8 Web Development Trends Every CTO Should Know in 2020
The web development industry is quickly evolving, and the companies need to stay ahead with innovations to stay competitive in the online world. Here are all the latest web development trends that you must know. Read the entire blog to know them all.
Every year new trends and technologies shape the environment that web developers find themselves in. One year the statistic websites are trending, the other year, it is mobile responsive websites, and the other year chatbots are trending.
Keeping up with these changes is enough to discourage any small scale companies.
There are over 41% of websites that fail to respond to an online inquiry.
But this is why you are here because you refuse to be discouraged, and you know how important it is to be ready for the future. Since over half of the business owners are planning to improve their website in 2020 and keep up, you must also know all the latest web development trends and technologies. You can also seek a software consulting company that can counsel you on what technology will best suit your business.
Here is a list of web development trends which 2020 will face.
Eight web development trends to follow in 2020 and the years to come.
Progressive Web Apps(PWA):
The web development companies are totally in love with this trend. Progressive Web Apps or the PWA is pushing the world-wide-web forward, making website browsing experience closer to the native mobile application and, therefore, more user friendly.
Simply put, Progressive Web App is a website which, however, offers functionality traditionally available to native apps (example push notifications, offline access, hardware access).
As per the latest mobile app stats, mobile applications account for more than 80% of the overall time users spend with their gadgets.
Progressive Web Apps can even change the situation better by troubleshooting issues users hate about websites the most: poor experience, slow page load time, and no offline access.
Technology to use:
If you want to implement PWA on your website, then these technologies will help you:
Angular
React
Polymer
Accelerated Mobile Pages(AMP):
Google has taken a severe step to enhance the mobile browsing experience for users. The company first introduced the AMP project to the public back in 2015. Now, it is one of the latest trends to follow in web development.
The AMP technology is created to enhance page load time of websites. It encourages the building of websites that load instantly and work very smoothly across all mobile devices. Accelerated Mobile Pages are loaded for about 2 seconds while it takes up to 22 seconds for non-AMP sites.
As we know, Google loves speedy websites; AMP websites also contribute to increasing the website's visibility and adding to higher SERP positions. This makes AMP a superior technology for SEO.
Technologies to use:
If you are willing to follow the AMP trend, you must be ready to use a new, purpose-built AMP HTML open framework.
Responsive Websites:
Earlier, responsiveness was a good-to-have feature for websites, but now it is a must-have feature. As said, the majority of users prefer mobile devices over other devices for surfing the internet. So, keeping this in mind, Google has enabled mobile-first indexing by default for all new websites. Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the sites for ranking. The better mobile optimization, the better ranking on Google.
To make sure your users have the best experience, follow these three steps:
Always use the same meta robots tags on the mobile and desktop versions of your website.
Do not lazy-load original content upon user interaction. Google will not load content that requires user interactions.
Allow Google to crawl your resources. Make sure you are not blocking the URL with the disallow directive.
Voice Search Optimization:
"Ok, Google!" It's 2020, and by now, we are well aware of the voice search feature.
Voice search is another trend in the web development industry, and you would not overlook it. It already has a significant impact on the web, and more is yet to unfold in the years to come.
A report from Gartner says, about 30% of all searches will be done without using a screen by 2020. And we are all aware of the number of smart speakers rising every year. Reports say that there will be 21.4 million smart speakers in the US by the end of 2020.
Consequently, voice commerce sales are expected to grow dramatically and reach up to $5 Billion in the UK and $4 Billion in the US by the year 2022.
After considering all of this, we can say that voice search optimization is the web development trend you cannot ignore. It must become a part of your SEO and tech strategy as soon as possible.
Technologies to used:
Web Search API is best to work with voice data. This API is divided into two components:
Speech recognition and speech synthesis.
Speech recognition allows recognition of voice context and responding to the queries. At the same time, speech synthesis is a text-to-speech component that lets the script read text content.
API-first development:
Seeing the current trends in website development, we can see that web solutions have to be well prepared for connectivity with other applications. All this because of the considerable rise in the number of mobiles, wearables, and other devices that should integrate. That is where the API-first development approach comes into action.
Now you must be wondering what is wrong with the traditional approach? Usually, when a company is focused on building a web or mobile solution, they typically don't pay much attention to API development. The APIs are mostly not designed well or tested thoroughly.
Another problem with the traditional approach is the time-consuming API designing process. It increases development expenses and service market entry time.
Technologies to use:
Here are some trusted choices for API-first development approach:
Swagger
API Blueprint
Push Notifications:
Push notifications are the most powerful tool for a website owner. It helps you enhance the overall user experience and marketing efforts of the company. Even though mobile apps traditionally have more robust and flexible capabilities for user notifications, web apps gain momentum.
When we talk about web apps, push notifications are used to deliver different information to end-users. For instance, a new blog post or the clothing you liked is back in stock. All this is possible without a necessity to register or leave credentials like email. This provides additional channels for companies to interact with their target audience providing other marketing opportunities.
Tools to use:
Out of all the solutions available, these are the few best solutions:
one single
PushEngage
ZoPush
PushCrew
AI-powered Chatbots:
Many businesses work across different time zones and have their customers from all across the globe. This leads to a very complicated arrangement of excellent customer service, making it a costly affair too. 24*7 customer support, which is much needed in this case, becomes a Herculean task.
Web development trends of recent years have shifted towards automated, instant client support. Chatbots powered with Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning becomes the hero of this scenario. Chatbots also proves itself to be a worthy long-term investment for this purpose.
They are programmed to answer FAQs, connect with the right human client assistance, take and confirm an order, and so on. Surveys even show that users trust chatbots and seek help in case of emergency, resolving complaints, etc.
Technologies to use:
You can use any on the following bot-building technology:
Microsoft Bot Framework
Facebook Bot Engine
DialogFlow
Motion User Interface:
Every product in the web industry strives to be as engaging as possible. Motion User Interface or Motion UI library is a perfect solution to capture users' attention with amazing and beautiful animations.
The library is capable of animating design elements with grace and allowing developers to play with them. It is flexible enough and works with any JavaScript framework, making it an excellent option for many use cases.
Conclusion.
2020 and forthcoming years are ready to witness the quick evolution of the web development industry. Hopefully, the brief overview of the trends mentioned above will help you track the latest technologies and help you timely incorporate innovations into your business.
You must stay ahead of the competition with the top-notch web solutions and become the new market leader. You can even get in touch with the top web development company in India and get these trends implemented in your web apps and websites.
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I'm Shefali Basu and I am a Sr. tech-consultant and writer working for PixelCrayons which is a leading app & software development company in India. I love to write about all the latest technologies.