CURRENT TRENDS IN WEB DESIGN SOFTWARE
The web design industry has evolved at a rapid pace over the past decade and will continue to do so in the coming years. Developments in web design software are an important factor that helps to drive this evolution. Software companies, led by Adobe, have continued to improve their products and create new ones. Here is a look at the latest trends in web design software.
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Latest Trends In Web Design Software
You will find that many of these trends already exist on the web — but they are expected to become even more widespread in the coming years. Let’s take a look.
1. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
Though not a new trend of 2022, progressive web apps (PWAs) in their latest iteration are going to replace web apps for good. PWAs help websites to load in no time and can also work offline in apps like Google Maps. Companies like Starbucks, Uber, Pinterest, and Twitter have already been using PWAs for a better user experience.
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At the start of 2021, mobile devices accounted for 54% of global internet traffic. With the increased usage of smartphones and tablets to perform various online tasks, it is essential to revamp web applications into PWAs. In addition to providing an unmatched user experience, PWAs offer other benefits, including reduced development costs and seamless maintenance for the provider.
In 2022, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, or Angular will be used to write PWAs.
2. AI Chatbots
In 2022, AI chatbots are expected to become even more sophisticated in meeting the needs of and matching the behavior of users by leveraging machine learning, natural language processing, and information retrieval techniques.
Besides assisting companies in performing faster operations using voice or text chats, AI-enabled chatbots also help improve the customer experience. They can collect data, answer frequently asked questions, and solve other issues, thereby providing customers with seamless digital experiences with a company.
Many prominent B2C companies already serve their customers with AI chatbots. According to Forbes, marketers’ use of AI increased by 190% between 2018 and 2020, many functioning within Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, and Skype, instead of standard chatbots. We can expect more companies to embrace AI chatbots in 2022.
3. Accelerated Mobile Pages
First launched by Google in 2015, accelerated mobile page — or AMP — was designed to provide mobile users with lightning-fast digital experiences. In addition to providing seamless user experiences and decreasing bounce rate, Google’s AMP can help improve core business metrics, such as the number of conversions on web pages.
Although AMP usage has been trending slightly down since 2020, it remains the most popular mobile technology used worldwide, used on 35% of websites that implement mobile technologies and over half of the most popular 10,000 websites.
4. Single-Page Applications
Considered one of the most significant recent trends in web development, single-page applications (SPAs) are JavaScript-based web applications that load a single HTML page in a visitor’s browser and dynamically update content as needed without refreshing the page. SPAs have been widely adopted by the development community, as well as Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
Besides being cost-effective and relatively easy to create thanks to the popular AngularJS framework, SPAs consume less space on servers and provide information to users efficiently on a single page without the need to navigate around. These benefits make SPAs a win-win for developers and site visitors alike.
As online consumers expect faster and simpler app experiences, we can expect the SPA trend to continue into 2022.
5. Optimized Voice Search
First introduced by Google in 2011, voice search is rapidly rising in popularity. Intelligent virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri showed unprecedented market growth in 2019 and are forecasted to continue to grow rapidly, according to an analysis by Grand View Research.
More tech giants are entering the market or creating new products, like Google Home and Apple HomePod, to meet consumer demand. Data by Juniper Research predicts that as many as 55% of all households in the world will have voice assistants by 2022. As a result, voice search will be more relevant than ever.
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Consumers are not just using smart speakers to conduct voice searches either — they’re also using their smartphones and IoT devices for voice search. As a result, voice search results will start ranking higher, and more frequently, on search engine results pages. So, companies will be working on optimizing their products — as well as their content strategy — for voice search in 2022.
6. WordPress Development
The WordPress CMS powers over 40% of all websites, and a presence that large demands attention. An open-souce platform, WordPress continually adds more features to meet users’ needs. WordPress devlopers should be aware of how WordPress evolves over time.
As for 2022, Gravity Forms CEO Carl Hancock notes the arrival of Full Site editing, which will extend block editing functionality to the entire website, not just posts and pages: “2022 will be a pivotal year for the CMS as it introduces the biggest change to theming in the history of the open-source project: Full Site Editing. Scheduled to be introduced in WordPress v5.9, Full Site Editing is poised to introduce major sea change in how web sites are created and managed with WordPress going forward.”
