This article was updated on 01/06/2025.
What is Website Animation?
Definition and Importance of Web Animations
Website animation refers to the use of motion graphics and interactive elements to enhance the user experience on a website. These animations can range from simple hover effects to complex storytelling sequences, and they play a crucial role in capturing users’ attention, conveying information, and creating a sense of engagement. In today’s web design landscape, web animations have become indispensable for creating an immersive and interactive online presence. You might have scrolled past them without even realizing it—like a delicate shimmer on a button or a graceful transition that guides your eye from one section to the next. By incorporating web animations, designers can make websites more dynamic and visually appealing, ultimately improving user interaction and satisfaction.
Benefits of Using Web Animations (Boost Conversions, Engagement, and Storytelling)
Web animations offer numerous benefits for websites, making them a powerful tool for web designers. Here are some key advantages:
- Boosting Conversions: Web animations can guide users through a website, highlighting calls-to-action and encouraging them to take action. For instance, a subtle animation on a “Buy Now” button can draw attention and increase click-through rates.
- Enhancing Engagement: Interactive animations create a sense of fun and playfulness, making users more likely to explore a website and engage with its content. This increased engagement can lead to longer visit durations and lower bounce rates.
- Storytelling: Web animations can be used to tell a story, conveying a brand’s message and values in a compelling and memorable way. Through animated sequences, brands can create a narrative that resonates with users, making the experience more impactful.
Table of Contents
Website animations are all around us!
Over your time exploring the internet, you’ve undoubtedly encountered a subtle button effect as you hover over it, or maybe you’ve seen exciting transitions guiding your journey down a webpage.
Over the years, the capabilities in web design and the average quality of websites have skyrocketed between no-code website builders, new AI tools, and overall accessibility—we’re entering an unprecedented era of web design.
In some ways, the standard of websites that look good and *perform*well has risen so much that we’re now in the era of looking for newer ways to make the experience more exciting. Of course, there’s still no shortage of uninspired or poorly executed website designs, but it isn’t exactly unusual to run into a fantastic one anymore.
Modern tools now allow designers to implement animations with just a few clicks, enhancing the user experience effortlessly.
One of the ways websites with cutting-edge designs have begun to differentiate themselves is by using animated website designs. You’ve probably already seen a bunch of it without even really paying attention to it. These animated elements not only captivate visitor attention but also create a lasting impression through strategic branding and interactive web experiences.
But how did we get here?
History of Website Animation
Website animation has come a long way over the years. In the early days of the web, we relied solely on GIFs to create cool animated experiences. You’d see websites created on Geocities that were littered with GIFs in a weird and almost endearingly awful way.
And it mostly stayed that from 1987 to the late 90s. By the early 2000s, Flash player was the new kid on the block. Although it’s entirely deprecated now, at the time, Flash was the next frontier of animation on the web. Websites using Flash were absolutely everywhere — by 2005, it was the most installed media format on the web.
Nowadays, we opt for more modern solutions that both have better capabilities and also perform better and faster on the web. HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, and Canvas are just some of the tools we use today.
When you think about website animation, you may think about flashy transitions or even straight-up videos embedded on a website. Still, website animation differs slightly from traditional animation or motion graphics. While those are great and have their place, web animations can range from subtle button hovers to immersive interactive experiences.
But it’s not just about visual appeal; website animations guide users, provide feedback, and create memorable interactions. Graphic designers can create seamless, immersive online journeys by understanding how animations influence user behavior. Here are a few core benefits of website animation:
- Encourages and prolongs user engagement.
- Captures the user’s attention.
- Website animations can assist your user navigation.
- It creates an extra opportunity to create an emotional bond with viewers.
- Improve user experience overall.
Types of Website Animation:
Website Hover Animations
UI animation, including hover animations, is crucial for enhancing user interface design. Hover animations are super common on websites—it’s rare to find a site without them! Essentially, they kick into action when you float your cursor over something clickable, like a button. The animation might change the color, make the button appear larger, and more. They’re great for letting you know what’s clickable and what’s not.
However, there’s a catch with mobile devices. Since they rely on touch, not hover, these animations don’t work the same way. On a phone or tablet, the effect only shows up after you tap, which sort of misses the point—it tells you something has happened but not that you could interact with it in the first place.
Loading Animations / Website Progression Animations
It’s no secret that people hate waiting on the web, so that’s why web page speed is vital for websites. However, sometimes it’s unavoidable to have a page that’s a bit on the slower side. In these cases, loading animations can come in clutch. Loading animation, or progression animation, is another widely used technique — you’ve no doubt seen a loading bar or circle when using your computer.
