Nowadays, it’s hard for us to imagine that there was a time when we couldn’t just go on Google and have access to all the knowledge of humanity in a matter of seconds. Young people born in the internet era take it for granted. Indeed, the moment the internet appeared, our lives were changed forever.
The change, however, is still ongoing.
A key component of the internet, for example, without which it could not function, is the website. Websites are like paper in yesteryears; any information that anyone wants spreading has to be printed on paper and distributed.
A website is simply a magazine or newspaper that has been transposed in the digital medium. Instead of taking days or weeks for the paper to be distributed to people around the world, it just takes seconds now if disseminated online.
The existence of websites had led to the creation of a new job: web design. Web designers are the architects of absolutely every single thing you see on a site. They are responsible for everything, from ensuring that the various elements work, to making sure the website looks great as a whole.
Despite their importance, however, web designers might be rendered obsolete in a few years.
The future of web design is already here, and people working on websites will definitely be affected.
What does the future hold? And how will websites of the future be produced? Let’s find out.
Technological Trends in Development
Most people are not aware of the backbreaking effort that goes into making a website. Web designers and developers spend a lot of hours writing the code, and one wrong placement can lay waste to hundreds of hours of work.
Their problems aren’t over once the website is up. Servers can be overloaded, content can be wiped out in an instant, the website itself can crash, elements can go out of alignment and even more gravely, the website can be hacked.
This is why most small business owners prefer to spend thousands of dollars to hire a web designer for their website. A lot of entrepreneurs don’t have the skills to build websites themselves, nor the time to study how to do it.
Fortunately for them (although unfortunately for web designers), in just a couple of years, emerging trends will do a lot (if not all) of the work. Here are some to look out for.
Artificial Intelligence
The potential of A.I. has been researched for use in all aspects of human life, including, of course, web design. A.I., in comparison with the human mind, does not tire. It’s an ever-awake brain and it works unceasingly 24/7.
Can you imagine what the implementation of artificial intelligence in web design would mean? It would have a huge impact, for sure. For instance, with the use of AI, you can build a site in a matter of minutes for just a few dollars, instead of waiting for weeks or months and spending thousands on web designers.
You can coordinate the entire process, too, through an interactive platform. Everything will work with minimal input on your part. Due to the huge processing capability of A.I., things will take shape at an outstanding speed.
Moreover, if websites nowadays rely on customer support, in the future, we might be talking directly to robots instead of living people. Customers’ issues and concerns will be addressed in real-time, as the processing power of AI translates to lightning-fast delivery of assistance.
For example, take a look at Bookmark and see for yourself how AiDA, their Artificial Intelligence Design Assistant, works. Create an account and try to make a website. Time the process, and you will see that within just a few minutes, you will have your own custom, professional-looking website.
Pageless Websites
Believe it or not, pageless websites are already in existence. Regular websites comprise multiple pages, but the pageless ones are made specifically for scrolling. This means that a site will only have one page.
Although it doesn’t sound all that modern, it has many advantages:
– The speed of the site is vastly boosted.
– The notion of “responsive” design will be destroyed, as you will no longer need it because the website will look great no matter the platform.
– The structure of the site will rely on narration.
Mobile Traffic Will Surpass Web Traffic
This is pure math. It has been proven a long time ago that traffic is slowly moving towards mobile platforms. This is due to the evolution of smartphones, which are now as powerful as the computers we had five years ago.
Because pretty much everybody has a smartphone these days, the shift towards mobile traffic is inevitable. We’re surfing the internet all day long from our phones because we seldom find the time to sit at our PCs or laptops anymore.
In the future, web design will focus on mobile traffic more than anything else. The web designers of today will have nothing to do with the “web” per se, in the sense of working from computers. The pageless design we’ve talked above will help them in this sense.
Virtual Reality
Virtual reality is no longer in the realm of science fiction books or movies. It’s actually part of our lives already. For example, in the future, we might not surf websites the traditional way anymore, i.e., by clicking through the pages.
Equipped with VR headsets, we will actually walk through the websites. We will shift through the sections by merely thinking of them. This sounds so technically advanced, but this is well within the future.
VR will have a deep impact on our notion of storage. Why? Because websites won’t be hosted on hard-drives anymore. They could be hosted on wireless havens accessible at any moment, be it day or night. With a pair of VR goggles, you can walk through a company easily rather than browse through its website.
Virtual Reality is huge, and we are just seeing its potential. Our lives and the world we live in will change so much that we’ll barely remember the days when we had to click our way through websites.
User experience will be crucial in the years to come, too. The one we have today is already dying a quick death. To illustrate an example, make sure you check out the WebVR API, which basically allows you to design with a VR headset.
The Future is Now
Given the fast pace of development in technology, it’s time to say goodbye to old thinking. If until now all websites were created for the web, in the future they will be created for the users. We are in no position to even pretend we understand the impact this will have on our society.
We had been warned before to prepare for web innovations and adjacent technology. Now we are warned to prepare for their disappearance. The jobs of web designers will be facilitated to the point where they will only have to speak up a few keywords and sites will create themselves.
This puts them at risk of losing their jobs, sure, but it also gives them the opportunity to carve a new niche for themselves, to find other ways that they can work with the technology.
After all, as people say, “The future is now.” There is no better time to prepare than today.
About the Author
David Kosmayer is CEO and Founder of Bookmark.com, a website builder disrupting the future of web design with Artificial Intelligence. David created his first company at 22 just coming out of college. Marketing Extensions Inc., an online affiliate and marketing agency, was born from the basement of his parent’s home. This company grew under his leadership into a 55-person team, topping $60M in revenue in less than a decade. David is highly focused, dedicated and passionate about building successful companies.