Web developers all over will be wondering what the hottest trends are in commercial websites. The best way to figure out how to stand out is to look at what others are doing. Take a look at our guide to see what the best web development trends are right now, and maybe you can find space for them on your business website.
Web Accessibility
The world is becoming more accessible to the disabled, as it should, and the internet is only just following suit. An example of us moving in the right direction was 2022’s anti discrimination law that passed in March. The US Department of Justice released a set of guidelines to be followed by every commercial website on website accessibility.
The guide outlines different areas that might hold someone back from getting the full accessibility of the site, even if they are more guidelines than solid rules. Examples include videos with subtitles included for the hard of hearing or captions for users with visual impairments to understand the context of the video.
Nostalgia
Nostalgia has already taken over everything from film and TV narratives to meme culture, why shouldn’t it infiltrate web design too?
And there are a lot of ways to go about it. We’re always talking about the happier days of MySpace or the early days of Windows 95. You can incorporate some of those elements into your design. Everything can be more pixelated, less clear, more garish, and it’ll all be on purpose. Add sounds of the dial-up tone, add text that bounces around the screen like the DVD logo on your TV, make your scroll as sporadic as it used to be, and let your imagination run wild with 90s iconography.
Mobile-Friendly Designs
Mobile-friendly designs are given. And have been for years. But now the point has shifted from websites with mobile-friendly alternatives to mobile-friendly websites perhaps with PC and laptop alternatives. As the public shifts more and more to using their phone more than their PCs and laptops, especially for the sake of looking at commercial websites and online shopping, it’s becoming more important than ever to have your mobile website up to scratch. That goes double if you have a global market. African and Middle Eastern countries have a culture of skipping laptops entirely and going straight to keeping their phones in their hands and haven’t looked back since. An example of a mobile-friendly site would be 10Bet (https://www.10bet.co.za) which can offer games and betting on the go in an aesthetically pleasing mobile site.
Artificial Intelligence
2023 is the year of AI. ChatGPT has just released its 4th edition, competitors are popping up all over the internet, and podcasts are abuzz with theories and possibilities. But we’ll start small. No one is taking over the world with AI, but it could be a great option to include in your web design. Chatbots are old hat by now, but clients are still going to ask for them since they weed out a lot of customer problems that would have otherwise been an expensive and time-consuming phone call. A personable little character on the screen asking to help you out with the company’s most common problems is an easy fix.
But the possibilities of chatbots are extending. You can have them be your customers’ personal shopper, uploading products into the bot and giving it the ability to look at what the customer was looking at on the site and give suggestions.
Scrapbook Aesthetic
As for aesthetics, the big hit this year appears to be the scrapbook look. Everything looks scraped together, as though ripped from a series of magazines. Mismatched fonts, wonky images, images overlapping each other, drawing over images, the white pattern of the rip along the side on display: all the basic rules you learned in school apply here. The idea is quirky and eye-catching, just like real scrap art. And scrap art is taking off on Instagram and Pinterest lately, so you can look up a few artists with collections of magazines and half-ripped books in their studios for some inspiration.
Animated Product Reveals
Add a bit more dynamic movement to your products by animating product reveals. A user can hover over your products, which can trigger a reveal. It’s common to see users hovering over items and getting another angle or a demonstrative use as the reveal, but you can add a dose of pageantry to your products by revealing them from an animated curtain or other movements, and allow users to click through to the product for more information.
