Top 10 web app development trends you must follow in 2021

Last Updated: 25 January 2021, updated with latest web app development trends

Websites play a critical role in businesses as they are essential for branding and creating awareness and reach of their product or services. If your business website is appealing to visitors and has a better UI, it will attract more people. Web development frameworks and tools evolve faster than they can be implemented. That is why keeping tabs on current and upcoming web app development trends is crucial for modern businesses. 

There is a noticeable paradigm shift in web development. With around 1.94 billion websites worldwide, businesses find ways to turn their sluggish websites into web apps that provide a better experience. 

It is not a hidden fact that modern business owners often extend web development technologies to mobile devices (web apps). This requires the integration of better technology into web development. Development cost, time, and resources are the primary concerns that business owners face when making digital decisions. 

With the pandemic, customers move towards using the web and mobile apps to place their orders and fulfill their grocery or booking needs. Safety of customers and ensuring better health measures have taken the center stage. There is a stiff competition where businesses want to round up the most users for themselves while maintaining a competitive edge in the market. We can say that this pandemic also has contributed to the emerging web development trends. 

Here are the top 10 web app development trends you need to look out for in 2021 

We would also like to mention the incredible contribution of HTML5, Javascript, CSS, and others towards web development. But today, we must look forward to the future, which brings our discussion to top web development trends for 2021. Let us see 

1.  Using AI (Artificial Intelligence) for seamless customer experience 

Businesses around the globe are working towards the integration of AI with their offerings. Even though AI is not new when talking about web development, it still has a long way to go as far as flawless integration is concerned. Developers are making more progress in developing machine learning algorithms to help businesses gain better automation and make predictive decisions. 

With supervised learning, businesses can enable algorithms to learn more about their website. Data analysis plays an essential role in this approach, fused with a significant human contribution. Yes, there is plenty of data out there, in the case of websites. When AI and machine algorithms are fed data systematically, the chances of creating better integration grow tenfold. 

Yes, algorithms can be left unsupervised for exploring the website data, but that process is longer. Many retail businesses and e-commerce giants have successfully integrated AI assistants into their websites where the chatbots read, process, and provide results based on the users' queries. AI will keep on making its contribution towards web development trends beyond 2021. 

2. AMP - Accelerated Mobile Pages  

Accelerated mobile pages aim at providing a higher user experience to the users with necessary features such as speed. These mobile web pages are designed to process ad display data at an accelerated rate. These mobile pages are developed with the help of web plugins to avoid complex coding and higher UX. Businesses should surely pay heed to this web development trend for 2021. 

3. Chatbots 

Chatbots are a result of the blending of cognitive intelligence with voice recognition technology. Websites mostly use chatbots, and the voice part of this incredible technology is not explored by many businesses as there is too much development required to achieve such a feat.  

Bots collect user data after asking the customer or visitor a series of questions. After collecting the answers, the bots analyze the data and post their responses to the customers. We all have seen how financing companies have integrated chatbots into their websites and apps for helping customers and keep their workforce safe during this pandemic. 

It is the best real-time example of chatbots being used for resolving smaller issues before passing them down to human authorities. Such technology reflects the standard of business operations, customer experience, and staff security.  Many businesses will be looking forward to developing and integrating chatbots into their website to help customers.  

4. IoT - Internet of Things  

The Internet of Things (IoT) industry has been growing at a phenomenal rate over the years. There still are sections of the tech industry that say this technology has not achieved the success it deserves. 

Whether industrial automation or developing healthcare tracking devices, IoT, every other business domain has seen its tremendous impact over the years. This technology will stay in trend for web development because the need to track website data in addition to IoT-smart devices will see a tremendous rise in the coming future. 

Let's give you a brief. Imagine yourself having a warehouse or a goods storage unit. With safety and security measures in place, you cannot have more than 2 or 3 staff members managing the inventory. With IoT devices merged with RFID scanners, you can keep remote count or train your staff to do so without the fear of being exposed to the risk of catching the virus. 

By the year 2020, the IoT market is set to cross $1.6 trillion. This prediction is intensely driven by the development of web tools for fitness bands, smartwatches, and smart devices. There is going to be a surge in the fitness band and device market. Companies that venture into this foray will need a digital partner for developing IoT-based web development solutions. 

As IoT works with server-less technologies, it will encourage businesses to use cloud platforms to put less stress on their servers. This will also enable companies to enhance their website loading speed to provide a better experience to their users. 

5. PWAs - Progressive web apps 

Even though PWAs are not something new or lesser-known, their advent into the market has been remarkable. The reason is that progressive web pages allow businesses to create a high-quality user experience for their clients. 

The primary task that is handled by PWAs is enabling users to experience similar browsing speed on desktop and mobile web browsers. This modern age web technology has contributed to web apps' development with advanced features like offline mode, making them more interactive and responsive. Developers use HTML, CSS, and Javascript web technologies for developing high-end web applications. 

The best example is Google Maps. It offers offline maps that users can access even without an internet connection. Businesses can take advantage of this feature by storing static files in the browser cache and introducing business logic in the mix and ta-da! 

This web technology is best suited for businesses aiming to take a mobile-first approach where they want the users to have similar experiences on both mobile and desktop. 

6. Single-page websites 

Many businesses are still stuck with developing a complex web of pages. We say you should check out single-page websites, especially if you are a start-up or an entrepreneur. 

Even Apple used a single-page website for their product categories. The simple reason is that single-page websites enable businesses to target the specific audience segment for their product. Single-page websites are generally developed using WordPress. 

