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Designing with motion is a great way to draw user interest, lead the user’s eye to important areas of a web design, and make a website memorable, but it can also cause some technical drawbacks.

A website’s interface is an impactful point of interaction for a brand. It highlights the brand’s purpose and personality. It also serves as an introduction to what dealing with the business will be like from a consumer standpoint. UI animations are highly effective at making an impact on the user. Animations can affect business metrics by assisting in navigation and impacting user retention. The human brain is designed to notice movement. This means there is an immediate impact on the user’s first impression of the brand because animations command attention, hold interest, imply value, and make the site memorable. Once the user’s attention is captured, animations can guide the user through important elements of the website such as drawing the eye to CTAs and other important parts of navigation that drive end-results. Animations can even be used to demonstrate how something on the website works or communicate the status of an action to the user.

However, before you run and add a bunch of animations to your website, there are potential drawbacks to consider, especially if animations are not implemented properly to impact UX.  Going overboard with animations clutter the interface which leads to a bad user experience and a negative impact on loading speed. Slow loading is one of the biggest causes of users abandoning websites and animations can slow speeds down significantly if not executed with attention to quality, scaling, and minimal coding. Unoptimized animations can also result in rendering issues. Users do not want to wait for pages or animations to render, so make sure that rendering and loading take less than two to three seconds.

Consider a few points when adding UI animations to websites. Animations should add user value and not be superfluous. For animations to stand out and effectively direct the user, they need to be in an uncluttered environment and render quickly. Avoid the old-style FLASH methods and opt for lightweight JavaScripts or CSS coding instead. Utilize website builders with responsive animation effects built into their workflow to avoid any detrimental impact on mobile device usage. Pay attention to scale, rendering, and user impact through testing and examining the usage from a user standpoint. Additionally, utilizing a quality hosting service will help to ensure consistency in rendering and loading speed across all browsers and devices.

Animations are a great tool for creating an engaging website and assisting user navigation and their overall experience. If the animations capture attention and guide the user to important website elements with quick rendering, then chances are those animations will increase user retention, conversions, repeat business, and recommendations.

Avatar New York web design is an innovating, award-winning web design New York firm dedicated to providing clients with responsive websites to grow brands and convert visitors to customers. With an expertise in web development, branding, cloud hosting, mobile app development, and CMS and e-commerce solutions, Avatar New York's top tier designers have the ability to create intelligent websites for any type of business.