Today, what would you do if you had to look for a brand a friend told you about? Would you run to its store or just open its website and scroll through every detail?

Of course, the answer will be ‘going through the website’. This is because digitalization has eliminated the bottleneck by providing place and time utility to the customers.

The website does not only show the product or services, but with its bifurcated sections, it serves valuable information like blogs, regular updates, case studies, vision, achievement, etc. It’s no less than a virtual showroom. Now, to enjoy the same benefits every business wants to develop its website. Due to this, the scope of web development has been stretched to the best.

However, the story does not end with developing a website as new web development trends keep emerging, which needs to be pursued to keep up with modern technology. Aligning perfectly with these trends will manifest great impressions and engagement rates.

In this blog, you will learn about the current trends in web development and what benefits they provide to the website.

What is Web Development?

Website development, often referred to as web development, is the process of building a website and web applications, enriching them with great user experience, and maintaining them with the new trends. It also includes database management and website programming.

Open a website, and explore each of its webpages. You will observe how each webpage is designed keeping in mind the user experience and easy navigation. Web developers use various programming languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to mindfully craft the structure, and design, and add the touch of innovation and trending technology to the websites.

They merge functionalities such as shopping carts, query forms, filters, and content management systems (CMS) to meet precise business needs. Also, web development involves optimizing the sites so that they can benefit the user with high speed, effective performance, and search engine visibility, ensuring they are accessible across different browsers and supports every device.

In crux, web development not only sustains the entire process of designing and maintaining websites but ensures updating the website according to the modern and hot trends in website development to keep up with user expectations and search engine visibility.

10 Major Web Development Trends to Look for, in 2024

Websites hold great power as it is responsible for shaping our daily experience be it scrolling through hot news or the never-ending festive shopping. Hence, these trends fuel our experience by integrating modern technology with personalization and other benefits.

Let’s deep diver into the discussion and learn what the top web development trends are:

1. AI and Machine Learning Integration

Like every horizon in the digital marketspace, websites have not been left untouched by the magic of AI, too. AI contains the capability to infuse more personification and convenience into the website. AI and ML (machine language) have introduced various features to the website like AI chatbots, virtual assistants, and predictive analytics as well as curating high-performing content. With AI and ML, every checklist of a web developer can be accomplished.

If we talk about the popular CMS application WordPress, it too has leveraged AI and ML installations like personified content suggestions, automated navigation, automated technical customer support, and tech-driven predictions.

With the development of this trend, various doubts were curated regarding the replacement of web developers due to AI and ML. However concerning current and possible future AI and ML functionalities and features, it is clear that AI is here to enhance the experience of developers because it lacks creativity and needs constant supervision.

Here are the 2 examples of websites that took advantage of AI and ML for website development.

• HKU Trading Group

Made with: Wix ADI

• • Fantasy Farms

Made with: Hostinger

2. Mobile-First Development

Mobile is now playing a huge role in our lives. It has revolutionized our way of consuming information completely. A pocket-size gadget has now the power to let us know each bit of information we want. Hence, this point of view is a must to be considered before initiating your journey of developing a website.

Mobile-first development is the trend that prioritizes the website interface that fits in mobile before laptop or desktop. This is because, according to Statista, 93% of the user search is done on mobile. Which makes it crucial to prioritize mobile architecture and optimization.

Mobile-first development, also known as mobile-first design is an approach that believes in starting to design a desktop site by keeping in mind the mobile screen and then the larger screens. This is a completely different approach from the traditional one.

Brands that use Mobile-first development; you’ll be stunned!

Taking full leverage of their strong technical know-how, google began to work on its mobile-friendly interface way before people came to know about it. It started implementing AMP (accelerated mobile pages) and mobile-first indexing.

Output- Improved mobile performance and search rankings

Image source- Google Search Central

Post covid, an urgent need was raised for BBC to improve their news portal and make it mobile-friendly. Hence they utilised a mobile-first approach to enjoy mobile optimization and can give better mobile accessibility to the users.

Output- BBC gained immense mobile traffic and impressions. They also enjoyed effective content management post this move.

Image source- tempertemper

Dropbox decided to redesign its application to meet the user’s expectation of better accessibility and an intuitive interface. To do so, they opted for a mobile-first approach focusing on simplicity and convenience.

Output- raised user experience and mobile engagement

Image source- DropBox Blog

Hence, Mobile-first development is one of the most popular trends in website development that brought in the wave of mobile-friendly websites.