Skeleton screens can be used as a dynamic UI element to keep users engaged during loading times by providing a minimalistic preview of upcoming content.
From a purely practical position, loading animations let your users know that something is in the process of happening, enhancing the user experience. But outside of that, it’s an opportunity to make the waiting process more fun than the web equivalent of watching paint dry — and contributes to the perception of a shorter loading time by (tastefully) distracting them from the fact.
Website Scroll Animations
Scrolling is as natural for internet users as breathing. It’s one of those foundational skills (like clicking) essential for any web experience. Scroll-triggered animations add depth and dynamism to the user experience, enhancing visual storytelling and engagement. These animations can include parallax effects, fade-ins, and element transformations.
Keyframe animations can be used to create engaging scroll effects that enhance visual storytelling.
Website Click Animations
User feedback is crucial when users interact with clickable elements like buttons and links — they’re one of the building blocks of the internet. These animations provide instant feedback, confirming the user’s action and creating a more responsive interface. Click effects can include ripples, shadows, or color changes..
Website Background Animations
Motion design, including background animations, adds movement to the background of your webpage. Animated video backgrounds, particle animations, and dynamic gradients all fall under this umbrella. Background animations are great for enhancing visual appeal and for conveying a specific mood or theme, depending on what you’re going for.
Website Navigation Animations
Navigation animations involve the transitions and animations applied to navigation menus and elements. Animated dropdowns, sliding menus, and interactive icons enhance navigation fluidity and user experience, which make website interactions more intuitive. Animated icons can further enhance navigation fluidity and user experience by serving as interactive elements in navigation menus. These elements contribute significantly to creating engaging digital experiences that captivate visitors and elevate a brand’s presence.
Interactive Animations and Micro-interactions
Micro-interactions are subtle animations that provide feedback for minimal user engagement. Validation messages for forms, button clicks, and tooltip animations are all good examples. Although micro-interactions may initially resemble hover or click animations, the primary difference is that they are utilized to validate user responses, simplifying and clarifying interactions.
Website Carousel and Slideshow Animations
Carousel and slideshow animations showcase multiple images or content items within a confined space. If you’ve been on the web for any amount of time, then you’ve seen them. These animations include sliding effects, fades, and zooms, creating engaging visual stories or product showcases.
They’re good for condensing a lot of information into a more digestible format on the web without taking up too much real estate on the screen. However, poor use of carousels can hide critical information from the user, so it’s essential to use this with care to enhance visual storytelling.
Website Modal and Popup Animations
Modal and popup animations are applied to overlay elements that appear on top of the main website content. Modals are sort of like popup ads, just not annoying. They can be a good way of including more information on a page or helping users learn more without making them leave the page. They can consist of fades, slides, or bounce effects, making them more visually appealing and attention-grabbing.
Storytelling Animations
Storytelling animations are a powerful way to convey a brand’s message and values. By using a combination of visuals, motion, and text, these animations can create an emotional connection with users, making them more likely to remember a brand and its message. Storytelling animations can be used to:
- Introduce a Brand and Its Values: A well-crafted animation can effectively introduce a brand, showcasing its mission, vision, and core values in an engaging manner.
- Showcase a Product or Service: Animations can highlight the features and benefits of a product or service, making it easier for users to understand and appreciate its value.
- Highlight a Brand’s Unique Selling Points: Through creative animations, brands can emphasize what sets them apart from competitors, making a lasting impression on potential customers.
- Create a Sense of Nostalgia or Sentimentality: Storytelling animations can evoke emotions, creating a sense of nostalgia or sentimentality that strengthens the bond between the brand and its audience.
Though not a brand storytelling video, “Traveling Light” shows how minimal visuals and playful sound with negative and positive space can effectively convey ideas—demonstrating key principles that any brand animation can leverage to connect with audiences on an emotional level.
How do I create website animation?
You may be surprised to hear that adding website animations to your website to add interactivity can be entirely different from creating motion graphics or other types of animation. To create animations from scratch, you need to understand the process from conceptualizing the desired effect to coding and refining it.
Adding interactivity through these animations can significantly elevate the user experience and make designs feel more engaging. Animated elements are often incorporated into templates and professional agency websites to enhance visual appeal and create dynamic user experiences.
Build animations can enhance web interactivity and complexity using JavaScript, allowing for responsive animations that react to user interactions.
Instead of video production software, animation is added through programming or user-friendly website builders. Every method or framework will have its advantages, catering to different levels of complexity and user expertise. So, depending on your project requirements and coding proficiency, you should choose what works best to bring your website to life.
