5 Web Development Trends To Watch In 2022

Technology is constantly evolving and while it’s not necessary for business owners to update their website every year, being aware of the direction that design and development are headed can help ensure that your site looks reasonably modern and functions as expected.

Understanding the state of modern web development can also help you have constructive discussions with your web development services team when it does come time to update your website.

Increased demand for voice search

One thing to note about all design and development trends is they tend to focus on convenience. Voice search is a great example of this.

For a long time, voice search was seen as somewhat of a novelty. It seemed futuristic — being able to issue a demand to your phone and having it respond. In the early days of voice search, the big problem was that it didn’t always really work. The AI struggled to understand what you were saying or didn’t have the ability to answer your questions.

In recent years, the advancement of technologies like Siri, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home has meant that voice search brings actual value to the user. Customers will soon expect this feature to be available on all websites they visit, so it’s worth reaching out to a web development company in Melbourne and investigating the technology now before you are too far behind the 8-ball.

Dark mode to dominate

We spend a lot of time looking at screens, and it’s only recently that we’ve discovered the real damage this can do to our eyes, mental health, and sleep cycle.

Dark mode is a UI interface that was developed in response to concerns about excessive screen time. Traditionally, most websites display a dark text on a light background. Dark mode reverses this in an attempt to reduce eye-strain.

People started to take a lot more notice of dark mode when major websites began to offer it as an option, including Facebook and Google. It’s recommended that you provide users with the opportunity to toggle between dark and light modes, as not all appreciate a reversal of the UI they are accustomed to.

Chatter about AI chatbots

Chatbots are very similar to voice search in that for a long time, they didn’t work particularly well. It can be more frustrating to have a chatbot that doesn’t answer your questions than to have no type of live chat at all, so many websites steered clear of this technology.

However, chatbots have become increasingly versatile over the past few years to the point where they now genuinely add to the customer experience. It’s predicted that online customer service could quickly be replaced by AI-powered chatbots, which can provide instant answers at a fraction of the cost.

Chatbots become smarter over time, meaning the sooner you hope on this trend, the more likely your chatbot is to be a success.

More motion UI

Customers have come to expect a certain standard of user experience online. If your website fails to live up to these expectations, it will only reflect poorly on your business.

Motion UI, as the name suggests, refers to the practice of using movement and animation to elevate an interface. Movement can be used for decorative purposes. It can also be harnessed to help a user navigate a website, directing them from one step to the next.

Motion is a great way of keeping customers engaged with your website — provided that it’s implemented in the right fashion. Clumsy animations or unnecessary motion will detract from the overall user experience and tends to signal that your business (or your web development services team) doesn’t really know what customers want.

Single page applications to soar

Single page applications are designed to help improve the overall user experience by decreasing page load time.

As the name suggests, a single page application is an entire website rendered within one page. The content is dynamic, meaning when you click on a link, there is no need to load an entire HTML page. Rather, the content refreshes itself and does not require a response from the server.

It’s a slightly technical area of web development. Essentially, all you need to know is that a single page application tends to result in users sticking around for longer on your website, reducing the overall bounce rate and increasing conversions.

Many of the world’s most popular websites and applications, from Facebook to Gmail, use single page applications in one way or another. They’ve always been popular in the world and will continue to be so in 2022.

Whichever trends you and your web development services team decide to incorporate in your website, make sure the overall user experience is at the forefront of your mind. Focusing on how your customers perceive your site will guarantee you make only good design and development decisions.