The Scroll Animation Examples You’ll Be Using in Your Next Web Design

Give your website visitors a rewarding experience with scroll-triggered animations.

Scroll animations offer flashes of movement as people wind their way through a web page. They can be unassuming and nuanced, like an animated background color transition, or bold and sophisticated, like a multi-image scroll speed animation. Whether you’re creating a scrollytelling editorial masterpiece or a commercial landing page, we’ve got you covered with a bunch of scroll animation examples that you can easily add to your own designs with no code in Vev. Let’s take a look!

What is a Scroll Animation?

Scroll animations are visual effects that invigorate a user experience with interactivity and motion. Scrolling can trigger actions like sliding graphics and text into position, fade-in or fade outs, transformations, or react with other forms of movement.

Popular uses of scroll animations include:

• Highlighting products
• Providing visitors with visual feedback
• Presenting data through infographics
• Acting as guides or visual cues
• Pacing how content is revealed
• Making long-form content more engaging

Scroll-triggered animations can be an important part of a website, engaging users with dynamic visuals and enhancing its usability.

Scroll Animation Best Practices

The best scroll animation examples capture the attention of visitors, and inspire them to keep moving forward. Though they’re an effective design technique, certain things need to be kept in mind when integrating them into your own websites.

Use with intent

While scrolling animations can work as decorative embellishments, the effort in creating them pays off more when they have a higher purpose. Scroll animations can be used to lead people to calls-to-action, highlight key points, and act as visual cues signaling the transition from one section to another. They should be timed at appropriate places, and feel like a part of the natural flow.

Don't overwhelm visitors

Too many scrolling animations can take attention away from the content and messaging you want users to focus on as well making what on screen too busy.

Test on multiple devices

Test web designs with scrolling animations across breakpoints to make sure that they are responsive, functional, don’t drag down page speed, or otherwise have a negative effect on a user’s experience.

Scroll Animation Examples to Replicate in Your Next Web Design

Ready for the exciting part? Check out these scroll animation examples that will take your web designs to the next level.

Scroll speed

Let’s kick off our discussion about scroll animation examples with the ever popular scroll speed animation. Scroll speed animations boost interactivity, setting text and visuals into motion as people scroll down the page. Setting a scroll speed on an element adjusts how it moves in response to scrolling, meaning that some elements may scroll up or down at varying speeds, creating layered, parallax, or scattered effects.

In our 2022 Year-In-Review you’ll see colorful numbers stacked on the screen representing the number 33,998. As you scroll down, these numbers dramatically pull apart. Annual reports are traditionally filled with stats, so this scroll-speed animation makes them more interesting. It’s not only a fun bit of interactivity but leads visitors straight to an explanation about the significance of this number. We have also used this pre-built add-on in the section below, making the various feature cards move up or down slowly upon scroll.

Scroll speed animations also work for graphics and other visuals that you want visitors to activate. The travel website Tortuga Trip is like a greatest hits collection of scroll animation examples. The scroll speed animation can be most noticeably seen in this section where compasses glide over one another, moving at various speeds as you scroll down the page.

Fade-ins

Scroll-triggered fade-ins introduce text and visuals with a low opacity, bumping them up to 100% in one smooth movement as someone scrolls. Headlines, text, photographs, and other elements materialize on screen in bursts of movement, highlighting their importance as the blink into focus.

In this Vev built design for the World Heart Federation, there’s much in terms of text and visuals, but fade-ins and other animations keep up the momentum, prompting visitors to move forward in exploring its content.

Animated Charts and Data Visualizations

Let’s face it - it can be hard to get visitors to read through data. But statistics, figures, and other numbers don’t have to sit on screen in the cold grids of tables or static visuals of traditional graphs or charts. Animated charts and data visualizations are scroll animation examples that not only make experiencing data more exciting, but play an important role in helping people understand what they represent.

The Unstainability Report looks at ten different environmental issues that Denmark is facing. Animated bar charts, an infographic with spinning turbines of a windmill, and interactive pie charts present these facts in active and interesting ways, making sure that people stop to take in the information that’s being conveyed.

Sticky Scrolling

Sticky scrolling fixes something like an image or block of content in place, while a column with text and/or visuals moves against it. Though it’s not the most alluring or exciting of scroll animation examples, stick scrolling stands out as an effective way to break up content and add dynamics to a design. 

In this Vev designed report, Service Now incorporates several scroll-triggered animations like parallax, text fade-ins, animated charts, as well as sticky scrolling. There are several interviews throughout that are laid out into two columns, with one anchored in place, and the other that rolls out the questions and answers.

Horizontal Scrolling

Horizontal scrolling flips a user experience sideways, giving visitors a novel and interactive way of experiencing content. 

We love seeing scroll animation examples that enhance a user’s experience. In this Vev built design by Politico, a horizontally scrolled section cycles through several illustrations with hotspots, that when clicked reveal more information about the process and benefits of repurposing materials in urban environments. It piques curiosity, making readers want to find out more.

Animated Transitions 

Animated transitions signal to visitors that they’ve entered a new section of a website. This type of scroll animation can be something like a background color that shifts to a new one, text and visuals that slide or spin into place, or other special effects.

From the animated icons to the vertical carousel of projects demonstrating how its interactive videos work, Momenti offers an exciting user experience filled with eye-catching visuals. Scrolling through shifts the background, swapping out one colorful cloud of color with another, offering a smooth transition from one section to the next. Scroll animation examples don’t have to be big and bold, and we love seeing muted and low-key interactions like this one that still play an important role in providing visual feedback.

Morphing Animations

Morphing animations are one of the most mesmerizing scroll animation examples. This type of animation takes a graphic or visual and changes its shape or forms as someone scrolls.

Office Studio shows off its suave and sleek furniture in this minimalist black and white design. At the center of the screen a chair morphs into different positions like it’s made out of liquid. It’s a riveting effect that compels you to keep scrolling through.

Scaling 

Scaling takes features like text and images and bumps them up or down in size as someone navigates through a design. 

In any creative portfolio, it’s important that one’s work stands out. Bruce Mau Design uses scaling in an inventive way, taking his featured projects and bringing them up in size from the bottom right of the screen. It stands out in its originality and does a great job in highlighting projects he’s worked on.

Three-dimensional Scrolling

Through the illusion of depth and perspective, 3D websites offer immersive and visually stunning user experiences. Scrolling offers a way to navigate these spaces that pushes people in exploring all there is to see.

In his digital portfolio designer Muhammad Bilal Khan takes you on a virtual tour through his office. Scrolling leads you through and zooms in on different parts of the space, while text communicates something about him or his work. Where so many portfolios are just a flat expanse traversed from the top down, Muhammad wins you over with this virtual experience.

Create Scroll Animations In Just a Few Clicks

Whether you’re looking to incorporate scroll speed, sticky position, or fade-ins into your projects, Vev sets you up for success with pre-built effects and an easy drag and drop UI for putting all of the design elements together. Once your design is ready, publish it anywhere on the web—we’ll host it for you, or you can use our embed anywhere feature to add it straight into your existing website.