1. Animations: a subtle touch
Avoid heavy and intrusive animations
Excessive or poorly managed JavaScript animations can slow down your website, impacting not only the user experience but also your SEO, since Google sanctions sites that perform too poorly.
What's more, animations that have no specific function or that disrupt reading can irritate your visitors, increasing the bounce rate.
Although it's tempting to offer an immersive experience to stand out from the crowd, performance and accessibility must remain your priorities.
Use subtle micro-interactions to enrich the user experience
Prefer micro-interactions, such as buttons that change shape slightly, interactive sliders or subtle hover transitions.
These small animations add interactivity while maintaining the fluidity of navigation.
2. Typography: between originality and legibility
Don't overload your website with too many fonts or illegible typefaces
Using too many fonts detracts from the visual harmony and gives an impression of incoherence. Limit yourself to two or three font families to ensure a clean, consistent look and make your site easier to read.
Accessibility is a key element of the web, so make sure your fonts are legible, both in terms of design and thickness, to ensure a smooth experience for everyone.
Go for originality and boldness
Legible typography doesn't mean you have to give up creativity.
In 2025, retro style is making a comeback, with pixel art-inspired fonts that add a nostalgic yet modern touch.
You can also opt for imposing titles to add a touch of dynamism.
3. Colours: contrast and energy
Ensure sufficient contrast for improved accessibility
To ensure that your site is accessible to everyone, including the visually impaired, make sure you choose a colour palette that provides sufficient contrast.
Limit yourself to around 2 colours, apart from white and black, with dark or light variations for each. Then check the contrast for each combination.
You can use the Tailwind CSS colour generator, for example, to generate the colour variations, as well as an online contrast checker to check your website's compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Use dark mode to highlight bright colours
Dark mode continues to grow in popularity, partly because it reduces eyestrain and the energy consumed by mobile screens, while offering better contrast with bright colours.
Combined with bright gradients, black creates an elegant aesthetic without compromising accessibility.
If you need inspiration to choose your colour palette, you can use the generator available on the coolors.io website. Endless possibilities!
4. Visuals: when quality goes hand in hand with lightness
Avoid heavy or unoptimised visuals at all costs
Images attract attention and reinforce visual identity, but they must be optimized to avoid slowing down site loading.
Make sure you adapt the resolution of your images to suit the media (desktop or mobile) and use suitable formats such as WebP or AVIF.
For example, a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels is generally sufficient for a background image, while dimensions of between 600 and 1200 pixels are suitable for other images on a page or in an article. Thumbnail images, i.e. preview images of blog posts for example, work very well at 400x300. For mobile devices, use resolutions of between 320 and 768 pixels.
And to adapt the format of your images and convert them to WebP format, try our Snaperies tool!
Invest in customised visuals rather than standard images
It's often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this is especially true when it comes to web design. Relevant images, illustrations and videos make content easier to understand, especially dense or technical content.
It also makes the site more airy, interactive and engaging, which encourages visitors to explore further.
Users are increasingly fed up with generic image banks. And frankly, it's immediately obvious. To stand out from the crowd, opt for bespoke visuals, whether illustrations or content generated by artificial intelligence, to push back the boundaries of creativity. If you're looking for authenticity, hire a photographer and your site will be truly different.
With high-quality visual content, you can capitalize on the trend towards full-screen immersive experiences, which captivate users and immerse them completely in your world.
5. Structure and UX: an intuitive experience first and foremost
Forget overly complex navigation structures
Complex navigation makes the user experience frustrating and reduces the accessibility of information, thus affecting visitor satisfaction and your site's SEO.
Focus on intuitive, smart UX
In 2025, users expect simplified browsing, where access to information is just a few clicks away.
The rise of artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT means that Internet users are used to finding answers quickly and being guided intelligently, without having to wade through complex sub-menus.
If your navigation involves several levels because you have a lot of content, opt for simple menus with a single link, then sub-menus that are visible once the user reaches the first level. This avoids overloading the experience, and allows users to understand the content architecture at the right moment.
Conclusion: Design System, the cornerstone of a modern, functional website
Designing a modern website in 2025 requires striking the right balance between aesthetics, performance and accessibility.
To ensure overall consistency, it is essential to define a customized Style Guide from the outset. This framework ensures that every element (animations, typography, colours, visuals, navigation) respects your brand identity and accessibility standards.
On our web projects, we make sure that development starts here, with a customised Design System created at Coteries. This enables our web designers to create sites with a solid, consistent foundation for our customers.
Ready to bring your site to life or redesign it for 2025? Contact us to discuss your project and create a web experience that matches your ambitions!