7. SPAs - Single Page Applications

Application programming interface technology is growing more robust, more advanced, and helping single page applications grow. They are the reason that users enjoy faster feedback from modern web pages than those slow-loading websites. 

Be it Facebook or Google Drive, SPAs have made web applications more attractive and user-friendly with a faster web experience with interactive features. 

8. Voice commerce 

Yes, your assistant is now smart enough to understand what you want to order, add the products to the cart and remind you if you are running low on supplies. The real-life application is voice commerce supported by advancements in the smart speaker industry. With steady growth in the machine learning algorithm and the merger with natural language programming, intelligent speakers now have better speech recognition and cognitive intelligence. 

With the integration of voice recognition technology into consumer apps and websites, businesses have allowed customers to gain desired information regarding price, stock availability, and even purchases. Enterprises have successfully permitted customers to use voice assistants for grocery shopping. 

With the smart speaker technology at its helm, e-commerce or voice commerce is set to reach a remarkable $40 billion by 2022. To integrate such an innovative technology within your websites, you need a digital product development partner who has extensive knowledge of this field. 

9. DevOps will bring more automation

The agile principles inherent in the DevOps-centric approach allow businesses to accelerate their pace of innovation and digitization. That being said, 2021 will see three inner trends in the DevOps approach. 

DevOps in the cloud 

In comes, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), a scalable, reliable, and secure solution for your IT team and the end-users. With IaC, businesses will store servers, networks, and storage devices, whether on-premises or in the cloud, as text/code files. Such an approach enables enterprises to automate and simplify their business processes. 

IT firms will enjoy a seamless infrastructure version control system that allows their team to roll back to the ‘last working configuration in case of a mishap, resulting in rapid recovery and reduced downtime. 

More Kubernetes 

Kubernetes, also known as K8s, is an open-source system that enables automation deployment, scaling, and manages containerized applications by grouping the containers that make up an application into logical units—thus creating ease of management and discovery. 

Apart from automation and faster deployment it  

• helps them manage speedier delivery of software 
• allows application redesign for clouds using container-based microservices solutions 

Microservices help applications to be more resilient in comparison to monolithic applications. 

GitOps: A worthy emerging technology 

It is the key to launching effective software releases in the cloud-native era - siliconANGLE 

Though this is relatively new compared to the two trends in DevOps that we discussed, it is more cutting edge, and there is room for improvement in the coming years. 

This technology replaces the standard DevOps workflow and its sequence of steps using a source code (Git) repository. Git is set as a single source of control mechanism for creating and updating system architecture. 

The changes are made to the Git repository with pull requests and then automatically pushed to the live infrastructure, thus reducing both planned and unplanned downtime with faster and reliable deployments. 

Everything required to run an application is stored in a single source code repository so that changes can be quickly identified and rolled back whenever needed. 

10. Infusing big data analytics for better app development 

Big Data has seen tremendous growth and support in recent years. This technology backs businesses and IT specialists in a variety of processes. 

Businesses are utilizing this for better business decision-making and process automation tools. Although there are numerous interesting aspects of Big Data, the most important is its support for web app development. 

Faster development 

By using advanced analytical tools, businesses can seamlessly analyze enormous data and gain useful insights into certain web functions and features. 

Learning the user preference is as important as it enables faster application development. Developers can get optimal results and meet the user’s expectations faster. Data analysis keeps track of the dynamic user demand. 

Enhanced security 

Generally, security vulnerabilities right in front of the analysts and may go unnoticed. 

The aspects where cybersecurity vulnerabilities exist 

• OS (operating system) 
• Services and application flaws 
• Improper configurations 
• Risky end-user behavior 

Some crucial statistics related to Bigdata security 

• 90% of respondents from MeriTalk’s new U.S. government survey said they’d seen a decline in security breaches. 
• 84% of respondents said they’d used big data to help block these attacks. 

Let’s see how big data will be a force to reckon in 2021 as well 

For improving cybersecurity, business owners must rely on the tools that can provide intelligent risk-management insights, and Bigdata experts can provide you with the same. 

The tools you choose must make every data and insight available to analysts. Such a seamless approach enables analysts to counter security threats at a faster rate. 

Data analytics help businesses categorize the threat level of a cyber-attack. By evaluating various trends and data sources and running the same inside the data analytics tool, companies can counter these threats. 

Using intelligent data analytics, businesses can develop a predictive model that can notify a cybersecurity attack in real-time. When companies compile machine learning and artificial intelligence with data, they can create an analytics-based mechanism for predicting cyber-attacks. 

Concluding thoughts: Web technology trends keep you ahead of the curve 

Technology will continue to see rapid growth and web development trends are no exception. If you are updated with the upcoming web development trends, you can always be ready for the change, and there will never be a need to rush into developing applications with higher costs. It would help if you had a plan, an executable program. You must know every element in the market for creating an intuitive and attractive website that gives your customers what they need, an extraordinary experience. 

We hope that the web development trends will be a great help for you and help you decide your web development path to benefit your business. 

If you are looking to include a progressive web development company as your digital partner, you need to contact us. Rapidops will help you monetize every digital opportunity by delivering an outstanding digital experience to your user base.

We have developed over 200+ digital products for Fortune 500 companies and have helped innovative start-ups create a firm ground for themselves over the past 12 years. As a business wanting to establish its name, you must shape your success story with cutting-edge digital services, and we can help you develop them.