Current Web Development Trends: Your Ultimate Top 15

Daria Kosych

3 years ago

It’s not a secret how quickly things change in the web development industry. If you’re into it, you’ve seen numerous technologies and successful solutions rise and fall. However, the rising technologies are the ones that have the potential to make you the best in the game. So, to keep your finger on the pulse and your ears open, let’s consider 15 current trends in web development.

Overview of Current Trends in Web Development

Below we’ll discuss the web development trends that have already got traction and have the largest potential for growth. If you incorporate some of them into your website, you’ll welcome a popularity surge that takes you to new heights. But at the beginning, we’d like to pay attention to some well-known but still essential web dev tendencies:

the minimalistic design and user-friendly interface, using appealing images and video reviews (by the way, with the help of WordPress Slider Block you can make awesome sliders and attract attention to your text and media content), choosing an appropriate color scheme, simple logo, providing convenient navigation and visual focus on main web components;
3D elements on sites;
push notifications(pop-ups on pages);
using CMS platforms for launching websites and low-code/no-code platforms for creating apps, including low-code SaaS applications developed for MunichRe HealthTech;
using such frameworks as React, Angular, or VueJS development;
cloud computing;
voice search(according to statistics, more than 50% of searches are done by voice, and voice assistants’ popularity grows as they facilitate the process by presenting answers and solutions immediately).

While developing web apps, you can consider using React Admin Template to speed up your workflow. It will help you create a responsive & appealing web app.

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)

Recently, the hegemony of native mobile apps has swayed. Blame the new-gen Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) that take the best from the web and marry it into the best of mobile apps.

PWAs are web-based applications with a feel and UX similar to mobile apps. They utilize the latest web technologies to bring users an app-like experience in a browser tab. To better grasp the essence of a Progressive Web App, go through the list of its features:

Firstly, PWAs require no installation. Users can open a PWA in a browser by simply entering the URL.
Secondly, PWAs match the latest standards of responsiveness and cross-browser compatibility.
They don’t depend on the network state. With pre-caching, PWAs are available to users even offline.
Most importantly, PWAs ensure that users spend more time on your website.
HTTPS protocol serves PWAs, guaranteeing secure data transfer.
Last but not least, users can pin PWAs to their Home screens.

So, PWAs are the happy medium between simple websites and mobile apps. They take the best from the two and bring you the dual benefits.

Similarly to websites:

PWAs have URLs for every page for trouble-free linking. You can access them in every modern browser without installation.
Search engines index PWAs’ content.
PWAs deliver top-level full-screen experiences regardless of the viewport.

Similarly to mobile apps:

PWAs load when the network connection is deficient or absent.
They are identifiable as apps so that more users can discover them.
The users can add the PWAs’ shortcuts to their Home screens to keep coming back in one tap.
Progressive web apps are capable of sending users push notifications and re-engaging them.
Last, PWAs are fast, reliable, and engaging, thanks to the UI and UX borrowed from mobile apps.

Is PWA Worth It?

Of course, PWA brings its owners significant benefits, such as increased engagement, higher conversion rates, and improved reliability. For example, AliExpress doubled conversion across all browsers with its PWA, while eXtra Electronics increased user engagement by 4X. Among other PWA examples are Uber, Twitter, and Pinterest.

To get a basic idea of how you can power a PWA, check the Your First Progressive Web App tutorial by Pete LePage.

Single Page Applications

No more waiting for a web page to load. Thanks to dynamic refreshing with JavaScript-based SPA, only necessary content updates, and no additional pages need to be reloaded or loaded during the use. Thus you get better performance, improve conversions, and save time and potential clients.

Most of us use one-page pages daily: Google Disk, Gmail, Twitter, Trello, and Google Maps. The JavaScript frameworks that load content in SPA are Angular, React, Ember, Meteor, and Knockout.

