The Internet for businesses has evolved more than we could have imagined a decade ago. Every business, however big or small, today has a website. Add to it the number of sites that are owned and run by individuals, and you have a considerable number.
The website is the first impression that customers and audiences make of you or your business. In totality, a website is a branding machine for individuals, businesses, and communities. With more than 1 billion websites rocking the Internet today, catching up with the competition, innovating development and design to stay ahead of the curve, and creating a niche, are some of the biggest challenges that web developers have to face today.
Web developers not only have to put their best foot forward in terms of design, aesthetics, and UI but also have to ensure that the web pages are search engine optimized. After all, if you don’t make it to the top in the search results, you don’t make it at all.
2019 saw the beginning of new trends in web development and looks like a few of them are here to stay. Some oldies like Responsive Animation Idle Load (RAIL) crawled their way back to be a hot trend in 2019. Single Page websites and push notifications maintained their stronghold in 2019.
Let’s have a look at the top web development trends of 2020 that are set to refashion the web development purview.
Web development trends to look forward in 2020:
Modular Design
Modern web developers are not fond of restrictions and don’t want to restrict their design elements to set templates. A Modular Design helps in achieving just that! With Modular design, web developers can reuse components (or blocks) of design in their web pages, not sticking to a particular pattern.
These content blocks can be effectively used to display information in a more attractive fashion than a typical template. Also, since the module components are reusable, it can help in saving development time. The key here is to ensure that the modules do not overlap and fit seamlessly, presenting a flawless design as a whole.
If you are designing your website with Joomla, you will find several (free, as well as paid) extensions that allow you to design and manage your site modules easily.
Mobile-First/ Responsive Design
The world is hooked onto a phone, and there’s no denying that. By 2025, it is estimated that more than 70% of the total web traffic will be attributed to mobile phones. We can see the web strategy moving from ‘Mobile First’ to ‘Mobile Only’ in the coming few years.
But for 2020, web developers have to strike the perfect balance of presenting well-designed mobile-friendly web pages that look great on the desktops as well. Responsive design will continue to be a hot trend for web development.
In July 2019, Google introduced its Mobile-first indexing, which means that the web pages will be indexed first for their mobile versions, a reason more to focus on responsive design.
For Joomla websites, you need to remember that to make your site responsive, every front-end extension that you use has to be responsive. Unfortunately, not all the available extensions are responsive and, hence, you might need to do some additional work.
Chatbots
Strong customer support is one of the key elements for a website or a product that everyone loves. Today’s customers prefer prioritization, personalization, and achieving the same round-the-clock involves a lot of human resources and costs. That’s why more and more products seek out chatbots for customer support. According to a report by Gartner, by the end of 2020, more than 85% of the customer interactions will happen without human intervention.
Web developers have to accommodate this switch to chatbots, and have to provision for the same in their design.
Joomla site designers can check JBolo, which allows you to add a Facebook and Gmail like chat into your Joomla website. It also supports group chats, emoticons, file transfers, and much more.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Who likes to wait? No one! And this is why accelerated mobile pages with rocket-speed of loading time will be a key trend that web developers have to catch up to in 2020. Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP enables rich content such as videos, graphics, and animations to load side by side with ads. And this has to work across multiple platforms and devices. AMP’s typically load faster since unlike regular (non-AMP) pages, they render mobile web pages with restricted HTML/CSS and JavaScript.
Improved load speed can guarantee enhanced user experience and engagement, which the businesses are craving for!
Some of our favorite Joomla AMP extensions are JAmp, wbAmp, and Accelerated Mobile Pages.
Voice Search Optimization
Voice search has seen a steady rise in the past decade, and in 2020, it is estimated that 50% of all the searches will happen over voice. Virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana have made today’s customers habitual to speak their hearts out instead of typing in the tiny search box lying in the corner of the web page.
Web developers have to understand this growing need of the customers and have to integrate voice search to their web pages, especially the mobile web pages. Thankfully, adding voice search API is fairly easy, which also means that if you don’t do it, you are left behind in the game!
API-First Design
We are living in a hyper-connected world. From our homes to our phones, from our computers to our cars, everything is connected. Web developers have to ditch the conventional ways of building an application. The traditional method involves the front-end developers relying heavily on the back-end developers to furnish an API. This creates development latency. In 2020 web developers have to get rid of it by opting for API-first design!
In this article, we have captured three ways to do RESTful APIs in Joomla.
Motion UI & Integrated GIFs
Engagement is one of the prime factors that web developers have to consider when it comes to user experience. The web pages have to be everything and interesting, long enough for people to stay and consume the value-adding elements such as the content. Motion UI in one 2020 web development trends that can help drive the engagement on otherwise plain-looking web pages.
Motion UI makes use of interactive GIFs and animations, filling the web pages with a pop of color and excitement to engage the users. They are also a great way of compelling storytelling and quite easy to integrate with flexible CSS patterns and JavaScript libraries easily available for use!
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
What once seemed like a futuristic concept has pretty much arrived. If studies are to be believed, the AR and VR market will see a growth of 100% by 2021.
Web developers have to keep up with the pace of the growing AR and VR apps. Web gaming world will see a huge influx of AR and VR, and web developers have to acquire the necessary skill sets for a smooth transition towards the same in 2020.
PWAs (Progressive Web Apps)
Progressive Web Apps are web pages that behave like apps, meaning mobile users can experience the ease of navigation and heightened UX, but on a web page.
Web developers can make use of HTML5 to make the switch from websites to PWAs. With growing mobile users, needless to say, this transition is much needed. PWAs have proven to generate more conversions and top consumer-facing companies in the world. Companies like Uber and Twitter have incorporated PWAs in their web development strategy and have benefited from the same.
What are the other trends that you look forward to in the coming year? Do share.