WordPress happens to be the most popular content management system in the world. In fact, WordPress is so popular that it powers nearly 40% of the total websites operational today. Launched in 2003, WordPress is written in PHP. The popularity of WordPress surged after WordPress users realized that they could write their custom plugins in WordPress.
People make the mistake of thinking that WordPress is a website builder only for small businesses. This is far from true, as, in recent years, some of the biggest names like Etsy, Microsoft, TED and BBC have started using WordPress—lending further credibility to it as a reliable website-building platform. WordPress has evolved a lot in its two-decade journey, so as users we need to stay updated with WordPress that can impact our websites. In this blog, we have decided to discuss some hot WordPress trends that will shape the future of the website-building platform.
Let’s roll.
Top WordPress Trends
Although there are countless WordPress trends, we will stick to the most important ones in this blog.
Voice Search
“Hey Siri”
“Hello, Alexa”
“Okay, Google”
These are ubiquitous terms you will often see people ranting into their smart devices. Voice search has emerged as one of the most popular trends in the tech industry today. According to some estimates, voice sales are expected to hit $40 billion in the US and UK markets. Voice search is especially important for the ecommerce sector. This allows users to conveniently search for their favorite products online without going through the hassle of typing.
Many smartphone users have switched to voice search, so to provide impetus to your WordPress website, ensure that it is voice search-friendly.
The penetration and popularity of smart speakers like Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Apple Homepod are rising consistently. Understand those voice keywords are different from type keywords. You need to think of different ways to master the voice search algorithm so that your website can leverage its true potential. Put yourself in the shoes of your users and insert keywords that are voice friendly. An ecommerce site should write product descriptions that match the voice-search intent of its users.
AR/VR
One major obstacle that eCommerce businesses all across the globe face is the challenge of recreating the physical shopping experience. Technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) have proven to be game-changers in this regard. Now online shoppers can visualize the items that they want to buy. For instance, IKEA’s world-renowned furniture brand uses augmented reality (AR) technology. In its mobile app, the users can see how a furniture piece will look in their space. Many apparel brands allow shoppers to see how a particular clothing piece would look on them.
AR lets you project a few parts of the digital world into the real world. VR creates a new digital world altogether.
Integrate your WordPress website with AR and VR functionalities, especially if you are into the eCommerce domain. This way, you will be able to provide an immersive experience for your users.
Chatbots
Many brands across industry verticals use chatbots to improve the user experience. Chatbots help businesses solve the queries of their customers faster. Chatbots help brands offer the correct information at the right time to the users.
You can also use a chatbot to help your users navigate your website and complete the onboarding process.
Customer service is one arena that chatbots have revolutionized. Chatbots help answer customer queries and relieve the human customer-care team. This way, the users can get resolutions to their questions faster. Chatbots also help you reduce your cost as you do not need a lot of customer care executives.
Chatbots can perform the following functions efficiently.
- Collect valuable feedback
- Generate leads for your business
- Help your visitors to navigate the website
- Provide excellent customer-care services
There are a lot of free chatbot builders that will help you set up your first chatbot within minutes. It is very easy to add a chatbot to your WordPress website. You can just download and install the relevant plugin, and you’re all set to go.
Improving Accessibility
WordPress intends to conform to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The idea is to make all web content more accessible to people with disabilities. Apart from WCAG, the WordPress community is also working to adhere to authoring tool accessibility guidelines (ATAG). For example: UserWay’s AI-Powered Accessibility Widget specifically to provide business owners of any size an affordable yet comprehensive accessibility solution while also making the web barrier-free for users regardless of ability. These are the guidelines that govern building tools that create accessible web pages. These tools also encourage the developers to create accessible web content.
Accessibility as a WordPress trend is bound to increase in the future. The growth of trends like site navigation capabilities and voice search caption media are indicators of the rising awareness towards building a more accessible internet.
Use the best WordPress accessibility plugins to make your WordPress website more accessible.
