Web development worth following! Ready to innovate with a web app in 2020? We have researched the industry and know exactly how you can become the pioneer in your niche.
Standards in web development sometimes change faster than they can be implemented. To stay one step ahead, it is essential to focus on trends, techniques, and approaches that are gaining popularity.
We have analyzed tendencies across industries to create this ultimate list of web development trends in 2020. As a bonus, you’ll read about the top web technology stacks worth your attention in the coming year. No matter what your current interests are — marketplace development, startup innovations, or IoT inventions — you should be aware of Web Development trends.
Even if the billionaires with a decade of experience heading the industry recommend us to do so, what can we do but agree? To simplify your search, save your time, and help your business to grow in a new decade, here we have collected some of the top trends you need to be aware of while growing a web business:
Voice Search
We are currently experiencing the beginning of the voice search era. Every smartphone is already equipped with a digital voice assistant (Siri for iPhones, Google Assistant for Android-based phones). Moreover, smart speakers empowered with AI are gaining popularity.
- Ease of use
- Communication is something we don’t have to learn. Therefore, children and elders can interact with voice interfaces without any learning curve.
- Affordability
- Digital voice assistants are a standard smartphone feature already. Smart speakers are not that common yet, but a price tag starting at $50 is an excellent prerequisite for expansion.
- The report says that “voice assistant use reaches critical mass.” And by 2021, it is expected that almost 123 million US citizens, or 37% of the entire population, will use voice assistants.
WebAssembly
When building a web app, performance is usually compromised. JavaScript limitations make heavy calculations slow, and that significantly affects user experience. This is why most of the popular games and powerful applications are only available as a native desktop app.
- WebAssembly is here to change the game. This new format aims for native-like performance among web apps. With WebAssembly, the code in a programming language can be compiled into bytecode that runs in a browser.
- WebAssembly code is executed faster than JavaScript. As a result, you can write the performance-critical parts of the app with the most suitable language (C/C++/C#/Rust/Kotlin, etc.).
- WebAssembly will take care of execution in the browser. Native apps can be run in the browser right away. That means access to more users while offering comparable performance on the web without additional development expenses!
- More and more major web and desktop browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Safari, Chrome, Opera Mobile, etc. make it possible to take UX sky-high with this popular tool.
Content personalization through machine learning
Artificial intelligence, including machine learning, affects our everyday activities on the internet without us even recognizing it. This is the main point of ML — providing improved experiences natively.
Machine learning is the ability of software to improve performance without direct input from developers. The software analyzes incoming data, detects patterns, makes decisions, and adjusts its work.
- Airbnb, for example, employed machine learning to customize search results for guests to increase the chances of host acceptance of their request. A machine-learning algorithm analyzes the request acceptance decisions of each host. Depending on it, the search results in listings that are more likely to be accepted rank higher.
- Netflix engineers have more advanced ML-based algorithms to meet users’ needs in a better way. Unlike targeting the whole segment of users, each of the users is identified particularly. The algorithms provide content and search results based on users’ intentions instead of previous queries.
- Enabling natural language and image recognition can improve user experience. Machine perception allows the computer to interpret data and make grounded decisions. Machine learning is being used in web apps in different industries, such as healthcare, finance, education, agriculture, etc. This technology offers significant improvements that would be difficult to achieve without AI.
Data Security
The more data that a web app processes, the more attractive it looks to cyber criminals. They aim to spoil your services and steal your users’ data or internal company information. This can cause significant harm to your reputation and cost you a lot. Your web service security should become a top priority.
- Never neglect security testing : Security testing can be conducted during the development stage and can prevent data leakage. Each change in your web app should be explicitly tested.
- Use website-monitoring tools : An algorithm can continuously monitor all requests, as well as to detect and qualify suspicious activity. A timely notification enables your team to react and protect the web app instantly.
- Carefully choose third-party services : SaaS software is becoming more popular as it makes app development more comfortable and faster. However, you have to make sure that the service provider you choose to work with is trustworthy.
- Encrypt sensitive data : Even if the offender gets to your database, they won’t be able to extract any use from the sensitive data stored there.