The advantages of SPA technology include the following:

Excellent UX / UI directly in the browser;
High speed of work;
The high-quality software interface of the application;
Traffic optimization;
Adaptation to any device and browser.

With applications becoming more complex, the demand for an integrated infrastructure will only grow. Therefore, the single-page app trend will prosper even in 2022. Maximum convenience and instant feedback are what the user can expect from it.

Current Web Development Trends – Web Assembly

For web development, performance is a significant factor you should pay attention to. A low-level bytecode was created as JavaScript causes a slow load of elements. Thus, you can compile the code into WebAssembly and improve the user experience. Moreover, you can use it regardless of programming language or hardware. The most popular tools that integrate with WebAssembly are C++, C, Rust, Blazor, and Yew Framework.

Besides, it works fast and guarantees safe results. Companies like Frontend, Foretag, and Cubbit have already trusted and used this type of code.

Micro Frontends

There are two main reasons why this trend is in demand in 2021:

It enables cutting the code into small parts that are much easier to manage and avoids complications that front-end developers usually face while working with codebases.
Micro frontends facilitate the workload and help to manage a workflow. Thus, they can be divided between a few teams and gathered in one project. Undoubtedly, it’ll bring better results and faster implementation of tasks.

Serverless Architecture

This promising technology is among our top current web development trends. A serverless architecture implies getting rid of servers and using cloud providers. It ensures efficient system work, safe and secure data-keeping, saving costs on the development process, and improving flexibility.

Also, tasks such as downloading backup files, delivering notifications, and exporting objects will be much faster. In other words, serverless architecture is another trend that dramatically changes the way we approach web development. Nowadays, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon support serverless technology.

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Dark Mode Integration

As website owners strive to get more clients via any possible means, web developers seek new impressive, and convenient solutions. Dark mode standardization is an excellent example of current web development trends. Thus, you give every user a chance to decide what design is more pleasant for them, guaranteeing a more prolonged on-site presence and, consequently, better conversions.

Besides, there is good news for MotoCMS users – next month, we’ll present everybody with an updated and flexible admin panel with light and dark modes.

Internet of Things

The Internet of Things is a progressive trend. It ensures that devices and objects are connected to the network (including the Internet) or other devices and machines and work autonomously without human intervention. Thus, web developers can create intelligent devices that track, record, display, monitor data, and adjust accordingly. They have the knowledge to turn our dreams into reality and create applications to make users’ experiences personalized and convenient.

Blockchains

Blockchain is a rapidly developing technology that transforms the gist of being a business owner. The idea behind it belongs to a person or a group of people under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. The technology originally underpinned the Bitcoin digital currency but now finds multiple uses and proves revolutionary.

The essence of blockchain technology lies in using a shared database that is continuously reconciled. Millions of computers host the records of the database, which updates every ten minutes. As the data is scattered across so many PCs and no party is commanding it, it’s impossible to corrupt or violate the way the blockchain functions. To destroy the blockchain, you’ll have to destroy every possible PC that may store the data or cut off the Internet on Earth.

Let’s Enumerate Some Benefits

Being invincible, blockchain technology surpasses conventional ones in several ways.

First, blockchain cannot be controlled by a single party and destroyed by breaking a part of it.
Secondly, the network data is public and available to everyone who needs it.
Thirdly, it’s almost impossible to hack the blockchain. To do this, the hacker will have to override the data on millions of computers.
Next, the blockchain is the embodiment of decentralization. The blockchain has no hierarchy, which makes all the transaction parties equal.

Besides, they enable the creation of Smart Contracts, supply chain auditing, failure-free decentralized file storage, and automatic intellectual property protection. What’s more, they open new prospects for peer-to-peer commerce and crowdfunding. But if coders want to take advantage of some of these benefits, they must learn blockchain programming and languages like Solidity, especially if they’re going to make Smart Contracts.

Blockchains have been among the governing web development trends for recent years and will reveal more of their potential next year.

