Performance and creativity often feel at odds in the world of web creation. You want to grab a visitor’s attention with impressive flourishes but can’t push too far and risk compromising the site’s usability. 

Enter: website animations, a prime way to balance performance and creativity. When used strategically, animations can help your clients’ sites stand out. The key, of course, is making sure your animations don’t lag, distract or outright break the site.

This is why it’s important to understand the fundamentals of website animation. For starters, take a look at the principles of good web design. Your website animations should support most of these points, like smooth performance and frictionless conversion. From there, you can draw inspiration from the latest web design trends or best in class website animations examples (more on those in a bit).

To help you create purposeful, distinctive and seamless animations, we’ve created this guide to lead you through the entire process—from optimizing your web design process to pushing your site animations live, and everything in between. Plus, Eliran Vadhi, a brand designer at Wix Studio, shares how he includes animations in his own web designs.

What is animation in web design

Animation in web design adds movement to otherwise static elements on a site, and influences how visitors experience and consume a website’s content. Without animations, a site’s content will be fully loaded at launch and static—there are no gradual reveals, builds or surprises as a visitor explores your site.

Website animations can be grouped into two different categories:

• Triggered animations: A predetermined action—like hovering or scrolling—causes an animation to begin and, in most cases, to end. For example, scrolling down a page can cause images and text to move until the visitor leaves the section and the animated movements stop.

• Automated, or non-triggered, animations: Elements can also animate independently of a visitor’s actions, most likely beginning from the moment the site fully loads. These animations are often loop animations, as in no action causes them to begin or end and the animation continues repeatedly until the user navigates to a different page. 

Adding animations to a website might take a few clicks or require lines of custom code, depending on how you’ve built your website. For instance, on Wix Studio, there are over one hundred, code-free animations that are pre-configured and can be implemented within a few seconds. Otherwise, website animations could require a combination of languages—notably custom CSS and JavaScript—to bring your vision to life.

A common misconception is that website animations are a final step in creating a website. Actually, they should be determined when you are first designing your pages with an animation style that fits your client’s brand. (We’ll get to some best practices later.)

As you start to form the animation style that fits your current or next project, explore these website animations examples below to feed your inspiration.

10 popular types of website animations with examples

01. Scrolling animations

This type of website animation is triggered by the user scrolling up, down or even sideways through your page. Scrolling animations make a page feel alive and fluid, and like the user is driving the narrative. There are many scroll effects to choose from—parallax scrolling, flying effect, element rotations and more—and you have the freedom to apply the effect to an individual element, a handful of elements or even an entire section. Consider how to balance the scroll effects across a single page so your site visitors don’t feel swept up inside a tornado.

Pro tip: Consider the most important messages on the page. “You can apply a scroll effect to text elements, but make sure that important text is static for some of the scroll so that users have time to read it,” Vadhi says. 

Check out this tutorial to create a no-code scroll animation on Wix Studio.

02. Hover animations

Hover animations or effects are triggered when the user’s cursor is placed over a predetermined element. One standard practice is to apply hover effects to CTAs and buttons. This visual emphasis is particularly useful when a page has many different links or buttons, and it helps guide the user to click on the correct element. For a slightly more creative approach, apply hover effects to less obvious elements on a page, such as product images, which give visitors a touch of surprise and fun.

Pro tip: Vadhi uses hover animations to add Easter eggs to his designs. “With hover effects, you can hide cool design elements that users find at their own pace,” he says. “It makes them want to keep exploring your site.”

03. Hero animation

The first fold of a website, also called the hero fold, is the first thing a visitor sees, so it needs to grab their attention. A strong hero—with good design, strong messaging and engaging animations—drives a connection with visitors and ultimately a sale or conversion. Because the hero section of the website loads at launch and doesn’t require a trigger, consider animations that begin immediately and loop. 

Follow this tutorial to create a hero fold on Wix Studio with no-code animations.

04. Loading animation

Unlike other types of website animations that engage visitors within the site’s content, a loading animation engages visitors before they even arrive at the site’s content. This is because, true to its name, the animation appears while the site is still loading in the browser. While every site takes a moment to load, sites that are completely custom coded take longer, and a loading animation provides a nice distraction. One good practice is for the loading animation to take a cue from the site’s brand identity and play off of the logo. 

