Web Development Trends for Publishers

Every year brings with it a host of new trends within the realm of Web Development. Staying on top of these emerging trends and giving them priority during web development can go a long way towards delivering great results for web publishers. Here we have highlighted some key trends.

Progressive Web Apps (PWA’s)

Microsoft defines Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) as simply web apps that are progressively enhanced with native app-like features on supporting platforms and browser engines. Building a website that provides app-like experiences has gotten very advantageous with PWA’s. To begin with, PWA’s offer offline supports reduced use of device storage, low development costs, ability to engage users with push notifications, display advertisements with speed, performance and more. PWA does away with the hassle associated with downloading, installing, and updating the apps. It provides customers, launch-from-home screen installation with responsiveness truly optimized for the mobile context. Popular examples of usage include Pinterest, Flipkart, OLX, Starbucks, and Forbes.

Voice Search optimization

Search engine optimization is imperative to get good rankings in search results; not only for text entered searches but also for voice. With the emergence of AI, it is expected that 50% of all searches will be voice searches soon. According to Google, 20% of mobile queries are voice searches. This leads to important content and SEO implications. When optimizing voice search, it is important to include these factors in the strategy; misspellings that arise from the pronunciation of unfamiliar words and adjustment for natural language slang words used in conversational searches.

Chatbots optimization

Chatbots are defined as programs (often using AI & NLP) that conduct conversations via auditory or text methods. Chatbots certainly appears to be capable of becoming a generic phenomenon that most websites could easily catch up with. “Even Spider-Man gets the Chabot treatment to promote Marvel’s Secret Empire”. Globally used as effective customer support agents, these instant messaging systems provide much-needed assistance with queries and routine requests and lower customer wait times. Chatbots range from simple messaging bots, voice-enabled bots to advanced self-learning Chatbots. For publishing websites, Chatbots can be leveraged to deliver messenger notifications, to manage subscription settings or for content distribution.

Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR)

With many textbook publishers opting for a digital-first strategy, what is needed is to create better sites that are more alive; with more life-like simulations that immerse learners into the world of education. Reality technology brings rapid value to a lot of existing web pages. Staying true to its immersive nature, it increases learners engagement on education sites through the addition of video, audio, call to action buttons, images, and 3D models within static text content.

With the foray of web-based augmented reality, readers can be introduced to new levels of interactivity directly in a mobile browser which makes learning more entertaining and knowledgeable without the hassles of downloading content, apps or using headsets.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

AMP is an open-source initiative (HTML framework) developed by Google that provides a straightforward way to create web pages that have fast-loading times. AMP is, however, more than a web page prioritizing high speed and pure performance. It is user-centric beyond everything else and favored by popular search engines. These pages are characterized by a lightning bolt symbol in mobile search results. Many publishers from around the world have adopted AMP to improve their search results. 

Being a leading provider of publishing and eLearning services, diacriTech’s expertise encompasses digital solutions for web and mobile platforms including SEO, augmented/virtual reality, and AI. If you need any assistance regarding the implementation of the above trends, please don’t hesitate to reach out to marketing@diacritech.com.

References
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-web-apps/get-started
https://searchengineland.com/google-reveals-20-percent-queries-voice-queries-249917
https://searchengineland.com/is-your-brand-prepared-for-voice-search-three-steps-to-get-the-conversation-started-247483
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/06/ar-for-the-web
https://amp.dev/