Motion UI Among Current Web Development Trends

The next trend is not as far-fetched as AI and blockchains. It predicts the popularity and wide embracement of the Motion UI Sass library. What this library does, is lets you animate the UI of your website in a snap.

Working with it is not rocket science. The library package includes a CSS file with ready-made effects and Sass files, letting you play around and create animations. The library allows the transition of your website elements (such as overlays, modals, off-canvas menus, etc.) in and out. Moreover, you can use transition effects to build single CSS animations and even a series.

The motion will help reflect the website’s unique style, entertain the user, improve behavioral factors, and increase search rankings. With its help, you will implement the design of such elements as:

page header transitions;
charts;
popup windows;
drop-down menus;
scrolling the page;
background.

The draws of Motion UI that make it one of the web design development trends are its simplicity, flexibility, and universal character:

The coding of Motion UI is easy to grasp if you have a basic knowledge of CSS and some JavaScript.
Motion UI gives you multiple parameters to make your modern animations behave as you want.
You can apply Motion UI transitions and animations to almost every element of your website, ensuring its superiority over other libraries.

It’s easy to join in with this trend. Check out Motion UI documentation to learn more about the abundance of transition effects this library brings. Download the library and take the UI on your website up a notch. What’s more, learn about CSS image hover effects to discover more ways to make your website more engaging.

Multi-Experience

Managing a quality website is a must, but supporting various platforms is a demand. Therefore, multi-experience implies adapting not just to desktop or mobile versions but also apps, chatbots, laptops, smartwatches, etc., among current web development trends. It helps you interact with your clients and improve the user experience. Moreover, in such a way, you have more channels for your business promotion and building trusting relationships with your target audience that will undoubtedly appreciate such a gesture.

For example, Domino’s Pizza company offers about 15 ways for clients to make an order(via mobile, voice search, website, tweet, Amazon, smart TV, and so on).

Google AMP

Every article on web design development trends has been screaming about responsiveness and its importance for a couple of years. It was Google that made responsiveness a must. Google’s next step was the creation of the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project. AMP was developed by the collaborative effort of leading IT experts worldwide and is currently adopted by over 5B web pages.

At present, building an AMP version of your website is a way to ensure its lightning-fast performance on mobile devices. Accelerated Mobile Pages have simplified coding and load up to 10 times quicker on smartphones. Thus, the employment of AMP makes cutting down page loading time on mobile to less than 1 second possible.

Main Advantages of AMP

The implications of this are numerous. First, the impressive loading speed of AMP-ed pages improves mobile user experience and bounce rate. Next, AMP-optimized pages and ads look and feel more natural on small screens, creating a smoother and more engaging user experience. Thirdly, AMP positively influences your search ranking. Moreover, AMP is hardly a fad as Google, Bing, and some other search engines and social networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. already link to and present AMP content.

If you follow current web development trends, take the Google AMP Project seriously and create AMP versions of the pages on your website. For this, you’ll have to make three major adjustments:

convert HTML into AMP HTML, i.e., the simplified HTML that recognizes AMP commands;
go for AMP JavaScript, which loads external resources simultaneously;
power AMP CDN which provides for new-gen caching for immediate delivery. To get your first hands-on experience with AMP, check some GitHub AMP HTML samples.

Accelerated Mobile Pages are not only a modern technology to follow. It’s a window of opportunity for websites with high mobile traffic. Going for AMP should be on your list of upcoming goals if you want to welcome users on the go with lightning-fast performance.

User Behavior Tracking

At present, guesswork is not the strategy businesses adopt. With modern web solutions, you can track which content appeals to the users of your website and which fails. The more you know about your customers and how they act on your website, the better you can optimize it for conversions. At this point, User Behavior Tracking lets you see users’ actual behavior on your website.

