Web Development Trends is a field that keeps getting new innovations every year, which not only changes the way people perform their personal, social, and business-related tasks, but makes it easy for developers to create impactful solutions efficiently. For key decision makers and CTO’s, it’s vital to be familiar with this key trends for two reasons: to stay updated in their domain and to sustain ever rising competitive market. To save your time and provide a concentrated piece of information about web development trends in 2020, we at Gloify have analyzed market demands in different fields of the IT industry and made up this list based on them.
If you just want to quickly look through the main points, here’s the list of web development trends for 2020 that we’ve considered:
- Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
- API-first development
- Accelerated Mobile Pages
- Voice search optimization
- Blockchain Technology
- Internet of Things
- Push notifications
- AI-powered chatbots
- Motion UI
- Automation Testing
#1. Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
PWA is probably one of the most impactful trends in web development. It pushes the world wide web forward making website browsing experience closer to native mobile applications and, therefore, more friendly to users.
In a nutshell, PWA is a website which, however, offers functionality traditionally available to native apps (e.g. push notifications, offline access, hardware access).
A recent research shows that mobiles dominate over other devices such as desktops or tablets. Furthermore, there is a serious gap between using mobile apps and mobile browsers. To be precise, applications account for more than 80% of the overall time users spend with their gadgets.
That’s a huge difference and PWAs are able to change the situation for better by troubleshooting issues users hate about websites the most: poor experience, slowness, no offline access.
Examples
Here are some of the world-known companies that have already built a PWA and leverage its benefits for their business:
- Alibaba
- Forbes
- Virgin America
- The Washington Post
These companies mark the following results from PWA strategy adoption: increase in conversions and a decrease of load time.
Technology to Use
If you want to follow the latest web development trends and build a PWA, here is the list of popular technologies for this purpose:
Price Difference
Based on our experience, the creation of a complex PWA project takes up to 4x less time compared to native app development for iOS and Android. While the reasons for this are obvious (no need to build an app from scratch for each platform) some products might not need applications at all.
What concerns turning ready-made websites into a PWA, the time required on this type of web development services may vary significantly and depend on the complexity of set tasks.
#2. API-First Development
Current trends in website development suggest that web solutions have to be well-prepared for connectivity with other applications. It’s no surprise considering the rise of mobiles, wearables, and other devices that should integrate with one another. That’s where the tendency for API-first development approach comes from.
What’s wrong with traditional approach? When a company’s main focus is to build a web or mobile solution they usually don’t pay much attention to API development. At best, it comes as a side project that might not be properly designed and tested.
Another problem of the traditional approach is a time-consuming API design process which increases development expenses and service market entry time.
The traditional API development cycle looks as follows:
- R&D team creates a design.
- Back-end developers work on a prototype (while the rest of the team like QA engineers and front-end developers are waiting).
- As soon as the prototype is ready QA and front-end developers get access to it.
- In case of a bug, new feature, or any improvement this cycle will be repeated all over again.
API-first development is simultaneous and doesn’t force one part of the team wait until the other will finish its work. Correspondingly, it goes faster since API is made and all teams can work with it.
Technology to Use
Here are some of the popular choices for API-first design:
If you’ve built a monolith (or even an ecosystem of monoliths) that interacts in tightly coupled ways, then your ability to adapt to new needs or create new consumers of existing functionality is hindered. On the other hand, if you adopt the mentality that all applications are just backing services, and that they should be designed API-first, then your system is free to grow, adapt to new load and demand, and accommodate new consumers of existing services without having to stop the world to re-architect yet another closed system.
#3. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google constantly implements new technologies to improve users’ mobile browsing experience. In 2015, Google introduced accelerated mobile pages project to the public, which has now evolved and become a new technology of its own.
The purpose of AWP is to reduce the load time of web pages or building websites that load quickly and work flawlessly across all devices. The loading time for AMP pages is considered to be two seconds, whereas a regular web page could take as long as 22 seconds to load.
Accelerated web pages offer a significant advantage over standard web pages because when your web pages load faster, users will be delighted to browse your site. Also, it will help in improving the search engine ranking of your web app.
To introduce AMP technology to your website, you will have to use AMP HTML open-source framework. As Google first introduced this concept, it has provided detailed documentation on how to build AMP web pages.
Technology to Use
The AMP framework consists of three components:
- AMP-HTML, which is standard HTML markup with web components
- AMP-JavaScript, which manages resource loading
- AMP-caches, which serve and validate AMP pages.
