After 20 years of web development, the community is keen to know what will happen year after year with this dynamic and evergreen discipline. The year 2021 was exciting and innovative for all the industry, and we all spect that for 2022.
This article will discuss the principal, most critical, and respected web development tendencies for 2022.
Let’s begin!
Cyber Security
Securing computers, networks, and data from misuse and breaches has been crucial in websites development since the 70′.
Web admins, web developers, and companies have done almost everything to ensure their digital data from external attacks. In the last decade, the SaaS Industry raised cyber security awareness exponentially because it allowed the companies to have all their crucial data in the cloud, making cyber security a vital subject in web design.
DCMS cybersecurity breaches survey:
“DCMS cybersecurity breaches survey is an annual study detailing business and charity action on cyber security, and the costs and impacts of cyber breaches and attacks.”
- The overall risk of suffering a cyber attack has increased during the COVID-19. On the contrary, fewer businesses identify breaches or attacks than in 2020.
- At the same time, “35% fewer businesses are deploying cyber security tools, which is 5% fewer than in 2020. They also state that four in ten businesses (39%) and a quarter of charities (26%) report having cyber security breaches or attacks in 2020″.
- 77% of the director and senior managers states that cybersecurity is a priority in their companies.
Future of Cybersecurity.
There are many dangers in the digital world, affecting mainly websites like malware, ransomware, Man-in-the-middle attack, SQL injection, and many more. But there also are malicious email, social engineering hacking, insecure passwords, and insecure protocols. Cyber security analysts have to stay updated with the new technologies and dangers.
Many companies are beginning to invest in new cyber security solutions like clouds security measures, remote setup, and multi-factor authentication. Companies are allocating funds to cyber insurance, cybersecurity assessments, phishing drills, vulnerability assessments, and third-party risk suppliers.
As for the SaaS side of cyber security, they have to make it easier for the average user so anyone, or at least more people, can take action to secure their databases, information, bank accounts, and digital assets.
The cyber-attacks and the spending on cyber security are rising and will be a trend in web development for many years to come.
Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
Though not a new topic, specialists foresee that Progressive Web Apps or PWAs will replace mobile apps in 2022. We could say that mobile websites and native apps are rivals because they aim to reach the same market and solve the same problem. When the demand for mobile devices arises (around 2014), the native apps find their natural habitat, but they soon realize that they have a fundamental problem; compatibility. Also, they require more steps to install and use, among other disadvantages.
What’s a Progressive Web App?
“A progressive web application or PWA is a software built on a web framework using standard web technology like JavaScript and HTML. allowing users to immediately use or install them on their phone by just visiting a website and not having to find and download them from an app store.”
(Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/progressive-web-apps)
Why Progressive Web App?
- Unlike native apps, progressive web apps can work on any device and any regular browser, offering more usability and compatibility to the users.
- Requires fewer steps to acquire and use, erasing the need for a hub or storage center like the app store.
- Users can use it offline with cached content.
- Fewer development costs
Progressive Web App Examples
- Uber: works on 2G networks and offers a good UX on low-end smartphones.
- Spotify: Uses much less bandwidth and space on the disk, improving the overall UX.
- Pinterest: Basically, they improved the load time compared to the native app.
- Starbucks: Their PWA uses significantly less space and works online.
With the smartphone’s predominance in traffic share and order share in online commerce, the Progressive Web Applications will be the kings of the user experience in the foreseeable future.
Accelerated Mobile Page
The Accelerated Mobile Pages Framework, or AMP, was created in 2015. Since then has been one of the most critical topics for web developers, SEO masters, and companies equally.
Collaboration is the best strategy.
Google and Twitter collaborated to create the Accelerated Mobile Pages open-source HTML framework. The main idea was to deliver a better UX to mobile users when loading websites. The AMP optimizes page load time, thus generating a better SERP rank than the classic mobile website.
