Development Trends 2021
Web development, over the years, has proved itself as an indispensable element in the success of any organization/business. It is a window to your business, which helps you grow it globally.
Now, the Web development world is constantly changing, so do the trends. Sometimes these trends change much faster than they can be used. To stay ahead, it is necessary to focus on the latest trends, updates, techniques, and approaches that are getting popular. Besides, knowing trends and keeping in check of what is happening around is highly essential for web development.
Here we have gathered some trends after analyzing tendencies across industries in this list of web development trends 2021. You’ll get to know about the top web technology stacks worth your attention in the coming year.
We have made this list so that you can save your time and can help you grow your business in the upcoming era. So, let’s begin.
1. Single-page Apps
All in one place. No need to switch. No need to wait..!!
Well, it is a bit irritating when one click leads to one more web page downloaded from a server. It also consumes your time and leaves a bad impact on users as well. This situation has lead to a trend of SPA.
SPA is one of the trends of recent years that helps to avoid lengthy communication with the server. It offers better page performance and provides a high level of data protection.
So, A single-page application is an app that works inside a browser and does not require page reloading during use. You are using this type of applications every day. These are, for example, Gmail, Google Maps, Facebook, or GitHub.
As JavaScript frameworks in 2021 is going to actively rise, & SPA uses this language for content loading, this trend isn't going away soon. Besides, these apps don’t require additional waiting time providing the users with instant feedback. Furthermore, it offers some amazing advantages.
Advantages:
- Great UX/UI in a native browser environment
- Saved bandwidth
- Easier set-up and debugging with Chrome tools
- The focus on APIs
- The efficiency of a caching process
Single-page app examples:
2. Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
Everything at your thumb…!! We know this concept right? Easy navigation, smooth working, less loading, and fast. Yes, that’s what PWA i.e Progressive Web App is about..!! Fast, Reliable, and smooth user-friendly experience.
No doubt, PWA is not that new. Although, it is the talk of the town since it arrived and it is going to dominate 2021 as well. Modern developers and investors are aiming for it because of its capability to perform a high-quality user experience. As they are highly mobile-friendly, there is no doubt demand for PWA is going to increase.
Well, Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are built and enhanced with modern APIs to deliver enhanced capabilities, reliability, and installability while reaching anyone, anywhere, on any device with a single codebase. Which makes it suitable for cross-device compatibility.
They not only are fast and load instantly, but they also allow users to use services offline, while performing all the functions of a native app.
Advantages
- PWA helps deliver a smooth and user-friendly web experience.
- Helps reducing bounce rates
- Works offline as it is connectivity independent
- Makes your app reliable, capable and installable
Some example of services using PWA :
3. Artificial Intelligence Development
As per the report “The artificial intelligence market to be valued at USD 39.9 billion in 2019 and is likely to reach USD 190.61 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 42.2% during the forecast period.” That's a pretty huge number…!! Isn't it???
Now, around 38% of people skip a website if the content or layout is unattractive. More than 75% of customers decide a business’s credibility based on its website design. Users take just 0.5 seconds to form an opinion about a website. Henceforth, it is essential for technology to involve in the world of web development. Here, AI comes into the picture of web development trends 2021.
Applying AI in web development helps you predict customer choices using which you can shape the overall look and feel of your website. AI allows you to know,
- What are your customers planning to buy next?
- The ideal time frame during which a customer decides to buy a product.
- What kind of products allures the most to the customers?
- What are the products that are not appreciated by the customers?
- Who all are interested in buying your products?
We are living in a digital era and it’s a well-known fact that the upcoming age is going to be all about a smarter approach in every field. This means less manual operating. For example, chatbots, Augmented Reality/Virtual reality.
Sketch2Code, a web-based solution, has recently been introduced. It relies on artificial intelligence in order to transform a handwritten UI design from an image to a valid HTML markup code.
Many users aren’t even surprised that AI is involved to some extent in most sites. It created a new dimension in the sphere of web development.
4. WebAssembly
The first thing that must not be neglected when developing a web application is performance. Now, JavaScript limitations make heavy calculations slow. That significantly worsen the user experience.
This is one of the main reasons for the rising popularity of WebAssembly. With this technology, the code in any programming language can be compiled into bytecode, which runs in a browser.
