Some Web Development Trends to Keep an Eye on in 2024

Mobile-First Development

If you think having a mobile-first development approach is pointless, you need to rework your strategy. User experience has always been the most crucial aspect for businesses to retain customers. According to Zippia, 82% of the US customers make purchases on their mobile devices.

Mobile phones have revolutionized how we function in our day-to-day lives. Whether to shop, order food, learn or consume media, and much more, mobile phones have made us more dependent on technology. Planning first and understanding how web technologies would work well on both desktop and mobile is essential, making it more adaptive to users.

More Accessibility with Voice UI

The increased emphasis on accessibility with Voice UI is one of the leading web development trends we anticipate seeing in 2024. Users can engage with web applications using voice and natural language commands through a Voice User Interface or Voice UI technology. Since W3C introduced the accessibility standards and guidelines, web developers have aimed to develop a website that anyone can access, even hearing and sight-impaired audiences.

In the last few years, we have witnessed growth in the usage of voice recognition technology and smart speakers developed by Amazon, Apple, and Google.

By 2026 the voice search assistant market is expected to reach $11.2 billion. Voice-activated devices are used by 51% of consumers to research products.

Progressive Web Applications (PWAs)

Among various web development trends, the most likely that will continue in 2024 is using Progressive Web Apps. PWAs are web apps that use modern web technologies to give users an app-like experience, including push notifications, offline accessibility, and the ability to add an icon to their device’s home screen. PWAs are made to operate without any problems across various devices, including desktop computers and mobile phones, offering a consistent user experience on all platforms.

If you have seen Uber or MakeMyTrip websites, you will understand that progressive web apps are about less loading time, smooth working, and a linear user experience. Many organizations aim for it because of its ability to replace the need for a smartphone application. PWAs are developed with modern APIs to be reliable and deliver enhanced skills, and with a single code base, they can be accessed by anyone, from anywhere, using any device.

Apart from providing a rich UX, PWAs can even allow users to operate offline, providing all the features of a native mobile app. Thus making PWA one of the strongest contenders in web development trends for 2024.

User Experience with Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

With augmented and virtual reality in websites, the web development game has entirely changed. Augmented and virtual reality offer unique opportunities for businesses to interact with customers. They attempt to improve the user experience by delivering an immersive and interactive experience.

According to the research by Mixed Reality Market, the AR and VR industry will grow beyond $9.982 billion by 2024. With VR devices like Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard, industries like tourism, architecture, or retail allow users to see how the service or product they will purchase will look in real life.

Use of AI-Powered Chatbots

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how humans interact with technology, and chatbots that AI powers are popular web development trends. Organizations are already adopting Artificial Intelligence in varied departments to improve efficiency. However, customer service is one area where AI-powered conversations can be very beneficial.

A conversational Chatbot powered by AI can mimic human conversations with deep learning and machine learning technologies. We have already seen COVID-19 informative websites and new businesses using chatbots to help users with all information they need. Chatbots answer user queries without delay, thus decreasing the drop-off rates of users. With the help of speech recognition and cognitive intelligence, bots are reliable in solving user queries faster.

However, one cannot state that they will replace humans as people want to interact with humans who can understand their concerns personally. So having an AI chatbot is excellent, but you need to implement a hybrid strategy.

What’s New in Single Page Websites?

Single page websites have continued to evolve, incorporating new features, design trends, and technologies to enhance user experience and functionality. Here are some notable developments:

