Need web development inspiration? Upgrade user experience, increase traffic, conversions and engagement by getting one of these web innovations in your sights.
Improve your users’ experience
Websites don’t look the same as they did ten years ago. And that’s how it should be. Technology is changing all the time and developers and service providers are constantly looking to improve user experience.
While some of these innovations may seem out of this world now, they could give you food for thought for developments you want to make in the future. And some, we guarantee that as a user you will already be experiencing.
Progressive web apps (PWAs)
Progressive web apps are apps that are progressive in how they’re made. They’re like a basic web page but use different technologies so they look and act like a mobile app, without a user having to access the app store. Accessed through your web browser, PWAs will also work offline and provide a fast, seamless user experience across all devices.
Pinterest, Uber and Starbucks are all well-known PWAs. Due to their ease of use, PWAs are known to increase user satisfaction, take-up and, ultimately, engagement and sales.
Dark mode standardisation
There’s a growing trend for web developers to implement dark mode as a standard feature to enable users to save battery power, reduce eye strain and improve readability in low light.
Dark mode inverts the colours of a website to make the background dark and text light and is a popular feature known to increase user satisfaction.
Virtual assistants and chatbots
Increasingly, businesses and organisations are utilising chatbots or virtual assistants on their websites, to help them interact with customers and users to provide support or the means of transacting. Repetitive queries can be automated, helping to improve customer service.
Single page applications (SPAs)
SPAs are single HTML pages that load content immediately the user interacts with it via a simple interface. They provide a fast, responsive, ‘live’ experience for the user. For example, Gmail shows new messages without users having to refresh. Slack and Trello are also SPAs providing live messaging and collaboration. You might not realise it, but even Netflix is a SPA, despite its vast quantity of content.
Cybersecurity-conscious development
Many users are now highly aware of cybercrime and the prevalence of hackers and will not interact with sites asking them to login with social media criteria, such as Facebook. Cybersecurity-conscious developers don’t ask for data they don’t need and increasingly use multi-factor authentication methods (MFA) to increase user security.
Optimised voice searching
Increasingly, people use smart speakers and voice recognition assistants to search online. To ensure a website is discoverable, searchable and accessible, web developers ensure it is optimised for voice search, which, in turn, increases web traffic and conversions for businesses.
Ambient design
Do you get bored of looking at your screen? As our screen hours increase, developers are finding new ways to keep our screens fresh and interesting. Ambient designs include views, colours and images that change with the time of day or weather, for example.
Cloud-based development
Cloud-based development allows cost-effective scalability, collaboration, efficiency and productivity. The power of cloud services enables developers to share and access code, resources and projects wherever they’re based and a wide range of cloud platforms offer many other tools and services for web development.
Artificial intelligence (AI)
You can’t talk about trends in web development in 2023, without mentioning AI and machine learning. Developers are increasingly looking to integrate AI into web applications to provide the unique, personal experiences and improved search and functionality demanded by users.
More web development innovations to come…
The list isn’t exhaustive and there’ll be more web development trends hot on the heels of these just around the corner, all looking to do the same thing – increase positive user experience and service, whether via improved aesthetics or functionality.
Need help to keep your website and development one step ahead? Get in touch with our advanced web team today for a chat about using the latest technology to improve your users’ and customers’ online experience with you.
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