WebAssembly is an open standard that defines a portable binary-code format for executable programs, and a corresponding textual assembly language, as well as interfaces for facilitating interactions between such programs and their host environment.
Advantages:
- It’s independent of programming language and platform
- Independent of hardware
- Executes code fast
- Provides a high level of security.
It all comes down to the triangle — small footprint, cross-platform scripting, and speed. All three of these components are the key ones in modern web development. This is why a lion’s share of web development cases is not without WebAssembly today.
For more info check Webassembly concepts
5. Voice Search and Navigation
Hey Siri…. What’s trending today?
We, humans, are getting lazy day by day... isn’t it..!!??? First, we made mobiles, then developed smartphones to reduce manual works, and now we are heading towards “voice-oriented hands-free” gadgets. Command oriented services are hot topics nowadays.
Well, voice search and navigation are going to be one of the most dominant web development trends in 2021. They are already a part of our daily routine. They are super awesome as they kind of made it easy the way we search for information, take notes, and so on.
Brands like Apple, Android, and Google implement the trend in their UI/UX design process. So, this rapidly emerging trend isn’t something you can ignore…!!
Google reports that 27% of the online global population is using voice search on mobile.
Voicebot.ai reports that over half of all adults have used voice search, with 33% using voice search monthly in early 2019, jumping up from 25% in 2018.
By implementing Voice search and navigations in web development, you can make sure your service delivers an amazing user experience.
Voice user interfaces work according to the following algorithm:
- Speech recognition software converts input analog waves into a digital format
- The audio input is broken down into separate sounds, phonemes
- The software analyzes each of them and compares to words from the dictionary
- Speech is converted to on-screen text or computer commands
Advantages:
- Ease of use
- Allows freehand interaction
- High speed of task execution
- Great user experience
- Intuitiveness and convenience
People prefer to spend less time typing commands. This is why they increasingly use voice search. Therefore, web development will be closely related to the implementation of such functionality.
6. Native Apps will dominate the market
What if you are working and suddenly there is a net issue..!! Bit irritating to depend on the internet all the time. That’s where the Native app comes into the picture. It allows you to work offline as well.
A native mobile app is one that is installed directly on the smartphone and can work, in most cases, with no internet connectivity depending on the nature of the app.
Well, native app development is already in demand as it is, going ahead, software developers can expect this trend to dominate web development trends in 2021.
Since they are uniquely designed for specific platforms, they generally deliver a better user experience and more powerful performance comparing to hybrid apps. That’s the reason, more and more businesses are investing in multiple native apps for iOS and Android to enable them to provide their users with a better experience.
Advantages:
- Broad functionalities due to using the capabilities of the underlying devicE
- UI that better matches with user experiences of the OS
- Responsive and fast performance
- Push notifications
- Quality assurance through ratings in application stores.
With the increasing popularity of smartphones in the market and with the ever-increasing dominance of iOS and Android operating systems in the market, it doesn’t seem like an investment in native app development will dwindle anytime soon, not in 2021 or in the foreseeable future as a matter of fact.
7. Motion design UI
Motion design is one of the main web design and web development trends in 2021. Minimalistic design coupled with sophisticated interactions gives an engaging and interactive look that attracts the user's attention.
As its name strongly suggests, motion design is about designing movement. However, it goes quite beyond simply animating an element of the screen after it has been conceived.
Motion design must be contemplated already on the UI/UX design stage. The reason behind this is that just having a screen that contains animations falls a bit short of its intended aim: the movement added has to mean something and have a purpose.
Due to motion design, these elements will be implemented:
- Page header transitions;
- Charts
- Pop-ups
- Pull-down menu
- scrolling
All of that will help you display your unique style and entertain the user, improving behavioral factors, and helping your web app rank higher in search results.
With the help of AMP, motion design can be implemented without loss of download speed. Therefore, if you want to hold the user on your page, then do not ignore this one…!!
Advantages:
- Define your structure and interactions
- Eases navigation
- Dissimulates slow load times
- Increases session length hence reduce the bounce rate
To increase the engagement and provide better UI/UX to your web app’s users, try to upgrade it with motion UI techniques.
- Guide users through your app with animations demonstrating which step to take next;
- React to users’ gestures with catchy animations;
- Demonstrate the relations between different components of an app, etc.