1. Advanced JavaScript Frameworks: Single page websites often rely heavily on JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, or Vue.js. These frameworks facilitate dynamic content updates without requiring page reloads, resulting in smoother and faster user experiences.
2. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs): PWAs combine the best features of web and mobile applications, offering a native app-like experience within a web browser. Single page websites can be developed as PWAs, providing offline functionality, push notifications, and improved performance.
3. Improved Performance Optimization: With a focus on speed and efficiency, single page websites are optimized for quick loading times and minimal resource consumption. Techniques such as lazy loading, code splitting, and asset optimization are commonly used to enhance performance.
4. Responsive Design: Mobile responsiveness is essential for single page websites to ensure a seamless experience across different devices and screen sizes. Design practices like responsive layouts, flexible images, and adaptive typography are employed to accommodate various viewing environments.
5. Scrolling Navigation: Instead of traditional navigation menus, single page websites often utilize scrolling navigation, where users can navigate through different sections of the site by scrolling vertically. Smooth scrolling techniques and sticky navigation bars help users navigate effortlessly through the content.
6. Dynamic Content Loading: Single page websites dynamically load content as users scroll or interact with the page, reducing initial load times and bandwidth usage. This approach keeps users engaged by presenting relevant content progressively without overwhelming them with too much information at once.
7. SEO Optimization: Despite the challenges posed by single page architecture for search engine optimization (SEO), developers employ techniques such as prerendering, server-side rendering, and implementing metadata to ensure that the website ranks well in search engine results pages (SERPs).
8. Accessible Design: Accessibility is a crucial consideration in single page website design to ensure that all users, including those with disabilities, can access and interact with the content effectively. Practices like semantic HTML, keyboard navigation support, and ARIA attributes are implemented to enhance accessibility.
9. Content Personalization: Single page websites may incorporate personalized content based on user preferences, behavior, or location. By leveraging data analytics and user tracking, these websites can deliver tailored experiences that resonate with individual users, increasing engagement and conversion rates.

Overall, single page websites continue to evolve to meet the growing demands of users for fast, intuitive, and engaging web experiences, leveraging innovative technologies and design principles to achieve these goals.

Content Personalization with Machine Learning

One of the most recent AI-driven innovations in web development trends is content personalization. Machine Learning (ML) is used in modern web development trends to give users incredible experiences. To enable software to analyze incoming data, spot trends, and customize information, developers utilize machine learning (ML). Many top organizations like Netflix and Airbnb use this technology to improve user experience.

According to Twilio’s 2022 State of Personalization Report, 62% of people stated they are unlikely to continue backing a brand if they provide an impersonal experience. Utilizing cookies is another method of content personalization. Cookies are small text files that track a user’s visits to a website and deliver content specific to their interests.

Static Website Generators

One most widely used trend among the top web development trends is Static Website Generators, which represent a new approach to website development that is quicker, more secure, and simpler to manage than conventional dynamic websites.

Static site generators pre-generate all the HTML pages and assets at build time rather than relying on a server to produce HTML code for each page. This results in quicker load times and improved scalability because the website can be supplied straight from a CDN (Content Delivery Network) or a web server.

Jekyll, Hugo, and Gatsby are a few popular static website generators. Static website generators are a popular choice for developers trying to construct simple, quick, and secure websites because of their ease of use and speed.

Automation Testing On Cloud

One crucial factor in the automation testing era with the latest web development trends in the web development process, which can only be succeeded with thorough testing and validation for cross browser compatibility. Only some people use the same browser to access the Internet. You might have a distributed target audience accessing the website through different browsers.

Here you can see the global market share of browsers, where 64.38% of users prefer Chrome. However, many users still prefer other browsers over Chrome, and you must pay attention to them. As every browser renders the website differently, checking the aspects related to its cross-browser compatibility becomes essential.

Although we have a manual testing process to perform cross browser compatibility checks, what limits the process is the time! You will need more browser coverage by walking the manual cross browser testing route.

Automation testing allows you to run cross-browser tests by writing test scripts using a popular framework like Selenium. This makes it run and scale tests on a need basis. Parallel testing on a cloud-based Selenium Grid shortens test execution time while improving the test coverage and browser coverage.

More focus on Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity will be one of the vital web development trends of 2024 and in the future. With the innovation and evolution of new technologies, the risk of cyber threats is growing daily. According to a survey by Cloudfare, Q3 2023 saw a vertical rise of 117% in DDoS attacks. As a result, customers want companies to keep their data safe and secure.

Many websites from the health, retail, and banking domains store sensitive customer data focusing on their websites’ security. I hope you might have seen that Google marks websites without HTTPS as unsafe. When developing a new website in 2024, invest in appropriate SSL certificates.

If you own a large website with a decent customer base, ensure that you abide by the required data security standards and frequently conduct security audits for your site.

