Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last thirty years, the Internet will have become a pretty big part of your life. With more than five billion daily users, it’s no secret that it’s become the new frontier for everything from education to industry.
We’re here to tell you that web development isn’t as complex as most people think. In fact, you can set up your website to get the popularity it needs pretty easily.
Just follow the recent trends. Trends aren’t design choices approved by big companies.
Instead, they’re created by consumer interest, making them the best way to directly appeal to visitors on your page.
So How Am I Going to Know About These Trends?
Come on. You didn’t think we’d just leave you off here, did you? Below, we’re going to be learning about some of the top website development articles that have come up in 2024, along with a couple of helpful tips we thought were perfect for budding web developers.
The Evolution of Web Development – Trends to Watch
We’re going to start with a trend that’s equal parts common sense and eye relief, making it pretty popular with all those night owls out there:
The Dark Mode Experience
Also sometimes called a “Night Mode” or a “Dark View,” Dark Mode is an emerging trend in web design where typical white backgrounds are replaced with a low-light, dark color interface.
Essentially, it’s an easy, low-effort way to reduce eye fatigue. Users don’t get tired as quickly when browsing through their favorite sites.
Why Is It Popular?
This goes against the light-on-dark design you’ve seen for years, and honestly? We’re pretty sure that’s why it’s so popular! Besides that, Dark Mode came about due to increased screen time.
And that’s not everything either. Research shows Dark Mode packs a couple more advantages for web developers and consumers, like:
- Combining a Dark Mode or Night View option with brighter colors can make visuals vastly more appealing and lets users focus on them.
- It also saves the user’s device battery since colorful backgrounds tend to eat up way more charge than dark backgrounds.
Who’s Using It?
It’s not just a minor trend. You can see many famous companies providing a Dark Mode option, like:
- YouTube
- Newspaper websites as they often involve a lot of screen time
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
While it’s not exactly a trend that came up in 2024, PWAs are quickly on their way to capturing a large part of the web design market.
Often written in HTML, JavaScript, or React, these apps help websites load faster and provide offline functionality.
Both of those are already reason enough for their popularity, right?
If you believe most web analysts, Progressive Web Apps will likely replace most web apps out there, as they’re faster, more convenient to use, and a better way for companies to interact with their customers.
Why Are They Popular?
The best thing about PWA apps is that they’re designed for efficient use on lower-end devices.
The latest Uber PWA app will work on anything from high-end 5G phones to outdated 2G rustbuckets while also showing better performance and customer engagement than Native apps.
To sum that up in a clean couple of points, here’s why PWA apps are popular today:
- They offer better performance through faster loading and more efficient runtime performance.
- One-stop solution for app distribution across all platforms without going through app stores.
Who’s Using Them?
Oh boy. Some huge names are using Progressive Web Apps, like:
- Flipkart
- Uber
- AliExpress
AI-Powered Chatbots
Artificial Intelligence is on the rise, and unless the Internet comes crashing down tomorrow, it’s not becoming any less popular either.
A perfect example is AI-powered chatbots, the latest development in customer service.
Essentially, AI-powered chatbots are like virtual assistants who communicate with visitors to the side, reducing the manpower needed for various tasks.
These chatbots enable companies to communicate with their clients faster and more accurately, making the already grueling process of customer service much more effortless.
Why Are They Popular?
Chatbots help companies save heavily on different costs. They reduce manpower needs and promote quicker, better interaction with customers, among other things.
Some of the tasks performed by these AI chatbots include:
- They can communicate with page visitors to turn navigation into a fun, guided tour.
- Secondly, they can also be used for analyzing customer data in real-time to predict consumer trends on the spot, allowing companies to stay ahead of the curve.
Who Uses Them?
Chatbots are very popular with messaging sites, and social media platforms, where responding to users instantly is of the essence. That means you’re going to be seeing them in places like:
- Facebook Messenger
- Skype
- Cisco Spark
- Lyft
- The Wall Street Journal
Voice Search Optimization
Voice recognition technology has been on the rise for years.
However, it’s stopped playing second fiddle and has instead risen to the tops of trend charts everywhere, with companies like Amazon and Google launching intelligent speakers.
When connected to devices, these speakers can help users do anything from running a Google search to playing music.
Why Is It Popular?
If all of that wasn’t enough to convince you, here are a couple of reasons that make Voice Search Optimization as popular as it is today:
- It’s an innovative, low-effort way to improve the User Experience for visually impaired or hearing-impaired individuals.
- Adobe Analytics confirms that a staggering 47% of users on the Internet prefer using Voice Search more than typing.
Who’s Using It?
This part’s more obvious than we could make it, right? Some familiar names for Voice Search Optimization are Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri.
Single Page Applications (SPAs)
Single-page applications present a new trend in website development: something that dramatically changes how web pages work and feel today.
SPAs are popular because they promote a better user experience through an application that creates the illusion of pages changing and being loaded, even though you’re on a single page the entire time.
Why Are They Popular?
We said they improve the user experience, but we didn’t say how right? Take a look down below to see why SPAs are famous in 2024:
- Being a single page, they are much faster than traditional websites and involve almost no loading times.
- They’re easy to make with HTML and can be debugged easily within minutes.
Who’s Using Them?