Created in 2015, experts consider that 2022 will be a scorching trend. Despite the data from BuiltWith, we can quickly check the information of the Mobile Usage Distribution on the Entire Internet, which states that the Accelerated Mobile Pages are the most used, which explains that by the end of 2020, the number of websites using AMP exceeded 1.400.000.
Popularity.
There are several reasons for the AMP to be as popular as it is:
- It’s an open-source HTML framework.
- Easy optimization for search engines
- Lower bounce rates
- Compatible with any browser
- Less cost-intensive
These trends will mark the future of the internet; Google has always liked fast websites, which will only accentuate the rush for lightweight frameworks and mobile-friendly sites and the minimalistic approach to user experience and user interface.
Artificial Intelligence-powered Chatbots.
An AI-powered chatbot is a better and more intelligent version of the regular chatbots. They use artificial intelligence & natural language processing to understand humans and their needs to lead the user to their desired outcome with the slightest effort possible.
Facebook propelled the adoption of chatbots in 2016 when they opened the Messenger app platform to the world and showed what chatbots made possible.
Since then, the chatbot has helped companies with representation in several time zones, dramatically improving customer service, relieving the marketing and support departments worldwide, and improving the customer experience. In 2022, artificial intelligence-powered chatbots will be a topic for discussion in all web development circles.
Why automatize?
In the following chart, we can see the past and estimated growth of the chatbot market revenue. In less than a decade, the total revenue chatbots will bring to the business will be multiplied by a hundred times.
The exponential growth chatbots are experimenting with will create a whole industry around it, fueling its improvement until making them indispensable.
Chatbots can make the company’s lives more manageable and profitable, providing the following benefits, among others.
- Generate more qualified leads
- Automate business processes
- Making a sale, reservation, visit, and more.
- Paying bills
- Buying basics items
- Convert more website traffic
- Improve customer service
- Get quick answers to emergencies.
- Resolvin complaints or problems
- Providing detailed answers or explanations
- Finding the right human for customer service
How to Chatbot?
Suppose you require implementing a chatbot in your PWA, AMP, mobile app, web application, device, interactive response system, etc. In that case, you can use one of these open-source bot building technologies from tech industry giants:
How does an AI chatbot work?
Developers love the variety of ways you can build a chatbot. There are many different technologies to do it, but in the end, it’s all about what your goals are.
Chatbot process:
The chatbot process usually combines three successive functions; understand, analyze and learn to consciously improve the output of the answer, just as any other AI does, like this:
- Use already existing data to understand the question users ask,
- Correct answers are analyzed via a training process.
- Machine learning & NLP is used to learn the context and get better at answering the same questions continually in the future.
The three most common chatbots customers see today are:
- Ruled-Based Chatbots: These chatbots obey pre-designed rules, usually constructed on a graphical user interface where the bot creator designs paths using decision trees.
- AI chatbots: A bot developer initially trains the AI chatbots, which will learn automatically afterward.
- Live Chat: Used mainly by sales development teams, it can also be used by customer support organizations. More superficial than other varieties due to its live nature.
Internet of Things
The Internet of Things is a network internet-enabled device or a network of interconnected devices that require almost or no actions from users to perform or execute operations with valuable results. It was delineated for the first time in 1999 by Kevin Ashton.
“Whenever I hear people saying AI is going to hurt people in the future, I think, yeah, technology can generally always be used for good and bad, and you need to be careful about how you build it … if you’re arguing against AI then you’re arguing against safer cars that aren’t going to have accidents, and you’re arguing against being able to better diagnose people when they’re sick.” — Mark Zuckerberg.
Source: 25 Inspiring Quotes About The Internet Of Things
The chart above clearly shows what experts and researchers expect for the IoT in 2030. Web Developers must pay attention to this hot trend for the year 2022.
The Internet of Things is a vast concept and houses many other smaller applications such as:
- Internet of Military Things
- Ocean of Things
- Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
- Industrial Internet of Things
- Social Internet of Things
Internet of Future Things.
With its nearly two decades of existence, the Internet of Things is a trending topic amongst the community of internet-related experts like web developers and software developers. It will be fully developed in the next decade.
