Must Consider Top Website Development Trends in 2021

The trends in web development change every single year to a great extent. For it is important for decision makers to be familiar with all the emerging innovation. This will help them to stay in the competition and to beat their competitors. 

So, in this write-up, we have singled out 6 most innovative trends in web development in 2021 on the basis of market demands and expertise. Explore the write-up to the depth to get the desired knowledge. 

To be precise, have a quick look at the main points, here is the list of web development trends for 2021:

  1. Progressive Web Apps
  2. Accelerated Mobile Pages
  3. Responsive websites
  4. Voice search optimization
  5. API-first development
  6. Push notifications
  7. AI-powered chatbots
  8. Motion UI

1. Progressive Web Apps (PWA)

It is one of the most trendy talks in the town of web development. It paves the way for the web development world to make website browsing experience very close to native mobile applications; basically making applications more friendly to users.

To be more precise, PWA is a website that offers functionality traditionally available to native apps (e.g. push notifications, offline access, hardware access).

As per the latest research report, the mobiles will outwit the other devices such as desktops or tablets. If you go further, there is a serious gap between mobile apps and mobile browsers. Mobile applications alone account for more than 80% of the overall time users spend with their gadgets.  

PWAs are considered best able to prevent troubleshooting issues users hate about websites the most: poor experience, slow interface, and poor visible sections.

Here are some best known companies which are harnessing the business benefits PWA has: Alibaba, Forbes, Twitter, Virgin America, The Washington Post.  

All these organizations are getting increased rates in conversion and a significant decrease in load time. 

Technology Used

If you also want to follow the latest web development trends and build a PWA. Here is the list-

  • Angular
  • React 
  • Polymer 

Price Difference

Price difference is a huge factor here. As per the shared reports by developers, creation of PWA projects takes upto 4x less time compared to native app development for iOS and Android. Well, the reason is obvious here; some of the products may not need applications at all.

2. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Google has always been so concerned about the mobile browsing experience. So it introduced the Accelerated Mobile Pages Product in 2015. And now with some amazing updates, it has now become of the latest trends of web technologies. 

To explain it technically, this technology is created to build websites which have fast loading time and have a smooth functioning across mobile devices. Talking about its experience, AMP pages are loaded for about 2 seconds as compared to 22 seconds for non-AMP pages. 

As you know that Google always fond of speedy website, which also paves the way for good SEO impact.

Technology to Use

To build an accelerated page, one must have the expertise and experience of AMP HTML open framework. And Google has already a dedicated website which contains detailed documentation, and full of tutorials and guidelines

So if you want to introduce AMP technology to your project and thus stick to the latest trends in web development — check the documentation and get started. So just check the documentation and start work on AMP.

3. Responsive Websites

However, the development trends for 2021 are most commonly recognized by the names of PWA and AMP. But still, some old ones like responsive web design are still dominant among a section of developers. 

Well, it was a good-to-have feature and now it has become must-to-have. Presently, the significant majority of users prefer mobile devices over others. To harness this trend, Google is planning to add mobile-first indexing. It implies that the the website’s ranking will depend on how well it’s optimized for mobiles

4. Voice Search Optimization

Voice search is something you can’t afford to neglect in this technical era. By looking at the market trend, it has already a significant impact on the web and it will capture the entire market in future. According to Gartner, “about 30% of all searches were done without using a screen in 2020. Not to mention the number of smart speakers which is rising year over year. The Activate outlook suggested that approximately 21.4 million of them were used in the United States in 2020.”

Talking about sales figures, then voice commerce is expected to grow unprecedentedly and will reach $5 billion in the UK and about $40 billion in the US by 2022.

If you look at the multiple studies and real market scenario, then voice search optimization is the web development trend you cannot ignore. It should be an integral part of your Search engine optimization and tech strategy as soon as possible. Early adopters are always ahead of the competition.

Technology to Use

Web speech API is generally used to work with voice data. Speech recognition and speech synthesis are the two components of the API.

Voice recognition also allows recognizing the entire context and then responding to queries. Speech synthesis is a text-to-speech component that allows scripts to read text content. Have a look at the Web Speech API using this guide to start. 

5. API-First Development

As per the current trends in website development, web solutions have to be customized for connectivity with other applications. And it is no surprise that the increasing number of phones, wearable devices, and other digital devices should be integrated with one other. This need paves the way for the API-first development approach. 

Generally, when an organization is building a web or mobile solution they usually don’t heed to the API development. So they might not be properly designated or tested.

Technically speaking, the traditional approach is somewhere time-consuming API design process which increases expenses and service market entry time.

The traditional API development cycle looks as follows:

  • R&D team responsible for creating a design. 
  • Prototype is being developed by back-end developers (meanwhile QA engineers and front-end developers have to wait)
  • Once the prototype is ready, QA and front-end developers get access to it.
  • If the bugs are found or one has to add new features or any improvement, this cycle will continue.

Technology Used

Here are some of the prominent choices for API-first design:

  • Swagger
  • API Blueprint

6. Push Notifications

Push notifications are considered as the most powerful tool for enhancing the user experience and supports the marketing activities of the organization. However, mobile applications are customised to have flexible capabilities for user notifications. But here as well, web apps outwit the mobile apps.

Talking about its functioning, push notifications are used to deliver information to end-users (about newly posted blogs, the brands you have searched in the past). Amazingly, it is possible without registering and leaving credentials like email. It is an efficient tool to interact with the target audiences and deliver them some specific content. 

Tools to Use

There are multiple solutions to utilize when building browser push notifications. Here are some:

  • OneSignal
  • PushEngage
  • ZoPush
  • PushCrew

The Bottom Line

So, web development trends for 2021 are as follows:

  • Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
  • Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
  • Responsive websites
  • Optimization for voice search
  • API-first design
  • Browser push notifications
  • Chatbots powered with AI and ML
  • Advanced animation using Motion UI

So if you are planning to innovate your web strategy, then the write-up is a good way to comprehend the modern trends in web development and to decide which one can suit best to your business model. And for any help on how you can start, please refer to the libraries issued by Google.