The web has become an irresistible place for just about every person all over the world. As of 2019, there are close to 200 billion websites and almost 2 billion web applications. New technologies help businesses and their development partners create opportunities which are increasing online competition. Every year there is something new that comes out promising to make our lives easier. One year its chatbots another responsiveness. With each new trend brings a whole new set of development tools. It can a bit difficult to keep up with everything and understand what you need to do to ensure your website is the best for your visitors. To help you understand how you should create and/or update your website, let’s go through some of the latest website development trends of 2020. Responsive Design Between the years of 2015 and 2017 mobile web traffic went from about 34% to 50%. That is just mobile devices alone, it doesn’t even include the use of tablets and iPads. The need for a responsive design is absolute. Even Google now ranks a site based on its mobile version which means if your website isn’t responsive, your Google ranking will suffer. If your website is not responsive it’s time to contact your web development company to update it. If you are creating or have a website that is responsive then you don’t have to worry about this. Chatbots Chatbots were created using both machine learning and artificial intelligence to mimic human behavior. It takes information and attempts to solve problems similar to how an actual person would. Although chatbots have been used for some time until recently it wasn’t widely liked by consumers. People either like them or hate them. More than half of people now like them mostly for how quick the response time is to get the answers they need. It can be a pain to wait for a live representative to help you which is what frustrates people most. This year chatbot technology will rule the customer service sector as it will get close to 90% of the interactions people have. As the years go by it will most likely be the #1 AI integration. Now that consumers are getting more used to chatbots and liking it more and more, companies will also be integrating it more. Chatbots save money for the business and saves time for the consumer. Now is the time to integrate this technology into your business to create a digital customer experience unlike anything else. Accelerated Mobile Pages One of the things users find the most frustrating about websites is when it loads slowly. It can make or break you because users are used to getting information quickly and if they have to wait longer than a couple of seconds they bounce off. With accelerated mobile pages (AMP) load time is instant and smooth. The big negative to this is how restrictive it is. Some functions of your website might need to be left out in order to use AMP which can be a bit frustrating. However, with that being said there are huge benefits such as your pages loading in less than a second versus 15 seconds. That difference in load time can change the game for your business. If you really want to push your brand this can help you drive consumers your way, especially since Google has put such a huge importance on mobile websites. Surprisingly, there are still many large and small websites that have not taken advantage of this. Voice Search Optimization How often do you or someone you know use Siri, Cortana, or any other voice assistant? Chances are its fairly often. This year about 50% of people will be using voice to do their searching. The number of people using this type of technology keeps rising as people are getting more and more comfortable using it. Although those are some key reasons you should integrate voice search optimization into your website, you should also know that about 40% of people say voice assistance is very important in helping them run their lives. What’s great is that it’s pretty easy to integrate voice into your website which means there’s no excuse not to have it. Motion UI If you don’t know how important the User Interface (UI) is to your website, chances are you need to update it. Due to the massive amounts of information easily accessible to everyone, our attention spans have decreased significantly. In order to really catch your user’s attention, your UI must be stunning. This is where motion UI comes into play because it adapts changing as the user scrolls through the page making it way more interesting than your average website. We will probably see this more this year as a way to keep users on the site longer. AI and Cybersecurity One of the largest threats today is hacking. All of our personal information out there for anyone to take. Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used to help improve cybersecurity. The biggest problem has always been keeping an attack from happening because the professionals in this industry can only do so much. Once an attack happens then they can go about fixing it which is a serious problem. That is why the need for AI is so important. AI can work 24/7 monitoring and predicting possible threats better than ever before. The amount of people and the cost of cybersecurity is high but with AI it is not only more efficient but less expensive. For those threats that do end up happening AI can also start fixing the problem in an instant. Machine Learning Like AI, machine learning was created to help improve the user experience. It essentially works without the need of developers, something which AI still needs to function properly. It does everything itself without needing information manually entered it. Every action a user makes on a website is taken into account and analyzed by the machine learning algorithm to then determine what makes that particular person want to purchase. It then creates a unique output for that user for the future. What the user sees after that is tailored to them making them more likely to make a purchase. Machine learning is used throughout many different fields such as healthcare and education. This has become a very important part of the future of web development. All your customers will see is information that is so specific to them making their experience that much better. Progressive Web Applications One of the biggest trends of 2020 has got to be Progressive Web Applications (PWA). The ability to complete a task on a webpage while being offline is key to how these PWA’s work. Think about how your phone works while you are on a plane. There are multiple apps that you can still use and complete tasks. Once you get your network back all those tasks are automatically completed without any effort from your end. This is now a reality with web applications. Once you come back online all your tasks are then completed just like it is on your mobile apps. Until now doing this on the web wasn’t really heard of, but this year its a reality. API-First Design Whenever an app or a website is developed its common to build in APIs which allow it to have functions that work without building it from scratch. With so many connected devices we need to use more APIs. This can become quite complex in the development and testing phases. It was always common to design and then add the APIs in the end during the development process but now things have changed. Now, instead of starting with your design, we start with determining what APIs will be used and then create the web application around that. This can help save time and money. Keep in mind if you are only going to use 1 simple API then it’s not a big deal but nowadays we tend to need many APIs. This is definitely something you should take into consideration when speaking with your web development company. Modular Design Templates have been used for a long time when creating web designs. The problem with templates is that they are very limited in what you can change. This is where Modular Design excels. Developers are able to use this and create content blocks. It can be a bit complex and tricky to develop because every piece has to fit together perfectly. However, what makes this better is that it is cheaper, faster, and more flexible. This makes it very enticing for people which means your going to see this used more. Those are the latest website development trends so if you plan to create a new website or update an existing one then you should take all these points into account. Responsive design, chatbots, accelerated mobile pages, voice search optimization, motion UI, AI and cybersecurity, machine learning, progressive web applications, API-first design, and modular design can be key instruments in making your website a success in 2020. Take the time to review the technologies out there and determine what will work best for you and your customers. There are at least a few of these trending web technologies that are crucial to any website no matter what sector it is for. If you don’t plan to update your website, you may want to rethink that to become more relevant. You could be missing out on many opportunities with your current and potential customers. Before you start choosing what to use, consult your web development company to help you. You should also ensure that they understand what the latest technologies are and how to use them properly. They also need the ability to do proper web development testing. If you have any questions about these technologies and more, feel free to contact us.