With the year-end coming closer and increasing demand for web applications for all kinds of businesses, let’s look at the trends for web development in 2022 based on current trends and additional research. Whether you’re an entrepreneur trying to make your website more efficient and lucrative, or you work for a company that does web app development and want to know what will help to boost the development of your apps or your skills, here are seven trends that will be seen in 2022.
1. Using Progressive Web Application (PWA)
Progressive Web Applications (PWA) are applications that act like a native app while running on any browser. It has the flexibility of a website and provides functionality like a native app.
It allows you to see content on the browser without downloading the actual application from apps like App Store or Play Store. It even works offline and in a poor network, conditions making it accessible even on a 2G connection. PWAs give access to mobile features like camera, microphone, geolocation, etc. which are essentially provided to downloaded apps on phones.
As it can run on any platform, businesses can tap into a wider market rather than just focusing on making an app specifically for Android users or iOS users. It will reduce the time of the development process and will help your product reach a much larger number of users than before.
If you already have a website and are confused about whether you need to make an application, you can check that by developing a PWA. You can grab a user’s attention, engage with them through your PWA and make a spot on their home screen.
2. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence has been around us for a while now and we are seeing its implementation more than ever. Its demand and use are only going to increase in the next year. AI has been used in web development to provide a better user experience, give personalized content, chatbots, voice search optimization, etc.
Chatbots have been implemented by businesses for automating repetitive tasks, handling multiple customers at the same time, collecting and analyzing data, etc. Chatbots provide faster responses to users making interactions with users better. It can solve a wide range of queries at any given time rather than depending on specific business hours to connect to chat operators. This can cut down expenses on support centers and get redundant queries solved with help of chatbots.
With the help of AI, businesses can provide personalized searches on their websites to make the content more relevant and relatable for the users. It can suggest content like music, videos, items to buy, etc. to users based on their past searches.
AI is changing the present-day web development process. It is helping in creating smarter applications for better engagement, experience, interaction, and scalability.
3. Voice Search and Control
With the increase in smart speakers, voice assistants, or voice control, it is no surprise that websites or applications will incorporate this feature. According to a Google report, 27% of the online global population is using voice search on mobile. And this number is only going to increase in the future as users opt for communicating with audio rather than text. The websites have become more accessible to children and seniors thanks to voice search technology.
These trends stress the importance of incorporating voice search optimization for websites. Voice Search Optimization is the method of optimizing your page to appear in voice searches. It’s the way your page will be read by a voice search device. With the help of voice search optimization, users and businesses both can get benefit from it. It saves time, makes it easier to buy products, and helps generate customer behavior analytics.
4. WebAssembly Technology
WebAssembly is the new way to run code on the web. It can take code from any language, compile it into byte code and run it on any modern browser. So far, most web applications are written in Javascript. If the application requires computing huge calculations, the speed of the application will be affected. Lags on the application will create a low user experience and this reduces the effectiveness of your application.
WebAssembly makes the application work faster and provides a near-native experience. It works on any platform and takes advantage of the available hardware. It is a low-level language written in text-based format (.wasm format) which makes it easier to understand and debug.
Creating a web application with WebAssembly has several benefits. The code can be written in any language, deployed on any platform, works on all modern browsers, is fast, reliable, secure, and provides a better user experience. When you need to create a heavy computing application, using WebAssembly is a good option. It complements JavaScript and makes it more powerful.
As of 2020, WebAssembly was majorly used for crypto mining and gaming. Any site that runs a Unity game uses WebAssembly. It can also be used for creating web-based applications like photo/video editing, word processing, spreadsheets, etc. As for 2022, we can say that as web development is evolving use of web assembly in making applications will only increase.
5. Single Page Application
On most websites, there is a lot of repetitive content. To load new data on the site, the browser reloads the whole page from the server. Single Page Application runs by keeping the repetitive information or content the same and reloads only a small amount of information that needs to be updated.
We use SPA every day in the form of Google Maps, Gmail, GitHub, Facebook, etc. It provides a natural feel to users while going through the website as a single page. SPAs are fast, easy to debug, increase performance, and can cache local storage effectively. They also provide greater web page optimization and reduce site abandonment rates.
With increasing demands for a rich user interface, smooth UX, and easy-to-navigate applications, SPA is a leading web app development technology.
6. Motion UI
This trend falls under the design of web products. The way a website looks is just as same as what content it displays. According to research, there are only 15 seconds to grab a user’s attention to your website. This eye-catching site can be created with help of Motion UI which is the latest trend and will stay in 2022.
Aesthetically pleasing websites have more appeal to users. It is not about creating a fancy website. It is more about creating responsive and friendly websites that users will love.
Motion UI creates interfaces that are pleasing and intuitive such as quick transitions and animations at appropriate places which will attract users and increase page conversion rate. One thing to be aware of while implementing Motion UI is to not let the animations and transitions affect the load time of the website as the actual work of a website like loading heavy files takes high processing power and render time.
7. Serverless Architecture
With the work from home shift due to Covid-19, more and more businesses have shifted towards serverless architecture. Typically while hosting a software application, it requires a physical server, operating system, and other web server hosting services.
With serverless architecture, you do not need to worry about a physical server, there would be a server but a virtual one from cloud services like Amazon or Microsoft. It removes concerns about physical hardware while some level of management is still required.
When physical hardware concerns are out of view, businesses can focus on the actual functions of the application. This saves a great deal of time, provides scalability, delegates maintenance, and is cost-effective. According to a report by Flexera, 98% of enterprises use at least one private or public cloud. Thus showing serverless architecture is the future trend.
Final Words
Web development technologies are ever-evolving, by staying on top of these trends you can provide your business with a competitive edge. It changes the way you interact with your clients and acts as a stepping stone towards providing a better website and more customer satisfaction.
