The internet has constantly evolved and it is imperative that we stay in tune with its evolution. It is not to adopt the trends that currently exist but also anticipate future trends and work your business around what is going to be the norm in the coming years. Let us look at some of the web development trends you can expect in 2018.

Chatbots

This is becoming one of the most popular methods of communication for all users visiting websites. Chatbots, either in written or oral form allows for a user to contact a website at any time without having to wait for a response. The evolution of a chatbot has seen it replying to the most commonly asked questions, directing customer queries to information on certain pages and in some cases, even help people complete a purchase. As more and more people are becoming accustomed to chatbots, they are definitely going to change the way we look at customer service.

Real-Time Web Apps

Although this might come across as a new concept, Real-Time Web apps have been around for a while. The reason for their existence is simple- people don’t have as much time as before and want fast interactions, these web apps allow for such interactions. The main idea of Real-Time web apps is simple- every time there is new data received, the server pushes the data, making it immediately accessible for everyone to see. Comparing this to the past, a user would have to manually check to see if there is anything new.

Website Notifications

This is a great supplement to mobile app notifications. Working similarly on the concept of push notifications, the ability to send information directly to the user is becoming popular in a lot of areas, most visible in the form of cricket scores or any kind of promotional sales. This type of communication works only when the user authorizes the notifications.

Still Websites

A still website is very simple to develop. It is simply a page that displays static and not dynamic content for the visitor. The reason for their anticipated popularity is because of their simplicity and also for the fact that they are extremely easy to develop, more secure and load much faster. These websites have evolved and improved drastically with time so if you are looking at them as boring or too simple, you’ll have to change your mind.

Design

Even design is no longer being considered as a common template. There is the significant improvement in certain aspects of design, one of them being, material design, which looks at the combination of visual material and motion. Being developed by Google, this design language works on Google’s language of material design and is filled with components such as Parallax and Toast. Fully compatible with all modern browsers, this new design language is definitely one to watch out for.

Visual Content

When we talk about design languages, it is also important to consider visual content as an important medium. One of the seemingly popular forms of visual content for a product is photo content. Through time, photos have been great instruments in launching and re-launching discussions just through the story that is embedded within it. This is going to be looked at as a great medium of communication and story-telling in the future.

Single-page websites

This is simplicity at its best. One-page websites essentially contain one, the long page which allows you to scroll through it or to navigate across it to look at the information you need. Although this page will be filled with content, it will also contain links to go up or down to the desired section. This reduces the need for long, complicated menus and is perfectly suited for smartphones, where scrolling is the way one functions.

Extensions will get more compatible

Browser-extensions have been key add-ons for many browsers such as Firefox and Chrome. Something that is definitely going to grow in this era is going to cross-browser extension compatibility.