More focus on Data Compliance

As an organization, you must safeguard customer data in compliance with the data regulations. We’ve already seen that cyber-attacks are on the rise, and being a website owner, you are responsible for handling customer data. You must strategically plan the incident management and train the team to ensure no data leak.

According to CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), new consumer rights have come into effect from January 1, 2023, such as:

• The right to limit the use and distribution of sensitive personal information.
• The ability to restrict the use and disclosure of sensitive data collected.

Today, different countries have different data compliance standards. For example, if your website targets audiences from the EU, you should follow GDPR compliances. In fact, as per Help Net Security, since the GDPR was implemented, more than 340 fines have been issued for compliance failures.

Ensure that you abide by the data protection laws locally and globally to avoid long-term issues as an organization. Investing in data compliance is one of the mandatory things to look out for, making it to our list of web development trends in 2024.

Cloud Computing

Web development trends are shifting towards cloud computing, which has benefits including scalability, accessibility, and increased speed and efficiency. The global pandemic successfully projected us to the actual value of cloud computing. As more and more organizations shifted to remote working, web development and cloud testing became more flexible. Thanks to cloud technology!

This year, the market for cloud infrastructure is expected to expand by 35%. Along with other advantages like decreased development costs, flexibility, and robust design, the technology helps prevent data loss and overload.

No-Code/Low-Code Development Experience

No-Code/Low-Code development experience allows users without expertise in programming to create web applications using a visual interface and drag-and-drop tools. The necessity for organizations to quickly and efficiently build unique web apps without relying on expensive and hard-to-find developers has given rise to such web development trends.

Low-code or no-code products provide ease and a low learning curve for anyone who wants to build a tech product. Well, not only for people without technical skills, but no code platforms have helped developers build the initial phase and scale it up.

According to Straits Research, by 2030, the market for low-code is expected to reach $148. 5 billion. Some solutions like WordPress, Wix, Webflow, and more help users in web development without any prior coding knowledge. CMS solutions have predefined templates to add or modify web elements by drag and drop or click functionality.

However, low-code or no-code platforms cannot replace code but can be a support tool to help developers be responsive and scale faster in 2024.

No-Code/Low-Code Development Experience

No-Code/Low-Code development experience allows users without expertise in programming to create web applications using a visual interface and drag-and-drop tools. The necessity for organizations to quickly and efficiently build unique web apps without relying on expensive and hard-to-find developers has given rise to such web development trends.

Low-code or no-code products provide ease and a low learning curve for anyone who wants to build a tech product. Well, not only for people without technical skills, but no code platforms have helped developers build the initial phase and scale it up.

According to Straits Research, by 2030, the market for low-code is expected to reach $148. 5 billion. Some solutions like WordPress, Wix, Webflow, and more help users in web development without any prior coding knowledge. CMS solutions have predefined templates to add or modify web elements by drag and drop or click functionality.

However, low-code or no-code platforms cannot replace code but can be a support tool to help developers be responsive and scale faster in 2024.

Motion UI – Making the Website Smoother

Motion UI is a powerful tool for enhancing user experience by adding animations and transitions to a website’s interface elements. By incorporating subtle motion effects, websites can feel more dynamic, engaging, and intuitive. Here’s how Motion UI contributes to making websites smoother:

1. Visual Feedback: Motion UI provides visual feedback to users, indicating their interactions with interface elements. For example, when a button is clicked or hovered over, a smooth animation can signal that the action has been acknowledged by the website.
2. Smooth Transitions: Motion UI allows for seamless transitions between different states or views within a website. Instead of abrupt changes, elements can smoothly fade in, slide in, or scale up/down, creating a more polished and cohesive user experience.
3. Guiding User Attention: Motion UI can be used to guide users’ attention to important elements or actions on the website. By animating key features or content, designers can draw users’ eyes to specific areas of the page, improving discoverability and engagement.
4. Enhancing Navigation: Animated transitions can improve the navigation experience by providing visual cues that help users understand the website’s structure and flow. For instance, sliding menus, accordion-style dropdowns, or animated page transitions can make navigation more intuitive and enjoyable.
5. Reducing Cognitive Load: Smooth animations can help reduce cognitive load by providing context and continuity between different parts of the website. Users can better understand how elements relate to each other and how their actions impact the overall interface, leading to a more seamless and less confusing experience.
6. Adding Personality: Motion UI allows designers to inject personality and brand identity into the website through animations and micro-interactions. Whether it’s playful bounces, elegant fades, or subtle hover effects, motion can convey the brand’s tone and character, making the website more memorable and engaging.
7. Optimizing Performance: While adding motion can enhance the user experience, it’s essential to optimize performance to ensure smooth animations across various devices and browsers. Techniques such as hardware acceleration, optimizing animation timing and easing functions, and using lightweight CSS animations or JavaScript libraries can help maintain smooth performance without sacrificing speed.
8. Responsive Design: Motion UI can be integrated seamlessly with responsive design principles, ensuring that animations adapt to different screen sizes and orientations. By using flexible layouts and relative units for animations, designers can create smooth transitions that look and feel consistent across desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.

Overall, Motion UI plays a crucial role in making websites smoother by adding a layer of interactivity and polish that enhances usability, engagement, and brand perception. When used thoughtfully and judiciously, motion can elevate the user experience and set websites apart in a crowded digital landscape.

API-first Development

With over 20 years in the market, Web APIs have been accessible and the most popularly used method among various web development trends. An increasing number of developers are starting to create products using an API-First approach. It’s mainly because an API-first strategy ensures that other developers may easily leverage microservice applications and architecture to link your APIs to theirs, perform a voice search, or even work with interconnected devices.

The API-first approach puts forward the needs of the user. Using web APIs, development teams can do their work and push the code simultaneously when a user is accessing a website. This reduces development costs and increases delivery speed.

Also, API first approach allows new sites to become a source for content delivery. For example, a CMS developed in API first approach can be accessed from browsers and smart cars or kiosks

3D Elements Will Become More Mainstream

With the widespread usage of 2K and 4K displays, 3D design is one of the recent drifts in web development trends. Blocks and beveled borders are no more mainstream now! We have seen 3D visuals with shadow and crisp edges woven seamlessly into the user interface.

For instance, let’s take a look at Sennep’s website. You will find out that the initial homepage is very minimalistic. They have added 3D elements and 2D fonts with basic animation to create a visually aesthetic user experience.

In 2024 and upcoming years, these web development trends will increase the usage of static and interactive 3D elements on websites. If you are into web development, it will be better to start honing your illustrator skills.

Web Apps Becoming More Powerful with Web Assembly

Performance comes to our mind before we launch a website. We all know that a site with heavy JavaScript operations or CSS libraries tends to get slow. Thus affecting the overall user experience.

This is where WebAssembly plays a vital role. With WebAssembly, the code gets compiled into bytecode, which runs in the browser. It provides high security, language and platform-independent, fast, and hardware independent.

A website developed using WebAssembly is quicker and enables the developer to script across multiple platforms. This is why a significant share of web development trends will go to WebAssembly.

Blockchain Technology – Changing the Game Everywhere

The most emerging technology that has evolved in recent times among various web development trends is Cryptocurrency, which brought a revolution when it first arrived. Apart from currency trading, blockchain technology also revolutionized the web development domain.

Blockchain has a peer-to-peer architecture. Thus, it offers enhanced security features, transparency, decentralization, and a distributed ledger. Developers found out that blockchain has a significant impact on enterprise systems. Contracts that run on a blockchain network cannot be tampered with. Hence trustworthy and secure.

Besides, technology makes contract administration much more accessible. According to PR Newswire, the blockchain technology domain will reach $57.64 billion in 2025. And with companies like Spotify, Mythical Games, and IBM leading the way, 2021 will be a big year for blockchain technology in web development.

Serverless Architecture

A Serverless Architecture enables the development and usage of apps and services without the need to handle infrastructure administration. Developers can freely create and deploy their code, and a cloud service provider must set up the servers on which their databases, apps, and storage systems will function.