Multipurpose WordPress Themes
Earlier, WordPress developers used a lot of niche WordPress themes that solved a particular problem. These themes were designed to serve a specific type of business. This was a big hassle as the WordPress developers had to invest significant time in choosing the correct theme according to the kind of business. Today, there are a lot of multipurpose WordPress themes available that can cater to the needs of various companies.
Popular multipurpose WordPress themes like Total and Avada have revolutionized website building. Multipurpose WordPress themes have features like critical CSS optimization, icon scanner, image and video optimization, and font management and handling, to name a few. These features serve the purpose of multiple types of businesses.
Drag-and-drop Builders
Many industry experts believe that drag-and-drop website builders will continue to lead the way in the near future. Website builders appeal to small business owners and startups who cannot afford to hire professional WordPress developers to build their websites. With just a few of these tools, you can create a feature-rich WordPress website without any coding and launch it quickly.
Many drag-and-drop website builders allow you to customize the look and feel of your WordPress website and add the desired functionality using the wide range of plugins available.
Use of Videos
Videos are an effective way to promote products and services. We expect the use of videos to continue as a strong WordPress trend because their appeal is strong—users like videos and have grown dependent on them.
They make impressive headers and backgrounds that attract users; they can show actual products or how-to techniques in actual usage situations; and they can more quickly illustrate deeper, attention-getting tone, such as emotions or visual experiences that words and still photos cannot always match so efficiently.
Minimalistic Designs
Minimalism is a website designing method that focuses on keeping only the essential elements in an object.
Minimalism is the new thing in WordPress website design. A minimalistic website design offers smooth navigation for your users. We expect the minimalistic design trend to remain popular going forward as using flat graphics and white space provides excellent usability.
There are many ways to create a minimalistic website design. One of them is to reduce the number of colors—a simple white background and block fonts, or black background and white fonts can do wonders. Don’t clutter your website with too many colors, it can add complexity to the visual experience.
One-click Demo Import
WordPress provides a one-click demo import option. This allows the WordPress developers to check the demo of various WordPress themes with a single click. The one-click demo import function of WordPress saves a lot of time and effort. It also helps the WordPress developers select the correct theme. And import all menus, comments, categories and other elements of a theme. We expect the trend to continue strong in the future.
Mobile-first Websites
The penetration of low-cost smartphones and low-cost internet services all across the globe has given rise to a new megatrend, mobile-first websites. As a WordPress website owner, you cannot afford to ignore this megatrend.
According to a report, 92% of the world’s internet users use a mobile phone to go online at least for some time during the day.
The website developers and business owners should now focus on creating responsive websites that can work seamlessly on mobile devices.
White Space
Continuing on the previous thought about minimalism—indeed—less is more. You might have come across various websites that look like a flea market. They drive away users instead of attracting them. White space can attract and engage, on the home page as well as throughout the site.
The usage of white margins on web pages has gained popularity in the past few years. We expect this trend to continue strong in the future as a white space allows the developers to build attractive websites.
Video Headers
All good WordPress developers understand the importance of an effective website header. It anchors essentials like CTAs and brand messaging, telling the essential story you want to tell at a glance while also giving users a way to act on it.
WordPress has enabled support for video headers in 2016, and since then, WordPress website users have been using this feature. Although it has been more than six years since its launch, the video header feature has not taken off on a big scale in WordPress. However, the trend has changed in recent years, as video headers have increased in popularity. We expect the trend to continue strong in the coming years as we also mentioned in our previous related comment.
Wrapping Up
WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world. Businesses all across the globe use WordPress to build robust and scalable websites. WordPress has emerged as the ideal choice for both small businesses and large enterprises. Power up your WordPress website by equipping your website with the latest trends. You will always remain at the forefront of WordPress development by doing so. Apart from this, you will be able to engage your users as everybody loves a website with the latest features.
An effective WordPress development company will help you build an efficient, immersive, on-trend website aligned with your business goals.