3. Internet of Behavior (IoB)

The Internet of Behaviour is an effort to align human psychology with continuously increasing technology. It focuses on enhancing the human experience by collecting data. This approach has taken a special place in marketers’ and developer’s minds, as it integrates functionalities that conduct endless efforts to increase the experience of every person that comes across the web.

It focuses on 3 aims. Firstly, to provide a high-quality tailored experience to the users. Followed by, opening doors for unreachable content to be consumed by the target audience and finally, providing wisdom and knowledge rather than sounding data and information-centric.

How does it function?

• Crawls through multiple platforms to analyze the buying habits of users based on different demographic areas.

• Utilization of edge analytics to acknowledge the purchasing behavior of customers on the internet more precisely.

• Take the support of real-time rewards to encourage more interaction and desired behaviors.

• Eliminates the repeated pattern behavior by introducing monetary incentives.

With this valuable commitment to utilizing psychology along with technology, IOB has become one of the most popular current trends in web development.

4. Internet of Things (IoT)

It would be shocking if someone’s shopping cart did not include Google’s mini or Amazon’s Alexa, of course, it’s always fascinating to use them exactly the way we see in advertisements. These two are the prime examples of the Internet of Things.

IoT means various devices that are connected to the internet and have a unique identity in the form of IP addresses assigned to each one of them. IoT is used to collect data and transfer it to the internet.

Basically, the model works on 3 pillars i.e. sensor, processor, and communication. These pillars play the role of bridge between data and the cloud server.

However, web developers are not directly involved in IoT development, but they are into building websites that can reflect the data of these devices as well as communicating with them.

The future is not far when websites will be able to integrate IoT data into websites so that users will be able to enjoy real-time data graphics, predictive analytics, and personalization.

IoT and IoB: interrelated or different?

IoT (Internet of Things) and IoB (Internet of Behaviors) are interrelated yet different concepts. In one place, where IoT focuses on the network of tangible devices that is capable of collecting and exchanging data through its sensors and software, improving connectivity and functionality across various applications like smart homes.

IoB, on the other hand, uses the data generated by IoT devices to observe user behaviors, preferences, and interactions, to improve decision-making and personalize user experiences.

While IoT provides the technological infrastructure for data collection, IoB interprets this data to gain behavioral patterns, making them perfectly aligned in creating a data-driven, efficient, and user-centric ecosystem. Hence, in short, IoB is the extension of IoB.

Image source- Research gate

5. VUI and voice search

VUI- Voice user interface and voice search have dominated the digital landscape. The cinematic fantasies of commanding someone and getting instant replies are no longer an imagination, now we can experience it.

Right from Google’s voice commander handholding us to the desired results with just our one voice command to the absolute personalized experience we get through Siri and Alexa or getting voice navigation from Google Maps, we are now officially surrounded by it.

So basically, VUI is an approach that gives voice support to the users to enhance their search experience. This approach also brings a seamless ordeal to the user of any age or disability.

You can cross-question, reflect disagreement, or continue the loop of research with this stunning masterpiece of the digital era. Now, various web developers have already installed this feature on their website or are working on it.

VUI provides various features like ‘text-to-speech’ technology, response generation, and intent recognition, which makes it a cherry on the cake.

If VUI and voice search are infused into website technology, the following benefits will be seen and enjoyed by both ends:

• Accessibility for all:

By incorporating VUI into the website, it will become easily accessible for users of all ages, with visual difficulties or locational challenges. With just one click clear and transparent query can be transported.

• Increased Efficiency:

As voice commands take over the internet, an increase in efficiency has also been witnessed. Voice commands eliminate the extra time and effort taken by typing or menu navigation.

• Better User Engagement:

Voice search and its interface right from its emergence, has been the talk of the digital town. This is because it has always been seen as captivating users due to its responsiveness and intention analysis features.

• Personalized Experience to Users:

However, with the increasing scope of technology, it would not be impossible to imagine these stunning trends. But how these technologies are capable of molding themselves with user’s intentions, behaviour, and search preferences, will always be a matter of curiosity.

6. Serverless Architectures

Websites and applications are vital attraction points for potential customers, hence businesses of any scale need to create these platforms. During this competitive pressure of building a solid online presence, Serverless architecture lets the developers take a breath of relief.

Serverless architecture is a web development approach, using which developers can enjoy developing the backend of a website without taking care of its infrastructure development.