Internet of Things Barriers
To fully adopt the IoT, several barriers impede its insertion, primarily due to the lack of trust from the general people.
- Data privacy
- Security concerns
- Cost of implementation
- Inadequate infrastructure
- Lack of standardization
- Legal problems
Internet of Web Development Things
The IoT is a powerful concept for web development because it helps companies engage with customers swiftly and efficiently, create personalized experiences, and create advanced communications between operational models and website layouts. Considering the number of devices that come with broad applications like cameras, sensors, and signaling equipment, we will not err when saying that the IoT will also be a trend in 2022 and 2023 until it’s fully developed in the next decade.
Serverless Architecture
As in all the SaaS Industries companies, hyper-specialization is vital, and with Serverless Architecture, you can get just that. Also known as Serverless Computing, leaving the tasks of provisioning, managing, and upgrading the server where you hosted your web. You can leave that to a SaaS company in charge of providing Serverless Architecture for you.
“With serverless computing, companies can be more nuclear, smaller in staff, and more market-driven.”
Serverless Architecture is the future of software development. Whit it, you can focus solely on writing code, as your IT department doesn’t have to spend their time on repetitive tasks. When you need more or less server capacity, the provider will manage this automatically. From the monolithic architecture where you have a long unified codebase, now you can develop solo and single-function pieces of code, so you don’t have to load all the code of your site only to fix a bug or add a few more lines to your codebase.
This makes your new code deployment quicker, easier, and automated, but not only that. It also decreases the downtimes during a deployment. Overall, serverless functions improve the performance of your web/application and the experience of your developers and customers a great deal.
Serverless Architecture Benefits
- Less human resources, computing power, and less overall work time are needed to maintain your web/app.
- There is more time to focus on the main subject of your business; app development, service providing, or others.
- Your development team has more time to focus on the User Experience and User Interface.
- You don’t need to worry about your server and its maintenance and managing.
- IT team has fewer things to take care of, not dividing their attention from the main focus of your business.
Serverless architecture examples
Some of the biggest technology companies use serverless architecture to host their products or provide their services.
Serverless architecture.
If you’re aiming for efficiency and efficacy -and I don’t see why not seek that- the serverless technology is for you. The future is an exciting and specialized place. With serverless computing, companies can be more nuclear, smaller in staff, and more market-driven, leaving everything they don’t want to do to others. Make sure you do your thing the best way you can and let others do their thing for you.
Dark Mode User Experience
Everyone knows that Web Developers live in their rooms with no natural light. A too-bright theme can diminish their productivity significantly; hence the dark mode emerges. (some studies said so)
Jokes aside, since Twitter and Facebook adopted the dark mode for their apps, “one of the fastest-growing marketing trends it’s a reversed color scheme that imparts a soothing experience to the eyes.” Unlike the paragraph above, this is true: dark mode is more comfortable on the eyes than light mode, considering we’re spending more time increasingly watching screens.
Some Dark Mode numbers
According to this Android Authority poll, “out of 2,51, 81,9% of voters use dark mode on their phones, in apps, and wherever it’s available. 9.9% said they’re somewhere between dark and light mode, meaning 91.8% of voters use some form of a dark mode on their smartphone”.
Get Polarized Dark Mode Twitter Question
The web getpolarized.com asked its users the following question: “If you could only use one theme for polar, light them(e) or dark theme (granted it’s not implemented yet), which one would you go with?”. 89.4% of the 862 voters said dark theme.
Discord Light Theme Redeem Story.
Just for fun, I’ll leave with you a Discord story of how the Light Theme tanked its use when Dark Theme was released to the world in 2015. This exciting anecdote confirms users’ preference for Dark Mode everywhere.
Dark Mode
We’re in the User Experience era, and everything we can do to give our users the best experience is worth the investment. And the dark mode is a tendency that’s here to stay. All web developers, even app developers, have to have dark mode when developing their products.