7. Motion UI
Today, consumers not only expect faster and mobile-friendly digital experiences — they also expect richer and more interactive experiences.
That’s one reason Motion UI has become so popular. Motion UI is a front-end framework that enables developers to build fully responsive websites and mobile applications and to use predefined motions within a native app setting. Using this framework, you can make an element slide, spin, bounce, transition, and more.
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Because it’s compatible with all web technologies and can be added anywhere on a website, like the header, footer, and menus, Motion UI has been widely used since 2018. However, it has become more accessible thanks to the SASS libraries’ technology, making it one of the leading web development trends in 2022.
8. Serverless Architecture
There has been an ongoing search for technology that helps to reduce system overloading, data loss, and development costs. This search has resulted in serverless technology.
Serverless architecture runs on cloud technology, allowing users to run code for virtually any type of application or backend service with zero administration. No provisioning, managing, or upgrading servers is necessary. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are the leading examples of companies using and providing serverless architecture.
The global serverless architecture market is predicted to grow from $7.6 billion in 2020 to $21.1 billion by 2025. That means we can expect more companies to enter this market in 2021 and beyond.
We’ll also see more products — including chatbots, IoT apps, and APIs — using serverless functions to perform tasks like downloading file backups, delivering notifications, and exporting objects.
9. Mobile-friendly Development
As mentioned, mobile devices account for over half of web traffic worldwide. Plus, nearly three-quarters of global ecommerce sales are completed on mobile. From these stats, it’s clear that taking a mobile-first approach to web development has become essential.
Many developers have taken this approach for years. But being “mobile-friendly” is constantly fluctuating. In 2022, it means using geolocation data to deliver highly personalized experiences to users, offering one-click ordering on ecommerce apps, and incorporating biometric authentication like fingerprint scanning or voice recognition, among other trends.
10. Dark Mode Standardization
In recent years, dark and low-light websites have gained popularity. 2022 will continue to see websites and apps offering dark mode user interfaces (UIs), as studies have found that at least 8 in 10 users prefer to use dark mode whenever possible.
Facebook and Twitter have already implemented this feature. These apps provide an easy option to toggle between the two modes, depending on the reader’s preference or system settings.
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As more web developers provide a similar built-in feature to switch between light and dark modes, this will become the standard in 2022 and beyond. It may even become the de facto default for applications.
11. Improved Native Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity — the practice of securing data, networks, and computers from misuse — is one of the most critical concerns of 2022. Every company, no matter its size, is vulnerable. For example, in June 2021, hackers were able to scrape the accounts of 700 million LinkedIn users to acquire personal information including full names, emails, and phone numbers.
According to CDN provider Cloudflare, the number of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks nearly doubled each quarter in 2020. Hours of downtime, significant loss of revenue, and a damaged reputation are just a few effects of DDoS attacks.
With such an alarming increase in cybercrimes, website development has adapted to make it easier to protect company and customer data. There’s already been a shift toward application-based multi-factor authentication like Google Authenticator, patch management, and Security Operation Centers (SOC).
We’ll be seeing a continuing rise in non-traditional methods to improve cybersecurity as well, beyond monitoring tools and analytics checkpoints. Danny Wajcman, Co-Founder and COO of the heatmapping and live chat software company Lucky Orange, notes the importance of human monitoring in addition to automation: “We firmly believe session recordings can help identify security issues like a DDoS attack or extreme bot traffic…Having a feel for your daily traffic trends and regularly following visitor journeys builds your ability to recognize when something isn’t quite right.”
latest technology in web development
#1 Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
Progressive web apps (or PWA) are not the phenomenon of this year. However, the technology gained modern developers and investors’ attention due to its potential to perform high-quality user experience close to native app one.
In 2019, 65% of online shopping orders through the website were made with mobile devices. PWA’s rising website trend makes it possible for users to view their favorite websites on a mobile web browser or desktop and without downloading special apps or computer programs. PWAs in 2021 will be written with HTML and CSS, JavaScript, React, or Angular. Besides great user experience and no need for programs, PWA could send push notifications and provide users with offline access to cached content.