05. 3D animations

You can make a website more tactile with 3D animations. If you’re creating a site to sell physical products, 3D animations bring depth and dimension to the online inventory. And even if it’s a site for a service company—no matter whether it’s a creative studio or a construction company—3D animations are still relevant, adding personality and distinction to help the site stand out from the competition. For more inspiration, check out these 3D interactive websites.

06. Accent animations

Accent animations will help you create a rich atmosphere around the main content of your website. Think of these as design flourishes, similar to a garnish on a main dish—not attracting too much attention but giving a creative finish to your web design. Accent animations are flexible—they can be triggered or non-triggered, and are usually compatible on both mobile and desktop breakpoints. 

07. Mouse animations 

To move website elements in response to cursor movements, mouse animations do the trick. They give a site depth and dynamism, bringing a three-dimensional feel to your two-dimensional screen. The effect, sometimes referred to as mouse parallax, gives immediate gratification, unlike a scroll effect which requires more action to animate. However, because mouse animations require a cursor, they won’t work on touch devices, so you’ll need an alternate approach for tablet and mobile breakpoints. 

Pro tip: For mouse effects, Vadhi says to keep the integrity of the design. “The effects should be subtle so they don’t distort or skew the selected elements too much.”

Explore this Wix Studio tutorial to build an interactive section with mouse parallax effect.

08. Illustration animations

Unlike animations you apply to components you’ve created within your website, like text blocks or section transitions, illustration animations are created outside of your website, then integrated later. When adding animated illustrations to your website, opt for GIFs to maximize image quality without affecting page performance. Alternatively, Lottie animations offer an extensive library of animated illustrations that are embedded within your site and not uploaded as image files, so they don’t create additional weight.

09. Page transition animations

Animations can elevate the experience of moving between the pages of a website. But since page transition animations are seldom used, they create a sleek, professional flow that stands out. These animated page transitions can be subtle or bold, but be sure to balance them with how much navigation the site requires. If the site has only a few pages, and thus a limited user flow, flamboyant page transitions can make a memorable statement. But if your site has many pages, keep the animated transitions at a low intensity so they don’t overwhelm visitors.

10. Entrance animations

Entrance animations essentially roll out the red carpet for your headlines, images, buttons and the like. Whether you choose a subtle fade-in or an attention grabbing bounce-in, each animated element catches the eye for a moment and invites site visitors to briefly pause their scroll. Note: You shouldn’t apply entrance animations to the whole website. Instead, choose individual elements, either for emphasis (like to highlight a product’s name) or for style (like in a grid’s border lines). Either way, these animations add a professional finish to your clients’ sites. 

Pro tip: Vadhi encourages web creators to play around with a delay for entrance animations. “A delay creates a stagger effect, so the animations keep coming to life and have a nice flow.”

Tips for designing website animation the right way

01. Start on mobile

The mobile version of a website has become, in some cases, the main breakpoint to optimize. Not only has mobile web traffic increased year over year, the potential for your website to rank high in Google Search results is largely dependent on your mobile site experience. 

In addition, the mobile browser experience is more limited. The vertical, smaller screen requires an alternate approach for what is normally impactful on desktop, like a horizontal menu or a multi-layered scroll animation. Meanwhile some animations simply will not work on mobile, like the mouse parallax effect that requires a cursor. 

To create the optimal animation experience on mobile, use animations that:

• Aren’t compromised by a smaller, mobile screen

• Don’t require a cursor

• Don’t render the mobile site heavy and slow

Learn more about building content-rich sites with Wix Studio’s CMS.

02. Make sure the animation serves a purpose

When animation is used simply for the shock and awe of it, you’re more likely to distract and turn away visitors than to engage and convert them. Good animation serves as a guide for visitors, pointing out elements that they should engage with and taking them on the journey that you’ve designed and that supports your business objectives. 

