Key Takeaways:
- Give users the VIP treatment with seamless UX, playful micro-interactions, and AI that doesn’t ghost them.
- Embrace trends like minimalist designs, 3D elements, Brutalism, and text-only hero sections.
- Let e9digital help your website shine brighter than New Year’s Eve fireworks.
This year, make your resolution one your company can actually keep: updating your website.
Prioritize it by hiring a multi-faceted website design firm that delivers:
- Powerful UX
- Customer-centered content
- Enticing, modern design
Just like with fashion, diets, and which emojis to use, website design has trends that fall in and out of style. Using trends is a great way to enhance the user experience and keep their interest in your website for longer.
As 2025 begins, let’s unpack some web design trends to elevate your website and grab the attention of your target audience.
1. UX Design: Create a Seamless User Journey With the Greatest Hits
A constant topic of conversation at e9digital, the website user journey is so important because it will NEVER go out of style. This method focuses on creating an intuitive experience for the website visitors. Think of UX design as any Taylor Swift album; it’s always en vogue!
So, with any website design, stick to the UX greatest hits, which include:
- An easily navigable menu
- Optimization for tablet and smartphone use
- Putting the most valuable information first
- ADA compliance
- An intuitive interface
For example, an ecommerce website almost always has the shopping cart at the top right corner of the screen. Constraints like these never go out of style because they save people time. No one wants to search a website to figure out if they finally put enough items in for free shipping.
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel with UX–88% of users are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience. Meet people’s expectations about where to find each functionality on your website.
Map out user journeys and test your website with real people to ensure all 2025 web design trends still create a seamless UX. Use tools such as Aiava to create customer journeys and UserTesting to test them.
2. Artificial Intelligence: Help Customers Find Answers 24/7
your customers find what they’re looking for and create a personalized user experience. Use AI-powered programs to automate communications with website visitors.
Chatbots keep evolving to new heights, with cutting-edge capabilities such as:
- AI-powered language processing that understands context and emotions.
- Multimodal AI, which comprehends text, images, and speech at the same time. It even understands facial expressions!
- 24/7 response times on websites, giving customers access to service no matter the time of day.
- Personalization features to analyze user data in real-time, going as far as speaking in the correct language!
- Advanced analytics that allow companies to gain insights on conversations and track performance.
3. Simple Aesthetics: Less Is More Fancy
Everyone wants to go big for their goals in the new year! However, overdoing website design can be a recipe for disaster.
In 2025, stick to the idea that “less is more.” Minimalist designs continue to trend amongst websites, especially for artists and agencies. Choose familiar shapes and use lots of white space to highlight the most critical information.
The king of minimalist designs is Apple. Their website has a black-and-white color scheme, perfect use of white space, and bold images to create a sophisticated feel. Everything is easy to find on Apple’s website due to the simple yet effective menu at the top of the page.
The additional bonus of minimalist design is that it leads to faster loading times for web pages. For the optimal user experience, a web page should load in less than three seconds. Typically, the more elements on a page, the longer it takes to load.
Want to really impress your customers? Create a dark mode option for your website, with an alternate color scheme in darker colors that are easier on the eyes, reducing eye strain for people who stare at screens all day. Nearly 82% of people use dark mode on their smartphone, so they’ll be happy campers when they come to your site that offers the same option.
4. 3D Website Design: Let Your Clients Jump Into the Screen
When a person lands on your website, you want them hooked. 3D design does the trick, which includes motion graphics, animated illustrations, parallax scrolling (where two elements move at different speeds while the user scrolls), and more. Think of it as any design decision that gives your website depth.
What’s exciting is how fast these 3D designs can load now, giving designers more tools in their tool belts when creating your website. They can build more complicated animations that still load in under three seconds–40% of visitors will leave if it takes longer. Not to mention, tons of 3D object AI generators give designers a starting point for redefining their creations faster.
Another popular 3D design is Claymorphism, which uses two inner shadows and an outer one to make elements on your website look like they’re floating. Claymorphism has been called “fluffy 3D” because it makes flat surfaces look inflated.
This example from HYPE4.Academy shows the stark differences between a standard website card and a Claymorphic one.
This style can be used on:
- CTA buttons
- Icons
- Images
- Shapes
Claymorphism is typically used with pastel colors to create a soft, warm look. These subtle shadows make important text and information look like it’s coming off the page, drawing the visitor’s attention.