For whom these latest website technologies may be important? E-commerce, news platforms, companies with low development budgets, and those who’d like to reach a bigger audience without losing it on the app downloading stage should be extremely attentive now. That is also true that PWA can change money algorithms in App Store and Google Play Market world where paid apps should share profits with app aggregators.
#2 Artificial Intelligence and Bots
What does the future of web development look like? That is believed by many that next year bots will become more self-learning and will easily match particular user’s needs and behavior. That means that 24/7-operating bots will be able to replace support managers and save costs for many companies.
In the upcoming decade, chatbots will remain the most common instruments to serve people and become the major branch of digital development.
Huge B2C companies already use the technology to serve their customers — official page chatbots inside Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Skype are good examples. A bot could be also integrated into PWA, regular website, professional or household equipment, and any Internet-connected app developed by a commercial company.
Bot’s rise will also influence trends in web design, especially UX one. The significant advanced of AI and machine learning technology resulted in demand for virtual assistant designs, which is not only about visual experience, or product serving algorithms, but also about useful sound design.
The most important advantages of AI-based bots are 24/7 problem-solving potential, human-like experience, and deep consumer behavior analytics.
#3 Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Accelerated Mobile Pages (or AMP) is one more web development trend. The idea of it is to speed up page performance and decrease the risk of leaving it by a user. AMP technology is a bit similar to PWA. The difference is that pages become accelerated due to open-source plugin recently developed by Twitter and Google.
AMPs are optimized pages that could operate fast and have a simplified and yet convenient design with only basic features compared to full-scope web products. Those pages are also mobile-friendly and their content is always readable.
New trends in web design such as AMP development show that the Internet is becoming more user-oriented. Although we’ve got 5G Internet technology and most brands choose to develop native apps to make any user experience better, AMP plugin gives companies a chance to save costs on UX and reach users with any Internet speed. As a result, we will see smaller and niche products successfully competing with huge market leaders.
#4 Single Page Application (SPA)
Nowadays, with high-speed Internet standards, there is no need to be stuck on an approach where every action made on the page like clicks on various buttons leads to one more web page downloaded from a server.
Single page application (or SPA) is one of the new website trends that helps us avoid seamless communication with the server and show better page performance and provide a high data protection level.
SPAs gain their popularity due to JavaScript frameworks rise. Working with them you intercept particular browser events and request JSON which looks like working with a web application. Google pages like Gmail, Google Drive, or Google Maps, as well as social networking platforms like Facebook, are of that kind. Current web trends observation makes it clear that in future most functional websites will be constructed as SPAs.
Why developers of 2021 prefer the SPA approach? SPAs have more chances to hold users’ attention as they seem to be fast operating — SPAs provide users with instant feedback (compared to regular sites with their white screens before the page will be completely downloaded). Single-page sites also consume less and could work without server-side code at all (API technology).
#5 Voice Search Optimization
The web development future seems to be less texty and more voicy and it’s not only about virtual multifunctional home assistants such as Siri, Google Home or Amazon’s Alexa. In 2021, more than half of all smart and IoT devices will hear users and execute commands given by voice. And even more — they will be able to recognize the voices of different people and provide personalized AI-based experience for everyone.
Voice search is just the most significant example of technology that was implemented more than a decade ago. In 2021, people would prefer to spend less time typing commands as devices could understand them clearly. That’s why most companies are now puzzling over how to optimize their physical and digital products for voice search and voice commands. 55% of all households globally are forecasted to have voice assistant by the end of 2022.
The latest in web development is voice-activated self-standing devices and voice optimization for regular web sites and apps. Strengthen with AI, voice search optimization is beneficial for both end-users and owners. First, it saves time and allows a user to order more (online shopping and services). Second, technology is multitasking. Third, it gains users’ extra loyalty as helps them to cope with routine. And, finally, voice usage is a powerful source of user behavior analytics.
#6 Motion UI
Innovation web design is one more trend branch in the digital world. From year to year startups keep paying more attention to user experience and invest fewer resources in the aesthetics. However, beautifully looking websites and apps have more chances to be noticed by potential users and become viral. In that terms, visual design becomes not the question of engineering, but the one of marketing strategy.
That is likely, that in 2021 MVPs will still be minimalistic. At the same time, experts foresee the demand for brand new design approaches like motion UI. Although motion user interface design has been trendy since 2018, it becomes widely accessible for any device users only now due to SASS libraries technology.