Scalability is one of serverless architecture’s key advantages. Using serverless computing. Applications can scale up or down automatically based on user demand. As a result, organizations can handle significant traffic increases without worrying about infrastructure limitations or paying for resources that are only used when there is little traffic.

According to PR Newswire, serverless architecture is expected to have a market worth $36.64 billion by 2022. Therefore, starting in 2024 and continuing, more businesses should enter this industry. More products, such as Chatbots, IoT applications, and APIs, will use serverless functions to carry out operations, including downloading file backups, sending notifications, and exporting objects.

Headless CMS Architecture

One of the popular trends among various web development trends is “Headless CMS Architecture,” which excludes the Content Management System (CMS) from the front-end display layer, giving developers more control over the layout and creation of the website. A headless CMS stores the content in a backend repository that any platform or device can access via an API. This implies that a single piece of information can be utilized on various platforms, including websites, mobile apps, and smart devices, without duplicating or completely rewriting it.

The development of websites can be done with greater flexibility and scalability, given that headless CMS is not dependent on any one front-end technology or framework. Developers can quickly switch between the best tools without altering the content by selecting the ones ideal for their project. This enables an Agile development approach by enabling content updates and modifications to be made independently of the front end.

Internet of Things (IoT)

The term “Internet of Things” (IoT) defines actual physical objects with sensors, processing power, software, etc., that can connect with other systems and gadgets over communication networks like the Internet to exchange data.

IoT offers web developers many opportunities to build innovative, connected applications that interact with various devices. For instance, web developers can create software that enables customers to monitor their health via wearables or remotely control their household appliances.

Additionally, the expansion of IoT is giving organizations new opportunities to collect and analyze data from connected devices, producing insights that can help with decision-making and enhance consumer experiences.

Statista states IoT is rapidly emerging in web development, with over 29 billion connected devices predicted by 2030.

Meta-Frameworks

Meta-frameworks, usually referred to as multi-frameworks, are gaining popularity in the field of web development. They combine different frameworks so that developers can benefit from the best aspects of each framework in a single project. By enabling developers to use the most effective tool for each task, this method can shorten the development process, simplify it, and increase the quality of the code.

For large-scale projects, where numerous teams may be working on different parts of the application using various frameworks, meta-frameworks are particularly helpful. The multiple teams can collaborate easily even when utilizing other meta-framework technologies.

Next.js, Nuxt.js, and Nest.js are a few popular meta-frameworks. To provide developers with a seamless development experience, these frameworks blend various technologies like React and VueJS. In the future, we are likely to see an increase in meta-frameworks as new technologies and frameworks continue to appear.

Multi-Experience

The multi-experience web development trend aims to create a seamless user experience across many platforms and devices. Multi-experience development has become essential for creating a consistent and satisfying user experience as people interact with websites and apps through various devices and channels. This entails creating websites and software that adjust to multiple screen sizes and gadgets, including smartphones, smartwatches, and voice assistants.

Web development can be improved by multi-experience in the following ways:

• This method offers quick and flexible device development.
• A variety of front-end tools and back-end services will be available to developers, helping to meet all requirements.
• It gives developers more control over the deployment and is built on low-code frameworks

WordPress Development

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) for creating and maintaining websites and web-based applications. It is an open-source, cost-free platform, provides an extensive range of features, and has many different functionalities. With WordPress, businesses and developers can quickly establish and maintain their websites because of its primary interface and user-friendly design.

Due to its built-in security features and accessibility of third-party security plugins, WordPress is a desirable choice for businesses wishing to safeguard their sensitive data, given the rising importance of data compliance. Hence, we can say that more developers will leverage WordPress for enterprise-level projects in 2024.

A Change in GitHub’s Security

GitHub has already announced plans to stop account passwords for authenticating the operations a user performs in GitHub. From August 2021, GitHub began accepting token authentication for users.

As mentioned earlier, the threat of cyber attacks is increasing daily. Having a password only means a chance of compromising the password and can result in leakage. Although multi-factor authentications have become popular among various web development trends in the past few years, token-based authentication will make it difficult for an attacker to access a GitHub account. Thus, keeping your code more secure.