For the most part, programmers will handle this, as you’d need a good amount of knowledge in coding to create the sleekest look and best performance, especially if it’s a unique effect. Fortunately, there are plenty of no-code solutions, regardless of your skill level in creating websites.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and Keyframe Animations:
CSS is fundamental for creating website animations — offering the most straightforward and efficient way of the bunch. CSS animations are super lightweight and don’t require external calls, which helps you keep your webpage speed loading fast. They’re also highly compatible with any screen type, which is fantastic for keeping the same experience across all devices.
Basic shapes can be transformed into more complex designs using CSS animations, enhancing visual storytelling and character creation.
The downside of CSS is that compared to other options, its animation capabilities are lacking due to its simple nature and offer way less control/customization without extensive code (which can defeat the purpose of its innate advantage).
JavaScript (JS):
JavaScript is a powerful scripting language widely used to create dynamic and interactive website animations. By manipulating the Document Object Model (DOM) and leveraging various JavaScript libraries and frameworks (like GSAP, for example), developers can achieve a wide array of animations — the flexibility is unparalleled compared to CSS.
However, while powerful, JavaScript animations come with a caveat since complex animations can impact website performance, particularly on mobile and devices with limited processing power.
This is why careful optimization and testing are essential to ensure your website’s performance doesn’t tank in performance. There are plenty of ways to check webpage speed and optimize pages based on the technology used to create them.
SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics):
SVG animations utilize XML-based vector graphics, known as Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs), ensuring fidelity regardless of size — so no blurry pixels, ever! This scalability makes them ideal for web animations, accommodating diverse website dimensions. SVG elements can be animated by using CSS or JavaScript.
JSON / Lottie
SON/Lottie animations offer high-quality, interactive, and scalable web animations, and they integrate seamlessly and work across various platforms. Additionally, they’re often created in Adobe After Effects, which allows experienced motion designers to create near-identical quality animation to be added on the web.
However, there are a few caveats to note. Naturally, their creation involves a learning curve — you need to know how to use After Effects, for one, and there are limitations on how they can be edited after export. Complex animations might also result in large file sizes, affecting website loading times.
Additionally, potential compatibility issues with older browsers should be considered by designers and developers when choosing this animation format.
Overall, JSON/Lottie is an excellent option for web animation as long as you understand the trade-offs you make when using it. The key to any application is to ensure your website visitor has a good experience.
Canvas:
HTML5 Canvas allows dynamic rendering through JavaScript. You can draw and animate complex graphics directly on the canvas element. Canvas animations are powerful for games, interactive infographics, and data visualizations. On top of that, Canvas offers excellent performance, so you can execute high-level animation without sacrificing your website’s speed. However, there’s a steep learning curve, and it’s not as easily accessible as other methods of animation for the web.
WebGL (Web Graphics Library):
WebGL, a JavaScript API, provides high-performance 3D and 2D graphics in web browsers. Without getting into too much technical mumbo-jumbo, it uses your computer’s GPU to create immersive animations and games directly on websites. Because of its impressive performance, you can get pretty realistic 3D objects directly on the web — a feature that wouldn’t even be considered ten years ago.
The reason for that is that it depends on the user’s GPU, the quality of its performance is dependent on the device used. Simply put, if you’re using a fossil of a computer — you probably won’t enjoy the experience very much.
As such, if you’re thinking of using WebGL for website animation, first evaluate the project’s complexity, the target audience, and the necessary level of interactivity. Because even though it offers unparalleled visual experiences, it’s crucial to balance its advantages with the technical challenges it presents.
(No-Code) Website Builders and Services:
Sophisticated website builders such as WordPress themes like Divi, Framer, or Webflow and other DIY website platforms like Wix or Squarespace will offer intuitive interfaces for adding animations without coding.
On the DIY side, you can achieve this by using drag-and-drop interfaces, pre-designed animation templates, and moderately customizable effects. These tools democratize animation, allowing users with little or no coding experience to enhance their websites with engaging animations.
The more advanced platforms, like Divi or Framer will allow you to take it further and cover 95% of the use cases. But, of course, unique solutions will still require an experienced web designer.
Website Animation Best Practices
The quality of your animation is more significant than the quantity you employ on your website. The needs of the user should always come first. Remember that your goal shouldn’t be to increase the percentage of animated content on a page—quality over quantity.
1. Keep it Purposeful:
Make sure that all of your animations serve a purpose and are contextually relevant. They should direct the user toward an action, draw their attention to something important, or confirm their action was taken. Avoid gratuitous animations that don’t add value to the user experience. Every animation should have a clear reason for being on the page. If you can’t think of a good reason for something to be animated, it’s probably a good idea to leave it that way.
