Best Website Design Trends for 2025

Web design trends come and go, but good design principles never go out of style. As this new year gets rolling at full tilt, you might decide that this is the year you spring for a website upgrade. How can you tap into the best design ideas to ensure that your shiny, new website works well for you and–arguably more importantly–your clients? We’re glad you asked! At Alt Media Studios we’re here to design and build aesthetic, easy-to-use websites with built-in functionality that attracts potential customers to your online storefront. We’re also happy to answer all of your burning web design questions. So let’s get into it!

What is Web Design?

First off, let’s answer this (deceivingly?) basic question. Web design is a term that’s thrown around both within and outside of the industry so often that we could assume we know the definition.

To put it as simply as we can, web design is the process that takes an idea of what a website should be and makes it a reality. This can include everything from planning and conceptualizing, to building, implementing, and troubleshooting a website design plan. The end goal can be multifaceted, with web developers, graphic designers, content writers, and others all working together to create a visually appealing, practical, accessible, dynamic, and yet simultaneously easy-to-use website. 

With so many fish in the sea, and business potentially not limited by location, an internet user searching for your products and services has plenty of options–good web design can be the thing that draws them in and seals the deal. 

Web Design Trends: What To Know, What To Consider

Implied with the word “trend” is a sense of impermanence–here today, gone tomorrow. We all know that what’s popular and on-trend is ever-changing, and it can be risky to go all in with the current latest and greatest. That said, it’s good to know which 2025 web design trends are worth jumping on when it comes time to overhaul your website. 

It’s also important to remember that putting all your effort and time into trend following can be expensive. You could end up with a snazzy-looking website that eats up bandwidth and isn’t efficient or user-friendly. Lots of animations, dynamic design elements, embedded videos and eye-catching graphics can end up being too busy, and in the end, they can actually turn some users away, especially if it leads to slow load times. That’s even more true if your website is simultaneously hard to navigate and difficult to use on various (read: mobile) devices. 

But all else being equal, these are the trends we’d recommend checking out if you want to go big with your website redesign:

• Use Color Dynamically: In design, dynamic color use means implementing a custom palette that is as adaptable as it is compelling. A dynamic color palette allows for flexibility based on context or user preference. These could be common options for light/dark themes or custom color schemes. When you use dynamic color, even if your site visitor has their preferences locked in, they can still see a range of colors that are consistent with your chosen branding. Custom web designers first define a set of core shades and then set variations. Site users’ experience is enhanced when they can personalize their display.
• Resizing Animations: Recent updates are making animating element height smoother than ever, with more options for dynamic transitions. Web developers can more easily change the height of an element on a webpage when triggered by common user interactions, like clicking and expanding or collapsing, hovering over an image to reveal additional information, and resizing individual elements or the entire page. This quick shift needs to be smooth and seamless to make sure that site users don’t experience any static that could cause them to leave. The goal is to be responsive and engaging and to offer visual cues for improved accessibility for a wider audience. 
• Custom Drop Down Menus: Just about every website needs dropdowns, but they can easily be clunky and less than helpful. Well-implemented dropdowns automatically improve user experience and help your customers navigate your website to find what they’re looking for. Drop downs need to be intuitive, and while customization is great, it also needs to be balanced with a healthy dose of common sense and usability. The goal is to keep them from getting in the way or causing frustration on mobile devices–they need to serve a useful purpose. No, this isn’t the sexiest topic–not much about web development BTS is–but when these things are carefully considered and done right, your website will have an undeniable polish that will attract and hold users’ attention and help them make those conversions you’re hoping for. Top tier drop downs also speak to the ongoing need for improved accessibility features so that everyone can use a website equally.
• Animated Page Transitions: In web design, a page transition animation is seen as an effect that occurs when a user naturally navigates between pages on your website. These could be fades in or out, changing the scale of an element, sliding elements across the screen, morphing, unmasking, shading and more. The goal is smooth, organic motion that isn’t jarring–it seems natural, like rippling water or curling smoke. Animated page transitions add visual dynamism to your website, which, say it with us, improves user experience! These micro-interactions keep users engaged and can even help to tell a story while adding responsiveness and an interactive element. Custom animations can be tied to your company brand and used across online communication channels for consistency.
• Sustainable Web Design: Yep, this is a thing! And a real concern. When a website takes a long time to load and a site uses inefficient coding, it can have a real-world impact on the planet, via the infrastructure that brings technology to each of our doors. Sustainability could mean eco-friendly website hosting, prioritizing streamlined code, optimizing media and designing websites in an accessible way that will age well and easily integrate with emerging technologies. It’s about taking a more holistic approach, and thankfully, recent massive upgrades to the language used to create websites and the features available to web developers have made advanced options more affordable and within everyone’s reach. And of course, all these improvements also have the knock-on effect of improving user experience, even on everyday, low-end devices that have limited battery life. Win, win, win!
• Scroll-linked animations: This effect can be any number of things, from elements that move, fade, change color, shift in shape or size, etc. as a user scrolls up or down a webpage. These additions can lead to more interaction with your site and spark a little joy in users’ minds as they engage with your website.
• Blending Photos and Graphics: This is a great way to incorporate your company branding throughout the site. Graphics overlapping images is a mix-it-up kind of technique that brings creativity and a little spark of interest to an otherwise typical image. With the focus on user experience, blended photos and graphics can also help to keep users engaged and interested in your content and staying on your website for longer stretches.

Trend Takeaways

As far as aesthetics go, there will always be hot color choices and fonts, whether they’re influenced by Pantone’s color of the year or what’s going on in popular culture at the time–these are as fluid and fleeting as they come. More important is to match your website’s aesthetic choices with your brand so you can capture and convey your company’s ethos and general vibe. Working with an experienced, skilled custom web design company  will ensure that every detail is carefully considered when crafting the face of your company’s online presence.

2025 is more about function, user experience and accessibility than ever before. Some of the updates and enhancements are very behind-the-scenes and sort of niche–only the real techies and webheads get it. But that’s who’s working hard for you when it comes to building or retooling your company website. They understand why these topics that are sort of boring at first blush are really the most exciting part of what happens when a new user visits your site. These are the nuanced tweaks that make your site stand out, that convey your company’s professionalism, and that make it easier for one and all to find what they need online.

The long and short of 2025 trend watching it is this: anything that improves the user’s experience in a meaningful, problem-solving way is where to focus the majority of your efforts and budget. When site visitors love using your website, they’ll return again and again, they’ll easily find (and buy!) the products and services they need, and everyone wins.

But besides these new ways to spruce up an already great website, there are some basics that need to be in order first. From content to navigation, load time, mobile-friendly formatting, and more, some trends of the past have proven to be really valuable and have stuck around for the long haul. They’re now staples of any good website. And wrapped into any discussion of website design we also need to talk about psychology and how it should guide key decisions. Yep, that factors in here too. A quality website is informed by a wide network of diverse influences. There’s a lot to know, and we’re here to share.

Alt Media Studios Is Your Web Design Agency

A well-designed website attracts visitors and performs well with search engines, while a poorly designed site can have the opposite effect. Every year brings more innovation and trendsetting, but will these so-called improvements stand the test of time (and traffic)? All too often trends quickly become worn out with overuse and instead of helping your website stand out, they can cause it to blend in with the ever-growing crowd. A website should impress, impact, and lead to conversions.

At Alt Media Studios, our web development team is equipped to deliver. Do we stay up on the trends? Sure. Are we well-versed in solid graphic design principles? Of course! But we’ll only suggest the things that make the most sense for you and your business. Get with us today and learn how we can help you build and grow with an updated, dynamic website redesign.