10 Annoying Web Design Trends in 2025 Which Should Stop NOW

Web design trends aren't always a step in the right direction. Here are the top 10 most annoying web design trend that need to stop NOW.

So I've just clicked through to a website. Before I saw the content, I had some random mailing list subscription form thrust in my face, or even worse, a customer satisfaction survey. I've just entered the site! I have yet to learn what your site is about or the quality of work, so why would I want to sign up for a list instantly? Let me read your content first, and if I want to subscribe, I will. Thanks.

There are a plethora of "freemium" and premium templates out there, all promising to the latest and greatest with newly added features (most of which are on this list), except all the themes look the same. Standard hero image of some stock photo, bootstrap title and tagline, bootstrap button or two and the modular "panels" design. Only some templates now offer creativity from the authors. It gives me the impression that they have just taken another template, made a few minor cosmetic changes and relaunched it as a "new" template.

Every day, another new framework comes out, each claiming to be better than the rest; there are so many out there that it's impossible to keep up. Angular, Backbone, Dojo, Ember, jQuery, Knockout, mooTools, prototype, react. Those are just a few of the Javascript frameworks I've used. Then there is the CSS/SASS/Less/Gumby/Compass, not to mention the frameworks which span CSS/HTML and JavaScript. Indeed, they cannot all be entirely different; there must be masses of overlap and duplication.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, websites used MIDI files as background music, a trend that was about as popular as Comic Sans as a typeface. Fortunately, this web design trend has faded. However, a new trend for auto-playing videos has emerged, causing similar frustration. These videos, set to autoplay, can be anything from adverts to embedded videos in content, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Here's another scenario: I'm browsing sites, opening links in multiple tabs, especially those in the content that I plan to read later. But the trouble starts when the videos on these tabs start playing in the background after I've opened three or four tabs. I had to visit each page, locate the video, stop it, and then try to find where I was. It's a hassle, and it's annoying. Please, don't auto-play videos.

I use ad-blocking software to block obtrusive adverts, pop-ups, and video adverts (see above). There are also privacy issues with adverts, super cookies and tracking codes, which build up a picture of my browsing habits. These are legitimate reasons for blocking adverts. The web design trend now is to ask visitors to turn off ad-blocks to see the content, and in some cases, the site won't even allow you to go any further. If I can't see the content, I will hit the back button, so don't cry about lost revenue due to blockers.

I run adverts on this site, and I have seen the decline in revenues attributed to ad blockers, so as a publisher, I know what it's like. I don't punish anyone for blocking adverts.

What is the solution? I don't know. Let us know in the comments below.

With web pages getting heavier, frameworks are getting busier, and page load times are increasing despite the push for a faster web. We'll solve that problem by adding a loading icon for the user to look at. That'll solve the problem.

No. From a User Experience point of view, you are saying that waiting for a web page is OK. It is not. It would be best if you focused on delivering a high-performance, optimised site that does not need loading icons.

Loading icons need to disappear now. Or be replaced with this.

This web design trend is mainly used on news websites, where scrolling down the story leads to the next story, then the next again. The page scrolls down endlessly and often breaks the back button, so you must click 15 times to get out of the site. The same applies to listings, which automatically add new content when scrolling down. As more and more content is loaded, the browser uses more and more resources, eventually slowing down.

Notice the format of this post; it is a list presented one after the other on one page. Apart from scrolling down, no other user interaction is required. Clickbait sites started the web design trend, but not popular sites such as Forbes put each item on the list as its slide, sometimes even a new page that must be clicked. As with infinite scrolling, going back to the start requires clicking the back button 15 times.

Free content means downloading for free, i.e. a one-way exchange. The web design trend is now emerging, and "free" content downloads are offered in exchange for signing up for mailing lists or providing other personal data, which is then sold to marketing companies. So, while you may not have paid cash for content, you have sold your data to an unknown entity for whatever purpose they feel free to use. Folks wonder why they get so many spam emails.