However, regardless of its name, servers are included in this process. All a developer needs to do is to deploy a code to the cloud server, and define function triggers to it. After that, once the cloud server is triggered, it will run your code and serve you the infrastructure.

This trend was introduced to offload the developers as managing servers demands a lot of time and resources. Hence, this trend introduced third-party involvement in web development that can take care of the infrastructure and responsibilities of the servers, ultimately enabling the developers to focus on coding.

These third-party cloud providers are called FaaS (Function as a Service). The first FaaS was introduced by Amazon named AWS Lambda. Post that, Google and Microsoft introduced their cloud servers, which were named Google Cloud Functions and Azure Functions respectively.

It also brings benefits like cost-effectiveness, scalability as well as increased productivity. This makes it a perfect trend to try your hands on and enjoy the seamless process of web development.

7. Animated UI and Engaging UX

Before moving to further discussion, have a look at this website named ‘in Pieces’. It has beautifully sewed creative storytelling, and innovative technology together, that too without hindering the user experience.

This is the best way to initiate the discussion for animated UI and engaging UX, one of the best and top-notch trends to keep the users curious and awe-struck deliberately.

UX (User experience) and UI (User Interface) have always caught the attention of web developers through various experiments prevailing in the market. To add storytelling and exemplifying narratives to the brands the innovation has brought animation to the platform. Nowadays to give a unique personality to digital platforms, brands are more keen to incorporate movements, characters, and smooth transitions to the website. This will not only increase the interface of the website but will also add hundreds of other reasons for users to keep coming back.

Through effective use of animations and movement, we let users feel relief, as they do not have to put in extra effort to understand the context, as the effective animations can resonate with the intention of the publisher thoroughly. Also, it eliminates the boring structure of the website making the readers interested in engaging with the website.

Simply, uniqueness along with audience engagement is the goal of animated UI and engaging UX to thrive.

8. Dark Mode

According to recent stats, more than 80% of users prefer dark mode to prevent eye strain. This is your sign to install this feature to match the step with the potential users of your website.

Dark mode enables readers to personalize their visual experience according to their comfort and preferred black and grey aesthetics. It has been received wholeheartedly by the users not just because it has brought newness to the traditional white palette but due to the practical benefits it provides.

It brings eye-cooling comfort to the users who consume much time on screen. Dark mode can give them relief from eye strains and disturbed sleep cycles bringing the experience of comforting browsing.

At this time, various big websites and applications like Facebook, Instagram, eBay, Google, etc. have been using this feature. And this time, make sure the website is the next in the queue.

Image source:- Innovation at eBay

9. Headless CMSs with a visual experience

Imagine you have a food blog that you want to share on your website, application, or even with a smart refrigerator. How can you amend your recipes and suggestions easily so that they reflect accurately on all the platforms without putting extra effort into each one?

A headless CMS, i.e. Content Management System, can be your friend and bring efficiency to the chosen platforms. A headless CMS stores your content separately from how it is displayed. This means you can update your recipes in one place, and they will automatically appear updated on your website, app, and smart fridge without needing to rewrite or reformat them for each platform. Sounds relieving? Absolutely!

Utilizing a headless CMS offers several benefits like it saves time and effort to make necessary amendments, as the CMS will reflect the updates everywhere. It also ensures consistency, as all platforms show the same and up-to-the-minute content. Moreover, it provides adaptability, permitting you to use any design for your website and apps without being bound to a particular system. This makes content management easier and ensures the accessibility of the latest information to your audience.

10. Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are a set of performance standards set by Google to improve the user experience on websites. This includes 3 major metrics i.e. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures the time it takes for the largest content element to load; Interaction to Next Point (INP), which tracks the responsiveness of a website to user interactions; and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), which assesses the stability of elements on a webpage as it loads.

These metrics ensure a quick load of websites, respond punctually to user inputs, search engine visibility, and remain visually stable.

In crux, working on core web vitals is important for search engine rankings and the satisfaction of users. Websites that surpass these metrics are likely to rank higher in search results and provide an effortless and more delightful surfing experience.

Final thoughts

The following web development trends, with their power features and purpose, are here to stay and will keep evolving. Hence, to stay updated in the digital market, keeping an eye on these trends and nourishing your website with them is inevitable.

However, you do not need to juggle around these trends and technicalities, as we can help you with it. W3era is a leading web development company that can foster your website and help you deal with these trends and bring the best result out of it.

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• Source: https://www.w3era.com/blog/latest-web-development-trends/