How to Add Scroll Animation in WordPress Site

Ever visited a website where elements smoothly fade in, slide up, or zoom into view as you scroll? That’s scroll animation in WordPress for you! It’s a simple yet powerful way to make websites more engaging, interactive, and visually appealing.

For your WordPress website, adding scroll animations is a good way to draw attention to key sections of a page, make the website more dynamic, and improve user experience.

But how do you add these animations to your WordPress site? In this guide, we’ll walk you through three beginner-friendly methods on how to add scroll animation in WordPress. No matter your skill level, you can add eye-catching animation sequence animations in just a few clicks.

What are Scroll Animations in WordPress?

Example of on-scroll animations created using Nexter Blocks

Scroll animations in WordPress are dynamic effects that trigger when a user scrolls down a webpage. Instead of static content that just sits there, elements move, fade, zoom, or slide into view as the user navigates the page.

These animations add a layer of interactivity, making your site feel more modern, engaging, and intuitive. Such subtle design enhancements help attract user attention, create smooth storytelling, and improve the overall browsing experience.

Benefits of Adding Scroll Animations

Let’s see how WordPress scroll effects can elevate your website-

• Increased user engagement: Scroll animations capture attention and encourage visitors to stay longer, which can reduce bounce rates and increase engagement. 

For example, if your website has long sections of text, some interactive scroll animation examples, like text fading in line by line, make it easier to read and digest. This keeps visitors engaged rather than overwhelming them with a wall of text.

• Visually appealing design: Websites without animations can feel flat and outdated. With subtle motion effects, you can make the site look sleek, interactive, and premium. It can also help create a strong first impression and establish credibility.

• Enhances storytelling: With scroll magic in WordPress, you can enhance the flow of your website content, delivering a smooth storytelling experience.

• Optimized for mobile: With more users browsing on mobile, smooth scrolling animations make mobile experiences more engaging and touch-friendly.

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How to Add Scroll Animations in WordPress

Now that we’ve covered what WordPress scroll animations are and why they matter, let’s get to the practical part: how to add animation to your WordPress site.

Method 1: Using a WordPress Plugin

One of the easiest ways to add a scroll effect in WordPress is to use a WordPress plugin. There are many user-friendly plugins available, but if you’re using Gutenberg, Nexter Blocks is a great option.

It offers 90+ Gutenberg blocks, including a powerful scroll animation WordPress plugin. The On Scroll Content Animations feature lets you add stunning trigger animations on the scroll, customize styles, and add dynamic transitions to enhance your content interaction.

What’s more, adding web page scrolling animation effects is super easy with Nexter Blocks. Here’s how-

Step 1: Activate Nexter Blocks

To use the on-scroll effect in WordPress, go to Plugins > Add New Plugin from your WordPress dashboard. Search for the Nexter Blocks, and install and activate the plugin.

The on-scroll animation option is a built-in feature with the Nexter Blocks plugin, which means you can use it with any block on your website.

Step 2: Use on scroll animation

Add any block from the Nexter Blocks to your website page. For instance, you add an image block to the page. 

Go to the Advanced tab > On Scroll Animation under the Block Settings on the right.

From here, you can add an entrance and exit animation for the image under the In and Out tabs, respectively.

Step 3: Customize the animation

Under the In and Out tabs, you can select the animation style from the dropdown menu. This will customize the way the image enters and exits the web page on the screen.

From the Direction dropdown, you can select the direction of animation for different devices and use the Duration dropdown to set the duration of the animation.

You also get the option to add Animation Delay to the content. Lastly, the Easing dropdown lets you select how the image will ease on the screen.

Once you’ve customized the animation, click on Publish to view the live on-scroll animation on your website.

Method 2: Using Theme Features

Another way to add animations to your content is to use a WordPress theme that comes with a built-in feature for animations on feature. Popular themes such as Divi and Astra offer this feature to add animations seamlessly from the theme’s settings.

• You can use Divi theme and page builder to add animation effects to your site.
• To do this, create a new page using the Divi builder and choose a ready-made theme layout.
• Upload an image that you want to animate and click on Advanced under the image settings.
• Find Scroll Effects and add your preferred motion effects.
• After testing the animation, click on Save and publish the site.

If your theme doesn’t support animations, you may need to use a plugin or custom CSS/JS.

Method 3: Adding Custom CSS or JS for Advanced Users

For users comfortable with coding, CSS and JavaScript offer a flexible way to add simple scroll animations to their website.

If you use anchor tags to allow visitors to jump to specific content on your website, you know how abrupt it can look. However, you can make this movement smooth while scrolling using custom CSS or JS. Here’s what you need to do-

Step 1: Set up anchor tags

Start by setting up anchor tags for various sections of your website. For this, select the text where you want to jump to.

In the right menu, go to Advanced and add text to the HTML Anchor field. The text can be any word or combination of letters, which will be your anchor tag.

Step 2: Create the link

Next, select the text that you want to link to your anchor tag. Add a link to it, and in the link field, enter the anchor tag you created with a hashtag in front of it- #word.

Publish the page.

Step 3: Add smooth scrolling with CSS

To make this scrolling motion smoother, add the following piece of CSS code to the Additional CSS section in WordPress-

html{

scroll-behavior: smooth;

}

And done. This will add basic scroll animations to your website.

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Scroll Animation Examples and Best Practices

Incorporating scroll animations in WordPress can significantly enhance user engagement and create memorable web experiences. Below are some scroll animation examples of various websites utilizing motion effects in the best way possible:

1. Apple iPhone

Apple‘s iPhone page employs smooth parallax effects combined with fade-in animations to showcase product features dynamically. As you scroll, images and text transition seamlessly, offering an immersive experience.

2. Kubrick Life

This website offers an interactive journey through Stanley Kubrick’s life, utilizing horizontal scrolling and dynamic image transitions. The on-scroll animations guide users through different phases of his career, making the exploration engaging.

3. NASAProspect

NASA’s Prospect project utilizes scroll-triggered 3D animations to simulate space exploration, allowing users to engage with celestial bodies and spacecraft models dynamically.

Want to achieve similar animation effects for your website? Here are some best practices to follow-

• Optimize performance: Implement performance-friendly animations to prevent slow load times. Test animations across various devices to ensure they run smoothly without hindering the user experience.

• Maintain simplicity: Overloading a page with numerous animations can overwhelm users. Use animations sparingly to maintain focus on essential content and ensure the page remains accessible.

• Ensure accessibility: Whatever scroll animations you add should be accessible to all users. You can provide options to disable animations and ensure they do not interfere with screen readers or other assistive technologies.

• Test for responsiveness: Test animations on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices to ensure a consistent and responsive experience.

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Wrapping Up

Adding scroll animations in WordPress can enhance your site’s design, engagement, and storytelling. You can easily do so using a plugin, built-in theme features, or custom coding for stunning on-scroll and motion effects on your site.

While custom CSS helps you add simple and effective on-scroll effects, using a plugin or theme gives you more flexibility in customizing the animation style, duration, position, and so much more.

So, if you’re looking for the simplest way to add animations, try Nexter Blocks. The beginner-friendly plugin gives you access to 90+ Gutenberg blocks to boost your website’s design, content, and functionality within seconds!

FAQs on Scroll Animations in WordPress