Along with these tips, we’ve prepared some of the latest 2020 web trends to keep your app and data safe. Here, two crucial components must be highlighted:
AI for Cybersecurity
Machines are getting more intelligent. Although this fact has both positive and negative sides, in our report, we will pay attention to the advantages it brings. In 2020, we expect AI technologies to become even more helpful in terms of data security. We already have an opportunity to watch after the most recent improvements: AI-powered biometric logins that scan fingerprints or retinas are not just the elements of science fiction. Web systems of many great companies demonstrate these functions.
Threats and malicious activity are more comfortable to detect with AI-powered security software. As the variety of malware grows, it becomes more reliable and more dangerous. So large companies now train their AI systems to analyze behaviour patterns within a network and react to any suspicious activity immediately.
Blockchain for Cybersecurity
For several years, bitcoin and other blockchain-related topics have occupied their top places in tech blogs and reports. In 2020, we would recommend taking a closer look at it as a tool for web solution security. NASA implemented blockchain technology to protect data and prevent cyber attacks on their services.
Database safety : Once you store all your data in one place, you make it perfectly convenient for hackers to steal it. Blockchain is a decentralized database, which means that there is no single authority or location to store data. Every user is responsible for data verification, and none of the changes can be made unless everyone approves it.
Protected DNS : Large companies suffer from DDoS attacks. But there’s a cure: complete DNS decentralization. When content is distributed to a myriad of nodes, it becomes nearly impossible for an attacker to find and use sensitive points as well as attack your domain.
Progressive Web Apps (PWA) and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google prioritizes web apps that load quickly on mobile devices. This is why you should consider implementing PWA or AMP, which are unique technologies that reduce web page load time.
A progressive web app (PWA) is a web page that replicates a native mobile experience. It is fast, can work online or with a poor internet connection, and is relatively low cost. A PWA supports interactions, allowing users to enjoy a high-end experience without ever realizing that they are still using the browser. E-commerce web apps are an everyday use case for this technology.
An accelerated mobile page (AMP) works for static content only, but they load faster than regular HTML. An AMP omits all fancy elements and displays only the essential information — text, images, etc. This approach works perfectly for blogs and news publishers.
Whether you should adopt PWA or AMP depends on your specific case. However, you should start considering these technologies right now. Along with delivering a high-end experience, you have a chance to improve your search result rankings dramatically.
Multi-Experience
The app development story started from smartphones, tablets, and laptops, which are now so widespread we cannot even imagine our day without them. These days, other smart devices, vehicles, smartwatches, and components of IoT systems are gaining their striking popularity. Mobile-friendly apps are a must; however, the fresh and crispy trend for Web Development or App development emerges.
Welcome multi-experience – the way to let users use your app wherever they want to: on a tablet, on smartwatches, in a car, etc. The point is to make an app that looks good, works well, and brings value on any device, in the same engaging and useful way. 2020’s trend is the adaptation of web applications for any sort of screen. This is called multi-experience, and that’s one of the top technology trends according to Gartner.
The traditional idea of a person interacting with a software application using a laptop or a smartphone drifts towards a multisensory, multitouch, multiscreen, multi-device experience. Customers expect to use apps powered with exceptional, intelligent chatbots, voice assistants, AR/VR modules, etc. on any type of device. For web business that wants to succeed in 2020, it is time to implement this multi-channel human-machine interaction approach in the web app.
Motion UI
Motion design is one of the leading Web Development and Design trends of the coming year. Minimalistic design, coupled with sophisticated interactions, look good and draw user attention. Think of page header transitions, sweet hovers, animated charts, background animations, and modular scrolling. These and many other elements will help you display your unique style and entertain the user, improving behavioural factors and maintaining your web app rank higher in search results.
Micro frontends
Recently, microservices architecture has won the preference of software developers worldwide: unlike the massive, monolithic old-fashioned backends, this development style gives more flexibility and scalability. However, there are still complications with frontends, and both enterprise and startup developers need to deal with monolithic codebases building user interface. A monolithic frontend isn’t just hard to support. It also may affect the overall project’s quality and become the obstacle on your way to success.
With its help, code refactoring and app upgrade get easier. An Web Development Engineer can re-write any component of the frontend independently, without harming functionality and the overall UI. This also creates an opportunity to work with several autonomous teams to build app faster: each engineering group has its scope of work and deploys components independently.