8. Serverless Architecture
Serverless architecture is a way to build and run applications and services independently to manage infrastructure. Your application still runs on servers, but all the server management is done by AWS. You no longer have to provision, scale, and maintain servers to run your applications, databases, and storage systems.
So basically, Serverless applications are event-driven cloud-based systems where application development depends solely on a group of third-party services, client-side logic, and cloud-hosted remote procedure calls. (Functions as a Service).
No doubt, Serverless is reaching new heights in its path to disrupt your server infrastructure. Serverless is already used in production by companies like Netflix, Reuters, AOL, and Telenor.
as Serverless architectures help reducing system overloading, data loss, and expensive development. Consequently, one of the solutions became cloud computing, which can replace regular servers.
Advantages:
- Easy to deploy
- Better scalability
- it reduces development and ongoing support budgets
- strengthen app architecture
- increases flexibility
The most common tasks that can be very quickly executed due to serverless technologies are downloading file backups, notification delivery, and objects export. Stated differently, serverless architecture is one more trend, which will dramatically change the approach to web development.
9. Continuous Integration And Deployment
We are living in the digital era where speed and continuity play a brutal role in any sector and business, the web development world is no different either. In fact, in the world of web development, it is the uppermost priority to deliver speedy, smooth, and updated services.
Frequency in Regular bug fixes, updates, improvements in UI/UX, etc makes your web service accountable and user favorite. Also, most modern applications require developing code in different platforms and tools, the team needs a mechanism to integrate and validate its changes. It affects your overall business. Thus, Continuous Integration And Deployment are crucial in the web world.??
Well, Continuous Integration is the process of testing each change done to your codebase automatically and as early as possible. Continuous Deployment follows the testing that happens during Continuous Integration and pushes changes to a staging or production system. While continuous delivery means apps get into production for thorough testing, and continuous deployment updates them automatically.
Advantages:
- Smaller code changes are simpler (more atomic)
- Fault isolation is simpler and quicker.
- The product improves rapidly through fast feature introduction
- Meantime to resolution (MTTR) is shorter due to the smaller code changes and quicker fault isolation.
- Testability improves because of the smaller, specific changes. These smaller changes permit more accurate positive and negative tests.
- Elapsed time to detect and correct production escapes is shorter with a faster rate of release.
With such advantages, no wonder more software development companies will implement this approach in their work. As it is the most crucial aspect in the world of web development.
10. Cloud technology is here to stay
Did you know that in 2020, the cloud services industry generated almost $40 billion in revenue, taking its market value to a total of $266.4 billion from the $227.8 billion in 2019, an 17% growth in just one year?
With these figures, one thing is sure; in web development services, cloud technology is the king. In 2021, it is expected that cloud vendors like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon will continue to rake in lots of cash thanks to cloud technology.
The reason behind this hot trend is, there are several companies on the cloud, and more are expected to move there. Businesses of all sizes, from a small entrepreneurial startup or a multinational corporation, to businesses across several industries, from health care to intelligence agencies and even government organizations are all going to cloud providers for data storage.
Following are some cloud services.
- AWS Lambda
- Google Cloud Functions
- Azure Functions
- IBM OpenWhisk
- Alibaba Function Compute
- Iron Functions
- Auth0 Webtask
- Oracle Fn Project
- Kubeless
Cloud technology offers great security, scalability, and flexibility when it comes to data storage, and considering the ever-present threat of hackers which could lead to a security breach, organizations will want to ensure they are taking measurable steps to safeguard their sensitive data and avoid a data breach and other activities that might compromise the privacy of data.
11. Mixed Reality (MR)
As per the report, the market of AR/VR i.e mixed reality will grow from $1.054 billion in 2017 to $9.982 billion in 2024, and it will see a CAGR of 73.2% during the 2018–2023 period.
Mixed Reality (MR), is a combination of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). It has a pivotal role in enterprise applications. AR combines digital content with the physical environment of users, whereas VR creates an immersive experience for users.
Organizations in many sectors like Web app development, defense, tourism, architecture, construction, gaming, healthcare, etc. are realizing key business value with the help of this technology.
How MR is turning the table:
- Businesses, government organizations, and even non-profit organizations can use AR and VR to train their employees in complex jobs.