You’ll be surprised to know that some of the most popular websites in the world are actually Single Page Applications instead of traditional websites, like:
- Google Drive
Mobile-First Development Approach
Humans have become almost inseparable from their mobile phones, with more than 10 billion mobile connections worldwide. What this means for website development is that websites have to start being mobile-friendly or risk losing the majority of their user base.
Don’t believe us? Get this: Think With Google put out statistics proving that today, 74% of customers return to a website if it’s easily usable on the phone.
That’s not just the majority. That’s almost the total percentage of visitors on the site!
Why Is It Popular?
Some of the more outlined benefits of such an approach to web design are:
- It lets you target the crowd that prefers to use their mobile phones over computers.
- A mobile-first design approach means faster loading that allows for better marketing through Search Engine Optimization.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs)
Launched by Google almost a decade ago, Accelerated Mobile Pages appeal to an old idea that’s still true today: the best way to convert visitors into paying customers is through a flawless UX.
It makes browsing through websites lightning fast, with animations and seamless transitions filling in the gaps.
While Google doesn’t give preference to websites using AMP for its Top Stories section anymore, more than 60% of mobile websites with the most traffic use AMP technology today.
Why Are They Popular?
The first thing to understand is that AMP isn’t itself a requirement for flawless performance on mobile devices. However, it still packs a lot of benefits like:
- It increases website engagement through decreased load times.
- Since page loading times are a ranking factor, using AMP can passively result in better Search Engine Optimization.
- It also lowers bounce rates by incentivizing customers to stay on a page.
Who’s Using Them?
Even though Google removed AMP as a requirement for its Top Stories, there are still several top websites using the technology, like:
- Geeks for Geeks is a famous computer science portal aimed at Data Structures and Algorithms.
- freeCodeCamp, a non-profit organization aimed at making web development more accessible.
Automation Testing
Most mobile trends are aimed at two simple things: reducing the costs of keeping the website functioning perfectly and achieving a better user experience through new technology.
The best thing about automation testing is that it doesn’t do just one of these.
Instead, it involves using AI and machine learning to automate project development and product testing, which can significantly reduce the development period for complex websites.
Why Is It Popular?
Automation testing can have many significant benefits, like:
- Reduces the risk of incorrect output from tests due to human error.
- Reports detailed capabilities of websites, apps, and other projects by using comprehensive test scenarios.
Who’s Using It?
Honestly, we feel like the answer should be everybody. Automation Testing isn’t just practical overall: it saves you a lot of money and time, which can be used productively for other, more important things.
CyberSecurity
There are many ways to quickly lose the trust of your clients, but right now, there’s none faster and better than leaking their data.
Once your customers and visitors know that their data isn’t safe with you, we can virtually guarantee they won’t be making a transaction on your website again.
That’s precisely why cybersecurity has become such an essential requirement in 2024, especially with DDoS attacks rising more than double-fold since 2019. This applies to many industries like the healthcare, retail, and pharmacy industry, as they often store vast amounts of customer data.
Serverless Architecture
Maintaining your servers can often be grueling work, especially if you’re already working on your website most of the day.
Using a serverless architecture means solving problems like system overloading and data loss by not using expensive servers in the first place.
People have started moving towards serverless algorithms, where servers are replaced by clouds, which are massively more Internet-sustainable. This technology is used for everything from chatbots to APIs and IoT apps.
Why Is It Popular?
Serverless management actually comes with way more benefits than you’d think, with some prominent advantages being:
- You don’t need to manage physical servers.
- It allows for quick deployment and updates to the software.
- Reduces cost by only requiring devs to pay for the storage they use and none of the equipment needed to maintain physical servers or the expenses that go into them.
Who’s Using It?
While many of the more prominent companies still have to adopt this tech, there are a couple of names aspiring devs might recognize:
- Codepen, a world-famous code repository.
- Shamrock Trading Corporation is the parent company behind RTS Financial, Ryan Transportation, RTS Carrier Services, and many other successful brands.
Frequently Asked Questions
We’re done outlining the focus here, but some of you had questions that popped up quite frequently. In this section, we’re going to answer some of them, though be warned a lot of these involve giving our opinion:
Which tool is best for Web Development?
We’re sure this one’s talking about web frameworks, as they’re an essential part of web design. We’d recommend React Native or Flutter: two frameworks currently voted by users to be the best.
How does technology affect Web Development?
The simplest answer is that it drives it up. The more advanced technology gets, the better features and functionality users will expect on the websites they’re browsing through.
So in simple words, it’s both going to make your life easier and much more complicated.
What is the next big thing in Web Development?
If you’re asking for our opinion, we’d say it’s a tie between Dark Mode and Single-Page Applications. The first is an essential design option that users love to see. The second is a design architecture that massively improves on traditional website design.
How to build a website with AI support?
We’re assuming this one’s asking how you can implement AI support in your own websites. It’s usually done by integrating an already-created AI tool like TensorFlow, which carries out intense high-speed calculations.
There’s also Adobe Sensei, which saves you hours of manual editing on pictures and even helps in patching processes.
The Takeaway
Right now, intention isn’t going to do it. If you want your website to be successful, you will need a secure and well-thought-out strategy. Combine different trends to see what helps you.
For example, moving to serverless technology and using AI-powered chatbots can quickly bring down the manpower required for your website.
Whatever you do, though, you need to remember: making a mistake isn’t wrong. That’s how you’re going to learn!
What do you think?
It is nice to know your opinion. Leave a comment.