Last week we talked about the importance of visual impact with the images shown on pages of websites, and the way that having a real emphatic nature to these images can be very powerful in selling customers on products when you’re operating an eCommerce website. This just doesn’t just apply to photographic images though, and it’s going to be designers who are the ones who put tougher the creative images that are also going to be a part of many sites and apps. In many instances where that assembly is going on there is going to be a need for animation and motion effects, and the best plugins for them are what we’re going to look at today along with the best secure managed WordPress hosting for designers.
They will almost always have the creativity part of the equation down pat, and will have the chops required to put together plenty of visually intriguing images. Logos are often the best example of that, but there can be plenty of other examples where designers are flexing their design abilities. Banner ads are another good example, and plenty of sites will have ones where there is animation and motion involved to catch the eyes of site visitors. If it’s a WordPress website for business that’s being used then the type of web hosting you have behind it, and this leads to looking into the best managed WordPress hosting for Toronto designers. Or for ones in any other big city in Canada.
Designers are like anyone other type of creative professional in that they’ll appreciate anything that makes the implementation of their art easier, and with WordPress websites of any sort that’s exactly what the hundreds of available plugins make possible for people. The sheer number of them available does make it that you need to evaluate which ones are best for your purposes, and that will apply for animation and motion effect plugins for WordPress too. You’ll need to be selective about the ones you’re going to use, as some are better than others. Most designers will know what they’re looking for with regards to functionality, and so what we’ll look at here with this week’s blog entry is how to add animation and motion effects using plugins.
Catchy Is Always Good
Adding animation to any element seen on a webpage can certainly be beneficial if the purpose of that page is to make visitors aware of what you have to offer or any particular reason why they’ll do better for themselves if they order that product from you rather than from your competitors. Here are the reasons why animation and motion effects are helpful for you web pages:
- Make the site stand out - Adding animation to a website makes it stand out more from competitors, giving it an edge over other ones in the same
- Engages the audience - Adding animation to your content stimulates greater interest in the viewer, meaning you’re more likely to engage the audience on your website for longer. It also encourages them to explore your site for more visually interesting content.
- Improves site SEO - When you engage your audience on your website for longer periods of time it’s going to reduce your bounce rate and increase your page views. This can be a major factor in improving your SEO, and secure managed WordPress hosting for designers is right in line with that too.
- Boosts conversions - Animations do engage audiences, and with the right ones you can inspire them to take action on your website, which means boosting your conversions and seeing greater volume of new business generated through the website.
- Brings content to Life - Adding animation to your website brings life to your content, plus making it easier for you to explain your content more excitingly to your users.
There’s a process required for testing these animation plugins, and while that’s not our area of expertise we do have enough wherewithal with all of this stuff to be able to pick up on it relatively quickly as we read of it. As we mentioned earlier, there are so many animation plugins out there and where we’d struggle like many of you would is with which ones are the best and offer the greatest width of suitability for designers who are responsible for making these choices. While the site webmasters will be the ones making the choices for the best managed WordPress hosting Toronto for designers.
Lightweight animation plugins that do not affect site performance are the first determinant that anyone will want to be taking into consideration with this. Of course they’ll also need to be easy to use. Usually there’s a need to integrate them into these WordPress sites and then proceeding to use them on various projects. Designers will also be weighing the animation effects they offer, plus how well they integrate with existing WordPress themes and plugins. Other factors will be the learning curve users will need to go through as they become proficient enough with using the plugin, along with performance impact and customization options.
Alright, enough with the evaluation process for WordPress animation plugins. Let’s get to the 5 ones that are generally regarded as as being the best choices for graphic designers that work on websites.
SeedProd
SeedProd is an excellent choice as an animation plugin with the way it allows you to create visual effects directly while designing your page. You’ll see how animations do not look out of place along with the way it improves the page’s visual appeal. You have a nice variety of ready-made animation blocks and can use the drag and drop interface to place these animation blocks anywhere on the page. All of this contributes to customization being really easy with this plugin.
Another big advantage for SeedProd is how you can customize the plugin further when you select the animation block, making it so that you can change the styling and shape of the title as a means of making the page more unique and eye-catching. You can also set the duration of the animation and the delay before it appears. This plugin also offers other animated blocks like image carousels, background videos, and slideshows for quickly adding visual effects to the page without coding.