- The ability to overlay digital information on the physical environment on a real-time basis creates many possibilities for augmented reality in business.
- Media and entertainment businesses are using AR and VR in a significant way to offer engaging content to consumers.
- Businesses can use AR and VR to let their prospective customers “try-out” their products virtually, and this augments their sales effort.
MR experiences on websites will keep increasing over the coming years. Think of furniture sites like IKEA that showcases what furniture would look like in your room..!!
12. IoT: Internet of Things
According to research, “over 20 billion IoT devices will be active and connected to the internet by the year 2020”. That’s pretty impressive…!!??
We want everything smarter. Be it a smartphone or even a light-bulb..!! You see, the demand for smart gadgets is increasing day by day and it is not going to stop. And, thanks to the internet, smart life is becoming a reality. All you have to do is, command…!! Yes, that’s the thing we love.??
Well, It is impossible to imagine life without the internet as each and every aspect of the world is now connected to make everything convenient, simple, and smart. Thus, to keep the world even more connected, the advent of IoT (Internet Of Things) has been a blessing.
IoT refers to a broad range of internet-connected devices that are capable of communicating with other devices and networks. They can perform a variety of functions but are most often used to gather information and perform specific actions. You’ll be amazed to know that Every Second, Another 127 Devices Are Connected to The Internet.
Advantages:
- Improve monitoring
- New capabilities to predict and act
- Increase customer dialog
- Fine-tune services and products
- Improve control of operation processes
Nowadays, the internet is making life extremely easier but also making the world a small place now. Thanks to the growing enhancements, the internet is now part of our systems and routine to enrich us.
Iot is definitely going to rule the web development world for a long span of time…!!
13. MEAN-React-Vue-Flutter
Most of the listed above trends can’t be implemented without a certain technological stack. But nowadays there are hundreds of frameworks and libraries. Which of them will be used most often?
MEAN is a free and open-source JavaScript software stack for building dynamic web sites and web applications. Because all components of the MEAN stack support programs that are written in JavaScript, MEAN applications can be written in one language for both server-side and client-side execution environments
MEAN stack is one of the most popular ones out there. It includes:
- MongoDB - a database
- React.js - a web framework
- Vue.js - a front-end framework
- Angular - a front-end framework
- Flutter for web
React library plays a major role. It’s frequently used as a replacement for Angular in the MEAN stack. It enables the faster and easier implementation of changes, so more and more developers choose it over Angular.
- React is an open-source, front-end, JavaScript library for building user interfaces or UI components. It is maintained by Facebook and a community of individual developers and companies.
Have a look at the Vuexy React Admin Template which is made using React.
You can check_ ReactJS Roadmap For Developers for a detailed overview of how to start with reactjs. Apart from this, there is an article on the best ReactJS UI Frameworks and component libraries which will be helpful.
Vue has already made its place in the global market after giants like Xiaomi and Alibaba switched to it. This is a very compact front-end solution.
- Vue.js is an open-source model–view–ViewModel front-end JavaScript framework for building user interfaces and single-page applications.
You can have a look at the Vuexy Vuejs Admin Template which is made using the Vuejs.
Also, there is a detailed article on Trending VueJS UI Components Library and frameworks that you’ll find useful.Angular
Angular is a TypeScript-based open-source web application framework led by the Angular Team at Google and by a community of individuals and corporations.
And the last popular solution is Flutter for Web. Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit created by Google. It is used to develop applications for Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, Windows, Google Fuchsia, and the web from a single codebase. It helps to provide high-quality work of web apps on any device, so it stands high in web developers’ ratings.
Conclusion
Well, as here talked about web development trends in 2021, It can be hard to chase them since they change so fast. But, we must keep them in check and try them out..!!
By following the latest tendencies in web development, you can appease your users with a world-class user experience, improve your web app ranking, and open new markets for your services…!!
By using these trends, you will be able to provide an amazing experience to your web app’s users. Also, you will increase your chances of becoming their first choice!
Generally speaking, every web development trend is worth your attention. Some of them may continue for the next decade, for example, IoT, Voice bots, MR, ETC. While some of them will become a norm in just a few months.
So, don’t hesitate to start implementing them to your next project as soon as possible.