Modern tools let you get several invaluable insights:

You can track user clicks, mouse movements, and scrolls and record their activity to understand how a typical user interacts with your website.
Such web development trends as heatmaps let you grasp how much attention each website block gets. Combined with A/B testing, this is the most effective way to see what works and what doesn’t.
Funnels let you see the user’s journey on your website and determine where users leak out.
You can monitor the way users interact with forms on your website. By this, you can identify the ones that hurt conversions.

Fortunately, joining this trend is not rocket science. The web provides multiple free and paid solutions for User Behavior Tracking. No doubt, Google Analytics is the most popular solution among them. Moreover, many User Behavior Tracking tools support integration with CMS and e-commerce plugins. So, feel free to test a couple of them to find the one that best works for you.

All in all, User Behavior Tracking is one of the must-have current web development trends in 2021. Please hurry up to get the valuable insights it provides and more conversions next year.

Content Personalization Approach

Nowadays, due to user behavior tracking, artificial intelligence can define what products users are looking for. Therefore you can give them what they want by analyzing their preferences via various channels, on-site actions, and even their comments, voice, or text search.

Current Web Development Trends – Chatbots

Artificial Intelligence has left the realm of sci-fi and ventured into current web development trends. The big cheeses, such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon, saw the prospects of investment into AI development and galvanized the effort that goes into it. They predicted that chatbots would fundamentally revolutionize computing and invested heavily in developing and popularizing chatbots.

Chatbot and Its Commercial Use

A chatbot is a computer program based on machine learning and natural language processing that assists people in completing some tasks. They automate the workflow and delegate routine tasks connected with shopping, finding information, or ordering a service. Bots help in Q&A form, providing a more human-like experience.

Currently, bots prevail on messengers, such as Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Skype, and WeChat. There are now more than 300K bots in Facebook Messenger only. Most business websites, including such commercial giants as H&M, Sephora, Hilfiger, and others, have their bots.

The fact that bots entered the current trends in web development goes without saying. You don’t have to code a bot from the ground up. Popular bot frameworks let every developer power a custom bot in days. Among them, check out Microsoft Bot Framework, Wit.ai, and Dialogflow. Check out this easy-to-follow tutorial on getting started with the Microsoft bot framework.

By and large, bots have secured their place in the web development industry for the years to come. In 2021, powering your chatbot is a wise step to run in front of your competitors.

Data Security

This year, we should see more padlocks next to URLs as adopting SSL certificates becomes not just one of the current web development trends but a must. Let’s figure out what these padlocks signify and what benefits they bring you, the website owner.

SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is a technology that establishes an encrypted connection between the browser and the web server. This certificate ensures data integrity, encryption, and authentication. When your website uses the SSL technology, you’ll see an ‘S’ added to http:// in the address bar and a padlock. Some SSL certificates also display your company’s name in green for better recognition.

Adopting an SSL certificate for your website brings the following benefits:

First, it protects users’ sensitive information and lets them complete transactions without any risk of data loss. Therefore it increases users’ trust and confidence and helps you generate max revenue.
Secondly, it lets you eliminate browser warnings and alerts telling users their data is not secure on your website.
Thirdly, SSL increases the reputation of your business over the Internet.
Moreover, Google also gives ranking benefits for HTTPS websites.
SSL eliminates the risk of phishing and other cyber attacks.

Besides, in 2021, going for an SSL certificate makes sense even if your website doesn’t handle sensitive client data. HTTPS makes you more secure and ranks higher for target keywords than HTTP websites. Moreover, to accelerate your mobile pages with Google AMP (see the next trend), you must go for the SSL certificate first.

Also, take care of GDPR on your page and check the security of your websites or networks(e.g.. provide security testing or use website monitoring tools).

Wrapping Up

That’s it for today. Now, you know what current trends in web development there are. Which has the highest potential to propel your business to new heights? Think carefully. Then, choose a couple to go for and be in for the ride of your life with them.

Best wishes for a challenging and prosperous 2021!

Are there any other web development trends you foresee being popular in 2022? Speak Up in Comments. Stay tuned!