According to a well-known author Paul Cookson: “Websites promote you 24/7: No employee will do that.” This statement is completely true in today’s internet-savvy world. It has become mandatory for every business to invest money in building an influential website that acts as a powerful weapon to enhance the digital reach of their business.
In today’s global marketplace, it’s not enough for an entrepreneur to have a robust web presence. But they need to hire an experienced web development company to guide them in building a user-friendly, interactive, fully optimized, functional website for their brand.
In addition, the web development industry is constantly changing where new trends keep coming regularly. In such a scenario, it becomes more important for a business to keep its website in sync with all the latest web development practices and standards.
Let’s explore the top eleven web development trends for 2018 and beyond. These guidelines can help you in making your site powerful and updated enough to deliver a dynamic user experience and retain more customers in present as well as in the coming years.
1. Feature Of Fast Loading
Nowadays, customers are highly impatient and they don’t want to wait for your if it takes forever to load. Therefore, it has become essential for you to develop your website in such a way so that it loads quickly for all the users on all the devices such as mobile, tablet, desktop, etc. In addition, you can use websites such as Pingdom and Pagespeed Insights in order to check the speed of your website and how you can improve it.
2. Fully Optimized For Mobile Devices
Nowadays mostly users surf the internet through their smartphones. This makes it essential for you to develop your website capable to function smoothly on mobile devices. The design should be mobile-friendly so that the users can easily access it as and when they require.
3. Tracking Enabled For Smart Analytics
You have to do analytics in order to assess how your website is performing and whether it is doing its expected job. For this, the website should be developed by incorporating functionality that let you monitor key performance indicators such as conversions, goals, and traffic.
4. Keep It SEO-friendly
It is required on your part to optimize your site equally for both the browsers and humans. In order to please your users, you need to incorporate effective and readable content in your site. Also, it’s significant for you to include all important on-page SEO elements and tags to get a higher ranking on major search engine results. Two of such important elements are schema and XML sitemaps.
5. Content Management System (CMS) Enabled
In order to captivate your target audience, it’s mandatory for you to keep adding fresh, valuable content to your website at regular intervals of time. It will also help in boosting your digital marketing strategy. For seamless posting and editing of content as and when required, there is a need to include a back-end content management system (CMS) in the design of the website.
6. Optimize Conversion
It is advisable to implement tools for developing campaign landing pages into your website design. These pages will help your users to move smoothly through your site. Also, it will encourage them to move towards scheduling an appointment, requesting a product demonstration, and even making a purchase.
7. Effective Email Marketing
In order to facilitate seamless access and connection, you should sync your site’s email capture forms with your own email marketing system. It will allow you to connect with your customer base via emails in a better manner.
8. Social Media Integration
Nowadays mostly users are addicted to using different social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Therefore, it is significant on your part to integrate these platforms within your website design. It will allow users to access social media channels easily from the website. Also, it will enhance the reach of your brand and increase its traffic and visibility.
9. Robust Security & Safety Of Personal Data
Your website security should always be your first and foremost priority. It is imperative for you to include fundamental security and privacy protocols into your web design such as basic security check for protecting your as well as the data of the users.
10. Rising Popularity Of Progressive Web Apps
Professional web designers and developers got inspired by the positive impact of apps on the mobile platform. They have combined the best of web and app features and produced a hybrid app which is known as Progressive Web App (PWA).
These apps are expected to experience a boom throughout this and in the coming years. It has given you an opportunity to elevate the overall UX of your website by incorporating a few PWA features such as animated page transitions, push notifications, splash screens etc.
11. Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are no more alien terms for us. They have already entered our lives to transform our digital experience. Many big brands are using AI-powered tools in order to provide their customers with the best possible experience. For instance, Siri by Apple and Alexa by Amazon are the two most popular examples of incorporating AI into web development so that to enhance the UX of the site.
In this way, by sticking to these eleven non-negotiable web development guidelines, you can easily connect with a potential customer base and transform the entire way in which your business operates. Ultimately, it will enhance the bottom line of your brand.
Author Bio: Anubhuti Shrivastava is a content crafter at Arkenea, a custom software development company helping entrepreneurs and businesses build successful web and mobile apps. She is passionate about writing articles on topics related to design and the software development industry.
