Top 5 Website Trends to Include in your Web Development Strategy

Failing to bag guaranteed customers due to the lack of a responsive website is definitely not a sustainable option. During our tenure execution of web development consultation projects, we often come across organizations that hesitate to implement the latest design trends in the industry, and we simply cannot stress enough on how essential it is to stay rife with respect to your website design.

When technology is innovating so rapidly, users are increasingly getting used to more advanced features, friendlier functionalities, and more appealing interactions. When a website fails to have an enticing interface viewer may feel dissatisfaction simply move on to one that better suits their fancy, ultimately costing the company a prospective customer.

“In 2018 Drupal accounted only for 3.7% of the fixes that Sucuri helped fix, while 90% were attacks on WordPress and 4.3% were on Joomla. There is evidence to show that WordPress and Joomla have also seen several more vulnerabilities (64 and 63 respectively) than Drupal (only 20) in the past couple of years.”

The 5 in-demand trends mentioned below are a must-have for websites today and in the near future.

• Cybersecurity: The nature of web application/website security has become non-negotiable with the exponential increase in cyber hacks. The number of exploits in 2018 was 120% higher in 2017 and 156% higher than in 2016 as reported by CVE. Drupal continues to be the most secure among the top web development platforms. In 2018 Drupal accounted only for 3.7% of the fixes that Sucuri helped fix, while 90% were attacks on WordPress and 4.3% were on Joomla. There is evidence to show that WordPress and Joomla have also seen several more vulnerabilities (64 and 63 respectively) than Drupal (only 20) in the past couple of years.
• Progressive Web Apps (PWA) and Single Page Apps (SPA): They are built to bring native mobile app-like functionality to websites. PWAs are reliable (they load almost instantly), fast (respond smoothly) and engaging (they feel like a natural app – they can be saved as an app on the home screen of the phone). They also work offline. By providing an app-like format, PWAs help improves customer conversion as well as user experience. For example, digital news outlet, Infobae, experienced a great boost in their user engagement when they shifted from a mobile website to a PWA in terms of reduced bounce rate (from 51% to 5%), longer session times (230% increase) and number of pages viewed per session (over 3 times more than before). Single Page Applications or SPAs dynamically rewrite pages in response to user interactions as opposed to loading the entire page. The results are, a faster response time, it precludes the necessity for the user to navigate through multiple pages so visitors are not lost during new page loads.
• Low-Code Development: Although low-code development has been around for a while, products offerings have only just started maturing. Low-code development platforms allow tasks generally performed using coding, such as UI (user interface) design to be handled visually, using a drag-and-drop interface. This eliminates the necessity to code from scratch and consequently hire programming resources. Drupal supports low-code development with the Cohesion DX8 platform, enabling Drupal development with visual, low-code interfaces. Companies such as Shell and 7-Eleven have started using low code to speed up business processes and reduce the time to meet business requirements.
• Trendy Designs/Layouts: Dynamic illustrations are not the only thing replacing massive bodies of text. Hand drawings are trending over traditional dynamic images because they are more personal and human. Users are leaning towards bold colors that embody the brand’s personality, and asymmetric designs that tend to be less predictable. Multiple tools, using platforms like Drupal as the base content source and interfacing with APIs come together to create an experience that combines the web, IoT and Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality to generate immersive customer experiences. For example, a shopping application that interacts with Drupal to capture information and present it in real-time to a customer (video 2 below) can make shopping much easier and free up billing queues.
• Continuing Trends: These are a few past trends that haven’t fallen out of favor yet and continue to provide practical and cost-effective value. Chatbots have stepped up to use Machine Learning technology rendering them more adaptable and versatile in terms of response and interactions. The concept of “mobile-first” is another such trend that cannot be ignored since the world is soon headed to make an almost complete switch to mobile browsing.

Conclusion

After several years of handling CMS consulting as well as recruiting projects, we believe that Drupal is the most cost-effective, progressive and secure platform for web development. Drupal also has a slew of assorted templates which are customizable, making it the #1 platform for developing the most trendy website designs. To learn more about CMS deployment best practices and CMS security & Drupal, check out some of our other reads.

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