Optimized Voice Search
Since its introduction by Google in 2011, and after the release of Siri, Google Home, and Amazon’s Alexa home technologies, the voice search has been a trend of its own authority. In 2022, the Voice Search will be a must.
What is Voice Search Optimization?
According to http://statista.com, the number of voice assistants in use for the year 2024 will be eight billons, and o be in sync with this technology trend, you need to have your app/web optimized to be found in a voice search. Like a mobile search, the SERP page will show only the optimized sites and exclude the other ones to the second page or lower.
Number of digital voice assistants in use worldwide from 2019 to 2024 (in billions)
Source: Stadista.com
The number of voice assistance devices is expected to triple in less than five years. That is why voice search optimization is such a prominent web development tendency in 2022. Marketing agencies, web developers, and even search engines need to adapt to this “new” way of search.
Why Voice Search?
Voice search has many benefits for the UX. As more AI-enabled devices surround us, the voice search will save us time in repetitive and tedious tasks you usually do by text and help us multitask. The IoT will connect everything connected to the internet, and thus the voice search will be transversal to devices. It allows you to reach places on the internet a single device could not access like your smartwatch can tell you if you don’t have milk in your refrigerator. You could schedule in your calendar a shopping stop for tomorrow or arrange to be delivered for you today, all by search commands, while you drive to work (don’t drive and text!)
Multiple devices and online stores make this kind of transaction through a voice search on a search engine, and to be in the middle of it, as a vendor, you have to be voice search optimized.
Have you always dreamed of being as efficient as Tony Stark with Jarvis? Well, that’s all voice commands and voice searches performed on the internet. Voice search can improve our productivity by much. Imagine you’re working on a new piece for your blog (TIDEOUS), and of course, there are things you don’t know or have, like statistics, images, and quotes from famous developers or entrepreneurs. You look for all this by text search on Google, and on it, you spend a third of the time you have to write your article. If you do all this by voice search, you could save a third of the time to go and play miniature golf, as all blog writers do… right?
Voice commands and search are here to stay. As a good web developer, app developer, or marketing strategy, you have to embrace it and make it part of your work and integrate it into all your services if you want to be a part of an 8 billion dollars industry, of course.
Benefits of Voice Search Optimization in Web Development
Of curse, voice search optimization can help web development a lot; here’s how:
- Develop trust and loyalty with customers by delivering time-saving solutions and company
- Hig speed queries answers
- It makes SEO campaigns more effective and opens your strategies to new markets
Examples of voice search brands, devices, and solutions
- Google Home and search page
- Amazon Alexa
- Siri
- Smart TVs
- Smartphones
- Smartwatches
Single-Page Applications
There’s a thing very well established: Google-like to go fast. And let’s face it, when Google says something like that, the rest of us say: how fast?
Since the release of slashdotslash.com, the first single-page web application in 2002 by Stuart Morris, Facebook, Twitter, and Google are leveraging the single-page application or SPA. For some time has been widely used in the development community and is one of the critical web development trends in 2022. This approach is JavaScript-based web applications that only load a single HTML page in the browser and update its content dynamically without refreshing the entire page.
The SPA approach is straightforward to build and cost-effective and requires fewer resources like space on servers, and it’s a fancy way to provide information on a single page, which is suitable for devs and visitors.
Smaller pages for Smaller Companies
As companies get smaller and more nuclear, their specializations and resources are more focused. The single-page applications to develop web applications are an excellent alternative to save money and work hours.
Also, the SPA provides offline caching, improving the loading time even more when revisiting the same page.
Advantages of Single-Page Applications
- Faster load time
- Offline caching
- Budget-friendly
- Requires less space on servers
Examples of Single-Page Applications webs
- Netflix
- Gmail
Finally…
As members of the SaaS industry, “internet industry,” and the technology industry in Scalater, we’re excited to apply all the tendencies mentioned in this article to improve the community’s business, webs, and apps.
Expect us to release a new piece next year about the main tendencies we can expect for 2023. We’re sure it will be exciting and very educative.
We’ll see us in the following piece, have a good day!