This last point is important to revisit as you design your site (and decide on your animations): what’s the objective of your site? Do you want users to read your content? Then lead them through your narrative with animations that point them through your story, like signposts on a hiking trail. Want users to submit a form? Animations can point to the form, emphasize its borders and highlight the submit button.

Ask yourself these questions as you determine where, when and how to apply animations:

• Which element(s) do I want to emphasize?

• Are these animations helping or distracting from the desired visitor action?

• Why is this the right animation effect to use for this action and this element?

03. Plan your animations from the beginning of your design process

Even though you don’t bring website animations to life until you’re ready to build the site, they should be part of your design process from the very beginning. Just like you decide the colors, tone of voice and typefaces that fit your brand, website animations should also reflect the identity of the brand. Otherwise you risk creating a jarring, inconsistent site that doesn’t reflect your client’s business. 

Take a look at a handful of sites to see different website animations examples. (The Wix Studio inspiration page should do the trick.) This digital portfolio from Praagya features nontraditional, powerful and oversized animations that pack a creative punch and stand out in a sea of similar looking portfolios. In contrast, the animations on Paint Fusion’s site are muted, structured and elegant, reflecting the brand’s interior design professionalism and sophistication. 

04. Be mindful of the implication on page performance

One of the biggest killers of web traffic and conversions is slow-loading pages. The longer visitors need to wait to see the content on your page, the more likely they are to abandon the page and never return. 

Because animations can be so draining on web hosting—especially when you use more than just a handful of them—it’s important to keep an eye on what they’re doing to loading speeds. 

Consider not only which animations you use but how you build your website. Today, web creators can choose from a wide range of different web solutions that fit the diverse needs of many different client types. Basically, do your research and learn if your preferred web creation approach is optimized for your creative needs, including animations. Wix Studio’s design features, for example, come with over one hundred preset animations that are all built with CSS and use the latest technology to ensure smooth performance.

Website animation FAQ

Is website animation still a good idea?

Yep, website animation is still a good idea. 

While you can still impress visitors with static content, animation has a unique way of commanding attention. Just keep the best practices above in mind, so that your sites’ animations enhance the experience without friction.

Create your next site with ready-to-go website animations on a Wix Studio template.

What are the pros and cons of website animation?

If you’re wondering, “why should I use animation in my web design?” The short answer is that animation can elevate the visitors’ experience and make your site stand out. But there are a few precautions when using them. Some pros and cons:

The pros 

• Animations are more engaging than static content, so they can help drive more conversions and more dwell time

• They effectively call attention to important elements and messages, and lead your visitor to the place that you want, like a button or a form

• They succinctly tell a story in a small space

• They add visual depth on the screen

• They can surprise visitors

• Unique animations can make a brand more competitive in a crowded market

The cons

• Ill-timed or poorly designed animations become distractions and roadblocks

• Too much motion can slow down the loading of a web page

• Too many animations prevent visitors from knowing which parts of the page to focus on

• Website animation doesn’t always translate well to mobile, which leads to poor experiences

• Can present accessibility issues for disabled or elderly visitors (which is why Wix Studio turns off animations for visitors with a reduced motion preference)

What is the best type of website animation? 

No single website animation is the hands-down best, but as a whole the best website animations:

• Complement the website’s objectives by reflecting the brand’s identity and by guiding visitors to complete the intended action, such as a product purchase, a newsletter sign up, or something else you’ve determined with your client.
  

• Support the visitor’s needs and elevate the site experience so it’s memorable, enjoyable and smooth. 

• Don’t diminish the site’s performance and ensure both seamless loading and good usability on all breakpoints. 

How do I create website animations? 

Creating website animations will depend on how you’re building your website.

• Write code—like CSS and/or JavaScript—if you’re coding your website from scratch, or if you’re using a web creation platform that doesn’t include animations but gives you the option to add custom code.

• Select code-free animations if you’re using a web creation platform that comes with premade animations. This cuts down on time and complexity, makes it easier to experiment with new styles and allows you to change your designs on the fly. Wix Studio is one such platform that gives you over one hundred out-of-the-box animations, and lets you adjust the animation configurations without needing any code.

Sign up now to create your next site on Wix Studio.