In 2019, website development, as with online resources in general, is characterized by a trend towards accessibility and functionally. While previous periods of development have to a large extent seen advances in hardware and software driven website design, more recent shifts have been towards reaching the widest audiences possible. Hardware and software development still help to push the limits of what is possible with a website - but for the most part, what people want are faster, smoother, and more efficient versions of existing products, rather than entirely new systems.
Keeping It Simple
With website development, this manifests as a trend towards a pared-down and minimalist approach - from the ground up. From the code and infrastructure to the front-end, websites are generally built with speed and efficiency in mind, getting best use out of available bandwidth and the rapidly-diminishing attention span of the general public.
With regards to cutting edge website build and design, these considerations are quite easy to take into account. First, designing a site that will work equally well across mobile, desktop, and any other format it might be accessed on gives a tendency towards simplification. Consider two classic functions of websites since the dark ages at the dawn of the internet: buttons and menus. Buttons and menus were traditionally designed to be used by a mouse or other cursor-centric interface - something that mobile devices for the most part lack. Many websites have buttons too small to be easily used with a touch screen, and drop-down menus are equally fiddly with just one finger. So mobile-ready sites have tended towards larger buttons, simpler menus, and clearer layout, with the aim of making one-fingered navigation intuitive and simple.
Agile and Mobile Friendly
Some companies have opted for a two-tier system, whereby simplified version of their desktop sites are developed in parallel for use with mobile computing, but this can be inefficient - requiring not only a whole new process of coding and development, but also mobile-ready versions of any content that might be required. A more recent, and more elegant solution has been the creation of agile websites able to adapt to whichever platform they are used on.
Simplicity to Speed Things Up
The trend towards simplicity has another added benefit: simpler website design often means lower bandwidth, which means faster loading, and that can have a significant impact on visitor numbers and interactions. The race for speed has taken place in the engine room of website design as well, with code developers finding innovative new ways of using JavaScript and other languages to minimise the load on already-stressed networks. These languages and codes are designed to be as widely accessible on as many platforms as possible, and with large companies backing their development, they’re likely to be reliable systems to build on for the foreseeable future.
Making your website future-proof in 2019 requires attention to be paid to three basic concepts: audience, speed, and platform. Maximising as many of them as possibly will guarantee the success of your site no matter what changes or trends occur in the years to come.
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