#4. Voice Search Optimization
Voice search is another trend you can’t afford to overlook. It already has a great impact on the web and more is yet to come. According to Gartner, about 30% of all searches will be done without using a screen by 2020. Not to mention the number of smart speakers which is rising year over year. The Activate outlook suggests there will be about 21.4 million of them in the United States by 2020.
Consequently, voice commerce sales are also expected to grow dramatically and reach $5 billion in the UK and $40 billion in the US by 2022.
Taking into consideration multiple studies and actual market situation, voice search optimization is the web development trend you cannot ignore. It should become a part of your SEO and tech strategy as soon as possible. Early adopters are always ahead of the competition.
Technology to Use
Web Speech API can be used to work with voice data. The API is divided into two components: speech recognition and speech synthesis.
Speech recognition allows recognizing voice context and responding to queries. Speech synthesis is a text-to-speech component that allows scripts to read text content. Take a look at Web Speech API using this guide to get started.
#5. Blockchain Technology
With the popularity of Bitcoin throughout 2019, many of you might have got an idea of Blockchain and its impact on the entire web development industry.
It is believed that by 2020, Blockchain will bring radical changes in the web industry. Blockchain is an open and distributed ledger that is known for providing safe and protected online transactions by eradicating the need for liaisons. It uses ordinary data storage to help individuals store their data in different locations around the world.
Due to the high level of protection, many multinational banks and organizations are planning to invest in Blockchain. Also, it is helpful in reducing financial business costs, lowering the frequency of transaction settlement, and improving cash flow that is backed up by transparent records.
Technology to Use
Here are some of the Blockchain Development Tools to build Blockchain Ecosystem.
- Remix IDE
- Truffle Framework
- Solc
- Solium
- Geth
- Embark
- Ganache
- EtherScripter
- Metamask
- Blockchain as a Service (BaaS)
#6. Internet of Things
IOT is about connecting objects in your environment via intelligent sensors and enabling them to send and receive data. This includes everything from your mobile phones, refrigerator, washing machine to almost everything that you can think of. With IOT we can have smart cities with optimising traffic system, efficient waste management, and energy use. IOT is basically a giant network of connected devices all of its gathers and shares data about how they are used in the environments in which they are operated and by doing so each of your devices will be learning from the experience of other devices as human do. IOT is trying to expand interdependence of humans i.e Interact, Contribute and Collaborate to Things
According to a research report by Statista, it is believed that the number of connected devices by 2025 will be more than 75.50 billion. This immense growth in IoT devices will directly impact web development because companies will control such devices from a desktop or laptop.
#7. Push Notifications
Push notifications are a powerful tool for enhancing the overall user experience and marketing efforts of the company. Even though mobile applications traditionally have strong and flexible capabilities for user notifications, web apps gain momentum here as well.
On the web apps, push notifications are used to deliver different information to end users (e.g. new blog post, clothing you liked back in stock, etc.) All this is possible without a necessity to register and leave credentials like email. This gives additional channels for companies to interact with their target audience and provides for additional marketing opportunities.
Tools to Use
There are plenty of solutions to utilize when building browser push notifications. Here are just some of them:
#8. AI-Powered Chatbots
A large number of businesses work across different time zones and have representation on various continents. This makes the arrangement of a good customer service a very complex and costly task, especially considering 24/7 support which is needed in this case.
Web development trends of recent years definitely shift towards automated, instant client support. Chatbots powered with AI and machine learning proved themselves to be a worthy long-term investment for this purpose. They can answer FAQs, connect with the right human client assistant, take an order, etc.
Surveys show that users would use chatbots for getting quick answers in an emergency, resolving a complaint, etc.
Technology to Use
You can use one of the following open-source bot building technologies from well-known tech giants:
#9. Motion UI
Every product strives to be as engaging and attractive as possible. Motion UI library is a perfect solution to capture users’ attention with beautiful animations. The library is capable of animating design elements with grace and lets developers play with them as they want. It’s flexible enough and works with any JavaScrip framework which makes it a great option for many use cases.
Motion UI is one of the best web trends of 2020, as it gives you an easy solution to capture visitor’s attention. With Motion UI library, you can incorporate animated charts, background animations, hovers, and eye-catching headers.
Using Motion UI elements will not only make your website stand out, but it will also enhance user engagement by encouraging active user interaction and improving site usability. It is an added advantage for developers because they get multiple alternatives to craft a functional and remarkable site.