Hello, this is Mikel with TinyFrog Technologies. Today I want to talk about animations on websites, and probably more specifically, micro-animations or small animations.
Most websites nowadays, if you look at them, especially ones that have been probably built in the last year or two, have some kind of movement on the website. It’s very common. It’s pretty rare to see a completely static website.
A real common one is if you’re scrolling down, you’ll notice the header will become a sticky header, so it actually adjusts so that the header is sticking with the website page’s you’re scrolling down. That being said, scroll animations are really common. As you’re scrolling down, you’ll see different things moving; oftentimes something coming more towards the center of the screen or some kind of adjustment within the content as you’re scrolling down.
Hover-overs are also very common. They can make the website more interesting and engaging and they can have a practical application because it’ll really highlight a specific area of a website, of a web page, as you’re scrolling down and hitting that area. So, we strongly recommend having some kind of animations in the website to make it more interesting, make it more dynamic, make it more engaging.
But it’s pretty easy to cross a line with that and using too much animation and at that point, the website can be very distracting. There’s a term that we use called “visual bullying” and you may have had this experience. You’re going to a website and you’re just moving and navigating to the website and things are moving from all all over the place almost randomly or indiscriminately, and a lot of website companies or website designers build that in just to make the website animated.
But every time there’s an animation or a micro animation built into the website, it should serve a purpose to enhance the overall user experience, and that’s the way that we approach animations and specifically micro-animations: using it to enhance the user experience versus detract from the user experience.
And again, it’s a very fine line that gets crossed all the time, so it’s definitely something if you’re considering a new website, or you’re in the process of, make sure that you’re finding websites that are examples and inspiration that are doing it well and building those into the design plan versus just randomly having things moving.
