The internet has come far in the 40 years since its inception. More than 5.2 billion active daily users are now visiting close to 2 billion websites. Website development trends have shifted and evolved immensely throughout the decades, and the most successful websites have always been able to stay on top of the emerging changes.
Failure to keep up with new developments could lead to poorer website performance and decreased user experience. This will inevitably cause your users to shift to competitor websites.
If you wish to remain competitive in any business niche in 2022, you’ll need to build and run your website according to the ongoing trends. That’s why we have decided to talk to the best website development consultants out there and give you the top web development trends to look out for in 2022.
Top 8 Website Development Trends for 2022
You might find that most of the trends outlined in this article have been around for a while. That said, we expect the following 8 trends to become much more widespread in 2022 and the following years. Let’s take a look at each one in no particular order.
Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
PWAs are a great example of just what we discussed above — a trend that is by no means new to 2022 but one that we expect to achieve its full potential this year.
Progressive web apps will slowly replace regular web apps in the years to come, helping websites load quicker and bringing a wide range of other benefits such as working offline, seamless maintenance, and reduced development costs.
Some of the biggest companies in the world, including Google, Twitter, Pinterest, Uber, Starbucks, and others, have already decided to offer their customers a better user experience by switching to PWAs.
We don’t need to tell you that mobile devices have played an increasingly important role in global internet traffic, reaching a whopping 54.4% in 2021.
With an increase in the usage of tablets and smartphones for online tasks of all sorts, revamping web applications into PWAs is becoming essential.
Chatbots
Another trend that has been around for a few years is chatbots. Still, in 2022, we expect them to fully evolve, not only meeting the users’ support needs but understanding the consumers’ behavior through information retrieval, language processing, and machine learning.
Aside from helping companies improve the speed of various operations through text and voice chats, AI chatbots will make the customer experience significantly better.
Chatbots will provide prospects and customers with an increasingly seamless digital experience on most websites in the future by collecting data, answering FAQs, and solving a slew of other issues.
The most prominent B2C organizations already use AI chatbots to serve their customers better. According to Forbes, the use of AI in marketing increased by an impressive 190% from 2018 to 2020 alone.
Chatbots are also expanding their area of influence beyond company websites. They can now be seen in increasing numbers on social media platforms and chatting apps like Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and LinkedIn.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google launched accelerated mobile pages (AMPs) in 2015 to help websites offer their mobile users a faster digital experience. Aside from decreasing bounce rates and providing more streamlined user experiences, AMPs can help improve businesses’ core metrics.
Unlike the other technologies we’ve talked about in this article so far, AMP usage has been in a slight downtrend over the past couple of years. However, it is still the most popular mobile technology globally.
AMPs are currently used on 32% of mobile websites, including more than 50% of the most popular websites on the internet.
Single-Page Apps (SPAs)
Single-page applications are rightfully considered one of the most critical recent web development trends. These web applications based on JavaScript can dynamically update content within a single HTML page without refreshing.
This technology has been widely adopted not only by some of the biggest companies in the world, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google but the web development community as a whole.
The popular AngularJS framework makes SPAs relatively easy to create and highly cost-effective, consuming less server space.
On top of that, they can provide users with information effectively within a single page, so the user experience is improved significantly. Looking at these benefits, it is evident that SPAs are a win-win for site visitors and developers alike.
Voice-Search Optimization
Since its introduction in 2011, Google’s voice search has steadily grown in popularity. This technology has since been used in a wide range of smart virtual assistants, such as Cortana, Siri, and Alexa, with unprecedented success.
A Grand View Research analysis predicts the virtual assistant market to keep expanding with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.5% from 2021 to 2028.
The tech giants of Silicon Valley have all entered this market in recent years, creating products like Apple HomePod and Google Home to meet the increased customer demand.
Juniper Research pegs more than 55% of all global households to have a voice assistant by the end of 2022. These numbers make it easy to see why voice-search optimization has never been more relevant.
Of course, not only consumers with smart speakers conduct voice searches — this technology was first introduced on smartphones, after all. Smartphones and IoT devices are used for a significant portion of voice searches in 2022.
As a result of this widespread use and availability of the technology, we can expect voice-search optimized results to start ranking higher on SERPs. For this reason, we predict companies will put more work into optimizing their products and content strategies for voice search in 2022 and beyond.
WordPress Development
WordPress currently powers 43.2% of all websites, so it’s fair to say that it has a strong presence on the global internet. As an open-source platform, it is also notable for continuously adding features to meet the needs of its users.
This year, we will see some big changes in the operation of the CMS, most notably the arrival of Full Site editing. This functionality will extend block editing to the entire site, rather than just pages and posts.
With one of the biggest changes to theming in the open-source project’s history, 2022 could be a pivotal year for WordPress. The change is scheduled for introduction in v5.9 and will most certainly lead to some major changes in how websites are built and managed through WordPress in the future.
Motion UI
Not only do consumers today expect more mobile-friendly and faster websites— but they also want the experience to be more interactive and richer overall. This has been the primary reason for the rising popularity of Motion UI.
This front-end framework lets developers build entirely responsive mobile apps and websites and use predefined motions within a native setting. Using plain English, this framework allows you to make elements transition, bounce, spin, slide, etc.
Thanks to its compatibility with a wide range of web technologies, Motion UI can be used in menus, footers, headers, or pretty much anywhere else on a website. It is not an entirely new invention either — it has been widely used since 2018.
That said, this SaaS library is becoming more accessible thanks to its underlying technology, and we expect it to become one of the most prevalent web development trends in 2022 and beyond.
Enhanced Cybersecurity
Securing computers, networks, and information from misuse has always been a critical concern, and that is not about to change in 2022. Cybersecurity will remain crucial to all companies, no matter their size.
Even the most prominent industry giants are vulnerable to cyberattacks. For instance, hackers managed to scrape some 700 million LinkedIn accounts in June 2021, acquiring the users’ personal info, including their emails and phone numbers.
Cloudflare, a content delivery network provider, reports that distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are becoming increasingly common. A DDoS attack could keep a website down for hours, not only damaging a business’s reputation but causing significant losses in terms of revenue.
With the alarming increase in cybercrime over the past couple of years, website developers have been forced to adapt, making customer and company data more secure.
More and more businesses are shifting toward app-based two-factor authentication, using Security Operation Centers and tools like Google Authenticator.
We can expect a continuing effort to improve cybersecurity through non-traditional methods beyond analytics checkpoints and monitoring tools.
Humans will need to remain a part of this process for the foreseeable future, as session recordings are an invaluable resource in identifying security issues like extreme bot traffic and DDoS attacks.
Wrapping Up
Web development keeps changing to meet the ever-increasing needs of internet users and the market at large. Many of the trends we outlined above focus on security and optimizing the mobile user experience.
In the future, we might see other trends focusing on optimizing smart wearable device UIs, or improving the user experience of VR headsets.
One thing is certain — keeping up with main trends in web development is essential to making sure your website can consistently attract and delight its visitors.
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