Some other 3D texture options include:
- Tactile textures that make elements look squishy or fuzzy.
- Hyper-realistic 3D presentations so companies can show premium product renders.
- Grainy textures that overlay images and design features to give details without lines.
5. Brutalism: Proving Less Is More
Thank you to pop sensation Charli XCX’s 2024 brat summer for the rise in popularity of Brutalism in website design for 2025. The fuzzy Arial font on a lime green background became synonymous with brat ladies. Brutalism focuses on everything having a use and purpose. It’s all solid colors and concrete–the bigger, the better. It’s like if someone converted a Rick Owens couch into a website.
Brutalist websites have such a following that someone started a website that tracks them. The Satio website is another stand-out of Brutalist design with animation to engage the audience from page one.
6. Voice-Activated Interface: Keep Up With Busy Mobile Users
Many people use voice-to-text features in Google, text messages, and websites to save time. Add speech commands to your website with a voice-activated interface. These elements can be incorporated into search and chat boxes to help customers find what they need.
A voice-activated interface can be a key accessibility feature as well and opens up your website to all types of customers.
7. Vivid Design: Crank Up the Contrast
Bright colors and bold blocks are going to be big in 2025. Homepages in this design feature:
- Bright color contrasts based on hue and temperature
- Stark shapes
- Block fonts
The placement of the color is intentional in this website design. The website designer will use color psychology to group content based on meaning. Vivid colors like these can create a natural hierarchy, making navigating the site easier for the user.
Sequitur Renewables uses their logo’s bright yellow and green to draw attention to essential site details.
8. Micro-interactions and Animated Cursors: Cat Toys for Humans
If you’ve ever played with a cat using a laser, you know that little red dot immediately engages your cat to pounce on the wall like a lion catching prey.
A similar exchange occurs with humans and micro-interactions. This happens when scrolling a website and an image moves unexpectedly while the cursor hovers over it. The micro-interaction engages the audience and encourages them to continue to explore the site. A similar idea, a micro-animation, shows users where they can click to continue learning about a product or service.
These two interactions add playfulness to a site and help keep a user engaged, lowering the bounce rate (how many people leave your site after looking at just one page). Top it off with a cursor that reacts to movement, and you’ve got people scrolling like crazy. Petra Garmon’s site nails this: their cursor follows you with a message telling you where to go next.
Some fun micro-interactions and animations include the images on e9digital’s homepage and Start Elevator’s website.
These tools are evolving further with AI. Micro-interactions can be personalized by AI, anticipating certain actions and changing the animations based on how the user behaves on the webpage.
9. Text-Only Hero Images
Just like how a newspaper headline used to be sprawled out in big block letters on the front page, website designers will be using similar tactics in 2025. A text-only image is a popular choice for the hero section of the homepage. It’s a way to say what your product or service is about that catches the user’s attention.
A text-only hero opens the door to animation potential–the letters can flip in or out, the borders can animate, and the space between the letters can shift. Our team implemented animation in the hero image for Neoenta, creating a visually appealing design that explained their mission succinctly.
Some additional benefits include:
- Faster page load times
- Improved accessibility
- Better mobile responsiveness
- Clearer communication
- Reduced design complexity.
A Final Note: Don’t Forget Accessibility
We don’t just keep up with trends; we ensure that websites meet accessibility standards. Our designers create every website following the most recent ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Standards for Accessible Design. Our agency has a dedicated accessibility team on the cutting edge of ADA requirements, ensuring that every person has equitable access to your site.
Make the Most of 2025 Web Design Trends With e9digital
It’s a lot of fun to look at upcoming trends, but just like New Year’s Resolutions, they don’t mean anything unless you accomplish them. For website design, what matters most is using trends that will resonate with your target audience.
Think about Saks Fifth Avenue vs. Wal-Mart: they both sell clothes, but they’ll have entirely different marketing strategies to do so. People at Wal-Mart want the best deal, and people at Saks Fifth Avenue want the best quality. Both serve a purpose; you just need to figure out where your strategy fits.
At e9digital, our website designers study your target audience and competitors to ensure they use trends that speak to your customers and generate leads. If you’re ready for a website design in 2025 that keeps you relevant to your target audience, schedule a call with e9digital today. Mention that you read this article, and we’ll give you a free consultation on how we can update your website in 2025.
