Today’s Web Environment

Web development trends are constantly changing. With it, platforms, languages and other components that comprise the web are also becoming more refined. Boundaries are being pressed by the growing need for businesses to deliver their products and services to multiple devices around the world. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the most useful web development trends for today’s websites with a goal of reworking your website into an experience for your visitors that they will interact with.

Here are the top web development trends in 2018 that will help you stay on top of your game. Hopefully, this list will increase your knowledge, allowing you to make a more educated assessment of what is best for your business.

Single Page Websites

Single page websites are very popular right now. Many companies are choosing them over elaborate multi-page sites to meet the needs of their businesses. Some of our clients have opted to use them because it provides a much simpler focused message to their visitors.

The benefits of a Single page website are:

• Improved Mobile Experience
• Easier to target specific audience
• Focused message

From an SEO perspective, some people have issues with a single page website. Because the message is focused, keyword targeting is narrowed down. With a multi-page website, every page is a new opportunity to position (rank) the website to target an audience specific to that page’s message.

Let’s have a look at an example.

One of our clients, that uses the single page trend, owns multiple restaurant venues in Bangkok. The single page approach is perfect for the restaurant websites. On a single page, they can provide, a branded heading, an About us section, an image gallery, the menu, an online reservation booking form, and a contact page with location details.

This approach works very well as most of his website visitors are using a mobile device to visit the website. All information is on a single page with a focused message. The user does not need to click through several menu items to find information about the venue.

However, single page websites do not work well for all business. Your business may be better served with a multi-page approach.

If you need any input on adapting this web development trend to your business, you can contact us from our web development services page on our website.

Push Notifications

Push notifications are becoming more prominent, and a lot of websites are utilizing this feature. A user simply needs to click on the “Allow Push Notifications” button on the automated browser prompt the first time they visit your website.

Here some benefits of utilizing a push-notification feature:

• Engages users without a great deal of effort and time
• Offers users useful, valuable information
• Easy to implement
• Users who are not even on your website can be engaged through push notifications
• Low user opt-out rate (less than 10%)
• Higher conversion rates than that of email (30 percent)

However, care should be taken when implementing push notifications. The old-fashioned “water hose” approach to marketing is especially dangerous when applied to push notifications. It will cause your users to disengage from your website.

User-centric push notifications must be tailored to the people receiving them. Segmenting your users before you message them ensures they receive information that is relevant and valuable.

Message personalization is also critical. Your push notification system must understand your users’ behavior across platforms and devices, and in real time. A successful push notification strategy should also take into account message timing from the perspective of the end user.

Online Interactive Chat with AI

These systems, also called chatbots, are among the most dominant forces in customer service. They work well with social networks and e-commerce websites. These systems enable direct, one to one discussions with visitors. This results in forging good customer relationships and improving brand name engagement and commitment.

One of the functions of a chatbot is to allow websites such as Facebook, Google, Skype and Twitter to analyze massive quantities of information to better understand human behavior and other crucial idea procedures on the internet.

The biggest misunderstanding is the idea that bots can seamlessly and entirely replace humans as virtual assistants, customer care operators, or personal shoppers.

Chatbots should have clearly defined paths and funnels through which they lead visitors toward explicit or implicit goals. The process should include a series of questions and answers, and possibly even links and buttons. The realm in which a bot can act should be clearly defined. Boundaries should be created that the bot cannot cross and that support, contain, and actually help the system offer a much more effective, useful, and fulfilling experience.

Enterprise Applications and Digital Transformation Tools

This is a web development trend that is just starting to gain some traction. These applications are developed with a modern interface for mobile devices and web applications. The front end is supported by data from various systems used by the company, many of these legacy systems.

This trend involves implementing a platform that lets you visually develop your entire application, easily integrate with existing systems, and add your own custom code when you need it. The applications created can be used for Internal users or consumers.

Some examples of this are:

• Native mobile field service applications
• Mobile Banking applications
• Web portal for Customer Insurance claims
• Field Sales and Service mobile application
• many more …

These tools allow a business to quickly create web and mobile applications in a manner of weeks or months, instead of years using a visual development approach. They provide multiple environments for development, testing, and production. In addition, they allow the developer to integrate with just about everything available using SOAP and REST APIs. The goal is to reduce development time to produce a beautiful, useful, scalable tool for the business without constraints.

Recently, I have been using the OutSystems platform and was very impressed with what I was able to do in just a few hours. The days of 2-year projects are going to be behind us soon.

Conclusion

As web development trends continue to change, it is important to evaluate the needs of your business and your users. Implementation for the sake of having the latest technology is not a justifiable reason. There should be value added to your offering as well as an improved line of communication between your business and your customers.