to see what type will suit your brand’s look and feel better. Depending on these, they can be fundamental, or on the contrary, some fancy and elaborate animation. seize
Capturing Attention
Today, people have stopped reading as much. Now they are much more moved by visual effects. This has meant that people’s attention span has decreased to less than three seconds, which means you must capture your user’s attention quickly and convincingly.
If you miss your three-second window of opportunity, they might leave the site and even go to a competitor’s site who is better at grabbing their attention. That’s why although here we discussed animations, you need to use the entire arsenal of visual effects: videos, banners, icons, typography, and all the different elements to which you can add eye-catching animations. Ensuring you achieve your goal.
And finally, remember to always be very thoughtful of the reasons why you do something. If you think that just by adding a bunch of animations, you will be completing the brief, you might want to think twice.
If you are not particular about the type of animations you are using and how many of them you are using, you risk overloading the site. And I don’t mean just visually. I also mean it in terms of slowing loading times, which can be just as bad for your website as not capturing the user’s attention. Additionally, some analytics tools like heat-mapping solutions cannot work and collect data from JavaScript-animated pages.
When it comes to loading times, you might want to stray away from JavaScript (if you will use many animations) and stick with CSS animations. However, if you need JavaScript animations, you can opt for lightweight JavaScript, which is a good enough option.
Make sure you are using animations with an intention and a goal behind them, not just for the sake of using them. And once you know precisely why and how you’ll use them, invest time into making them high-quality so that your user (and your brand) can feel the benefit.