Motion UI makes digital products usage more intuitive and clear. The approach involves custom animation integration and CSS transitions powered by stand-alone libraries with numerous classes of animated elements. With their help, developers spend less time on digital product building and save the costs of product owners.
In 2021, the motion future of web design seems to be still appealing as SASS libraries are flexible, easy to use with CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, and are highly responsive. Motion UI is also a proven way to capture users’ attention, so it is useful for those who develop products for markets with lots of players.
#7 Automation Testing
Most emerging web technologies are aimed to make the development process cheaper and provide users with the best experience. Development stages automation is the tool on how to reach the first aim. Machine learning and AI approach allow us to build complex projects with a small team or with fewer development experts, while product test automation helps us to check whether our product is ready for the deployment or not.
Test automation has numerous benefits. It leads to the best testing coverage, transparency, and tech problem detection.
The approach also helps the development team collect test cases and learn from them, reduce development costs (up to 20%), and reduce test cycle time in general. In other words, with test automation, you will get a better end product for less money.
Why latest web development technology such as test automation is so important in 2021? The answer is digital environment becomes more and more competitive. If you are faster than your competitors and the quality of your product is better — you will win.
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#8 JavaScript Frameworks
Although JavaScript wasn’t invented yesterday, it is considered to be one of the most used programming languages in the world which makes every innovation concerning it that much actively discussed. In 2021, new website trends will include the rise and further development of JavaScript frameworks.
JavaScript frameworks emerged as attempts to standardize the language and create a convenient frontend ecosystem that is easy to benefit from. In 2021, JavaScript frameworks will involve UX, UI, testing, and product tech management aspects. Frameworks usage will be based on ready components one needs to compose working on a website.
Technically, JavaScript frameworks remain an application framework created with JavaScript programming language and based on libraries (both visual and functional) integration. This web trend has lots of benefits. Immediate feedback that is given to users without page reloads, high efficiency and fast performance, coding simplicity are just a couple of them.
Mind, that modern JavaScript frameworks have some differences compared to old versions. Built-in HTML templating, composed-based design, data management tools build system support are the most significant updates. However, Vue, React, and Angular frameworks will continue to be the most popular products of their kind in 2021.
#9 Serverless Applications and Architecture
What does the web development future look like? Serverless technology is the result of searching for the possibility to avoid system overloading, data loss, or costly development. Supported by major vendors like AWS, serverless algorithms were recently built as a cloud-computing execution model. According to the concept, regular servers could be replaced by clouds that manage machine resource consumption.
Current web trends concerning serverless app architecture help reduce development and ongoing support budgets, strengthen apps with flexibility potential, and keep the Internet environment more sustainable. The technology is based on function as a service (FaaS) usage.
Private cloud computing services providers give their partners a chance to create, run, and manage app features without building a product infrastructure by themselves.
In 2021, serverless technology is forecasted to be actively used for chatbots, IoT apps, products that need complex backend requests proceeding, and APIs. The most common tasks that could be executed serverless are downloading files backups, notification delivery, and objects export. AWS (AWS Lambda), Google Cloud (Google Functions) and Microsoft Azure (Azure Functions) will be still major service providers of 2021.
#10 Blockchain Technology
Cryptocurrencies are not the latest web development technology. The concept of them appeared in 2004 and three years ago crypto trading market (based on blockchain technology) explored with investments. What should we expect in 2021? It is clear for many, that blockchain currency trading could not be ignored by the official authorities. The usage of them became significantly active within the past decade and major payment systems decided to accept Bitcoins and other currencies.
In 2019, over 34 million blockchain wallets are used globally. Blockchain technology also requires hardware and software support, legal regulation, and infrastructure for trading. So next year emerging web technologies are likely to cover those aspects. Blockchain operations should be secure, protected from hacker attacks and tech errors. Major banks are planning to develop algorithms for protecting valuable user data and keep crypto trading as safe as one with regular currency.
Peer-to-peer networking is likely to develop too. If the blockchain world becomes more trusted and accessible for people, it will cause revolutionary changes in the way people pay taxes, interact with governmental services, and build a professional relationship.
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