2. Prioritize Performance:
Optimize and don’t overload the page with animations for a smoother performance, especially on mobile devices. Heavy and/or too many animations can slow down your website — and a poor page speed means a poor user experience which leads to bounce. Keep things optimized!
3. Focus on UI Animation and User Feedback:
No, not the kind of feedback from user surveys (although that’s helpful, too). User feedback means that your animations should provide clear feedback to the user that something happened or was engaged on the page. Whether that animation confirms a button click, hover, or form submission, the animation should affirm the user’s interaction, which helps your website stay intuitive.
4. Implement Scroll-Triggered Animations Wisely:
Scroll-triggered animations can create a dynamic user experience. You’ve probably seen some really cool websites using this effect — like Apple, for example. However, make sure they enhance the content rather than distract from it.
It’s often better to use them sparingly and in a way that doesn’t confuse the user. For example, if the user is scrolling vertically on the page, it doesn’t make sense for your website’s content to start scrolling horizontally; doing this can be jarring for the user. Also, we have come across whole-page scrolling animations that are down right confusing. Where everything becomes an animated mess and confusing.
5. Test and Iterate:
Test your animations rigorously across various devices and browsers. Solicit feedback from users to understand their experience. Regularly iterate and refine your animations based on user response and behavior data. This is a good reason to use a digital agency to produce your website because everything is built by a team of people- there are multiple checks and balances within a team environment.
Website Animation Practices That Should Be Avoided:
Overwhelming Animation
One thing at a time, please! Too many moving elements can quickly confuse and distract users, causing them to bounce from your site.
Slow or Unoptimized Animation:
“This thing is taking forever!” is the last thought you want to cross your visitor’s minds. Heavy and unoptimized animations significantly slow down your website’s loading time. Users expect websites to load quickly, so sluggish animations are an easy way to frustrate your audience so they bounce.
Disorienting or Distracting Animation
Remember — animation is meant to enhance the experience, not confuse it. Rapid movements, unexpected transitions, or animations without a clear purpose can confuse or annoy visitors and make them hesitant to engage further.
Inconsistent Animation:
Consistency is essential! For example, if you have a button that increases in size when a user hovers over it, don’t put that animation on anything that a user can’t interact with. Website animations must remain consistent with their intended function — engagement.
Ignoring Mobile Users
Mobile users constitute a significant portion of web traffic — in many cases, they even outweigh desktop users. So, it’s essential to ensure your animations are responsive and provide the same experience on smartphones and tablets as they do on desktops. Avoid animations that are too intricate for smaller screens — and any of the other no-gos on the list. — and any of the other no-gos on the list.
Current Trends in Web Animation
Innovations and Future Directions
The world of web animation is constantly evolving, with new technologies and techniques emerging all the time. Here are some of the current trends in web animation:
- The Use of Lottie Animations: Lottie animations are a type of lightweight animation format that can be used to create complex animations with ease. They are highly efficient and can be easily integrated into web pages, making them a popular choice for modern web design.
- The Rise of Interactive Animations: Interactive animations are becoming increasingly popular, allowing users to engage with a website in a more immersive and interactive way. These animations respond to user actions, creating a dynamic and engaging experience.
- The Use of AI-Powered Animation Tools: AI-powered animation tools are making it easier for designers and developers to create complex animations without needing to write code. These tools can automate various aspects of the animation process, saving time and effort while ensuring high-quality results.
- The Importance of Accessibility: With the increasing importance of accessibility in web design, web animations are being designed with accessibility in mind. This ensures that animations can be enjoyed by all users, including those with disabilities, making the web a more inclusive place.
These trends are set to continue in the future, with web animations becoming an even more integral part of web design. As technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more innovative and interactive web animations that push the boundaries of what is possible.
Wrapping Up
Yet, this isn’t merely about aesthetics; it’s about user engagement on a profound level; it’s about crafting experiences that linger in the memory, ensuring each interaction is meaningful and unforgettable.
As we wrap up, remember: website animation is a garnish; when executed tastefully on a website that is already well-designed, it’s the secret sauce that takes that site to the next level.
However, good animation still can’t save a site that’s been poorly designed.
If website design overwhelms you, we get it — and that’s why we’re here to help. At Mighty Fine, we like to make our clients’ brands shine. And we’re no strangers to motion graphics or website design. If you’re looking to supercharge your site, our team has your back. No question is too small, and no project is too big. As a creative agency, we are always keeping up with the latest website design trends.