‘Particle Background’ is also really good for creating a more interactive feel.
If you are looking for a more interactive feel, then “Particle Background” is the solution.
It is a design feature that allows you to add dynamic and animated backgrounds with particles or small moving elements to your landing pages. Add particle background effects like particle shape, color, and size or customize the direction, speed, and number of particles.
Soliloquy
Soliloquy is also a solid choice as an animation plugin, and it gets high marks for simplicity and powerful slider animation features. Its simple drag-and-drop interface allows you to create stunning sliders in minutes without writing a single line of code, plus with over 100 configurable hooks and filters you can customize sliders to set up everything exactly as you like. Use this plugin to create thumbnail navigation sliders to improve featured user navigation and its lightbox sliders can cover the entire screen, making it easier for your users to view the content.
You can also choose from pre-made slider templates and themes, ensuring that you quickly build the sliders without coding or expert help.
Performance and security are two points where Soliloquy really excels as a motion and animation plugin for WordPress. Many slider plugins will bloat up the site and slow it down, but this one doesn’t and instead it really is optimized for speed with a dynamic Ajax preloading technique. This ensures your sliders load quickly without affecting overall site performance, and it also allows for easy content integration to showcase blog posts or quickly put together a product carousel.
Smart Slider 3
You can’t go wrong with Smart Slider 3 either, and it’s another good WordPress plugin that excels with slider creation. One of the best features of this plugin is the way it lets you add layers to your sliders and structuring them into rows and columns to have them appearing more organized. Users seem to also really like the different animated backgrounds for the sliders as a means of giving them a unique look. Another advantage here is that many of their sliders are optimized for use right away with no additional tailoring or configuring required for them. Consider as well that this plugin supports images and videos and is also fully optimized for better website SEO.
Animate It!
For starters here with this one, we can tell you that Animate It! is a free WordPress animation plugin. With it you can add cool animation effects to your content and it may be a popular choice for those who’ve already decided on the best managed WordPress hosting Toronto for designers. Use the pre-packaged CSS3 animations or add your own custom CSS choices easily through the interface. Animate It! Is really good for creating attention-grabbing animation effects that instantly engage audiences. But what adds to the appeal of that part of it is the way that you also have options to apply animations when a user clicks on or hovers over a specific area on the WordPress site.
Creating these button or image hover effects is nicely straightforward with these plugins, and you are also able to control the duration for different animations. You can create text animations for your site with the delayed animation and the use the plugin customization options to apply animations on other Gutenberg blocks. The last swaying point we’ll share with this one is that it supports multiple languages, which helps for reaching a broader, global audience.
Slider Revolution
Our final contender for today is Slider Revolution. It’s another unique WordPress animation plugin that offers easy ways to build rich & dynamic content for your websites and like the others is a solid fit to be used alongside secure managed WordPress hosting for designers. Go with Slider Revolution and you’ll have hundreds of templates designed to give your site the exact look and motion functionality you’re hoping to see with it.
This plugin is especially good for creating sliders & carousels, hero headers, and content modules, and with added images, videos, icons, and other visual elements it’s possible to make your site stand out and really be capturing site visitors’ attention. The plugin offers in-depth animation settings and animation presets so you can have full control over the animations you use.
There’s everything to like about having a 250+ template to choose from with this plugin, and so even if you don’t have the design expertise that other designers may have you can still create beautiful, dynamic content and do it relatively quickly and easily. Another useful function is the advanced animation controls that come with Slider Revolution, and with them you have complete control over every animation detail. Last but not least this plugin supports multiple content types like images, videos, icons, and text and that also contributes to being able to create sliders that are even more dynamic.
Don’t hesitate to be in touch with us here at 4GoodHosting if you’re in Canada’s biggest city and have a WordPress business website and an in-house graphic designer who shares the same interest as you do in the best managed WordPress hosting Toronto for designers. Managed hosting provides a whole host of benefits that go along with having all aspects of site maintenance and improvement taken care of for you, and ongoing SEO optimization is the one that most business owners will be pleased to hear of.
