The digital world is quite dynamic, and trends change from time to time. To stay up with the ever-increasing competition, you must adopt the latest WordPress Development trends as a business.
WordPress is an open-source platform that is also one of the most popular options for website development. Bloggers and companies use it to create informational blogs, highly customizable websites, and eCommerce websites. The main benefit of WordPress is that it has a minimal learning curve. However, hiring a WordPress developer is always a good idea. This post delves deeper into the top WordPress development trends for 2022.
From its inception in 2003 as a blogging platform, WordPress has come a long way, and it’s now a powerful content management system utilized by 43.2% of all websites on the internet.
As 2022 approaches, a few key trends will continue to reshape the WordPress arena and linked fields such as theme development and eCommerce.
Headless WordPress
WordPress refers to a “monolithic” content management system. While it has a complex back end for content generation and management, it is still designed with front-end displays. WordPress links the front and back ends together by wrapping display functionality in plugins and themes.
However, you can easily decapitate the functionalities of WordPress’s robust content management system, providing you with an efficient and light headless CMS. You may extend the content management you’ve built in WordPress beyond your theme by utilizing WordPress’ REST API.
In this situation, you would be able to access all of the platform’s back-end features, but the system would become reactive. Content will wait to be fetched and then react appropriately. It is in sharp contrast to WordPress’s existing, proactive approach of pushing or delivering content to primarily browser-based sites.
Chatbot Integration
Chatbots are great tools for answering visitors’ questions, keeping track of their preferences, upselling products and services, and simply providing them with the information they require. Thanks to a few companies delivering excellent customer service through chatbots, people gradually seek a similar experience on whatever other website they visit. You should know this trend and have a chatbot built for your WordPress site as a business owner. You should know this trend and have a chatbot built for your WordPress site as a business owner.
WooCommerce Growth
A good exercise for any web designer is to play around with typography from the git-go. No images, no graphics, just type.
When it relates to ecommerce WordPress plugins, WooCommerce has the maximum share of the market. WooCommerce has been used by 93.7 percent of WordPress-based web stores. A WordPress website developer solely utilizes WordPress for websites with online stores and usually prefers WooCommerce over alternative plugins.
WooCommerce is a freemium WordPress plugin that integrates easily with your website. It’s adaptable and gives business owners and developers a wide range of possibilities. It also has a lot of extensions and is often updated. WooCommerce is at the basis of many of the ecommerce technologies that will emerge in 2022.
The combination of a WordPress-powered site and WooCommerce creates a powerful team. As WooCommerce is a platform that isn’t going away, it’s beneficial to both store builders and merchants. With support for increasingly large stores, it grows and improves with time. With support for increasingly large stores, it continues to grow and improve with time.
Users who use WordPress and WooCommerce have access to advanced plugins and extensions that allow them to grow their sites beyond their wildest imagination. We regularly focus on introducing new products, interfaces, and services for our rising customer base. Although many of our extensions are available for purchase in our extension marketplace, we are also working hard to form partnerships that will allow us to offer free extensions.
Performance Improvements
WordPress focuses on improving performance in a coordinated manner. The focus is on obtaining the most “significant” gains on the WordPress core and thinking about methods to assist plugins and themes developers in creating software that does not slow down websites.
Contributors from Google and Yoast are among the project’s participants. While it’s only the beginning, based on the current developments, WordPress may be able to start building achievement on success reasonably soon.
Drupal, Wix, and Duda have surpassed WordPress in terms of performance. The new performance team could assist WordPress in gaining the top rank.
Want to increase the performance of the website? Upgrading to a high-performance hosting service would be pretty beneficial. A faster website is essential since most visitors want a website to load in under 2 seconds, or they would quit it. Every second that a website waits to load reduces conversions by 12%—both site visitors & Google consider site speed load times reasonable.
Google’s Core Web Vitals are considered into mobile and desktop search results as of June 2021, with site speed being front and center, primarily in rankings. Understanding how your site loads, which ultimately defines the user’s experience, will enhance your Google ranking and improve the chances of people finding and engaging with your site.
Do you want to check how your website compares to others? With the WP Engine Speed Tool, you can evaluate the speed of your WordPress site and get personalized suggestions on how to improve it. According to Moz, there are a few typical strategies to boost your site’s speed:
- Compress CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files more prominent than 150 bytes.
- Optimization of CSS, JavaScript, and HTML.
- Reduce the number of redirects
- Remove JavaScript that is rendering-blocking.
- Use browser caching to your benefit.
- Improve the response time of the server
- Make use of a content delivery network.
- Image optimization
Accessibility Improvements
Ensuring that your website is accessible to and usable by as many users as possible, including those with disabilities, is website accessibility. Disabilities affect a vast number of people. In the United States, 61 million people have a disability, and one in every four adults falls under this category. And over one billion people worldwide have some disability.
When building a website, you may first consider the overall form, purpose, and design. When building a website, you may first consider the overall form, purpose, and design. You’ll also want to understand how the website benefits your visitor in achieving their objective. These are excellent surface inquiries, but it’s also critical to delve deeper. Consider so many types of visitors who could visit your website.
The Four Accessibility Principles
Perceivable: Data must be presented to understand visitors to the website. For example, when it is non-text (i.e., images), text options should describe what is represented in those images.
For example, when it is non-text (i.e., images), there should be text options that describe what is represented in those images.
Operable: Your website’s user interface (UI) components should work with a keyboard, and your website’s visitors must be able to browse it without using a mouse.
Understandable: Your website’s text content should be readable. Your visitors should have a predictable browsing experience, or you should offer specific instructions about how to browse your site.
Robust: Your design should work on various desktops and mobile devices, and your content should be compatible with visitors’ technology, regardless of their technology. Assistive technology such as modified keyboards, computer screens, and mouth sticks fall under this category.
How to Improve the Accessibility of The Website?
- Check the accessibility of your website. The first step in increasing the accessibility of your website is to conduct an audit. Verify if your website complies with the WCAG 2.1 guidelines.
- Select a Theme that is accessible. Ensure that all themes, including those for persons with disabilities, are accessible to all users.
- Choose an accessibility plugin to audit but not to fix your site. There are several accessibility plugins available, but none of them give a simple resolution.
- Make sure your website complies with the WCAG guidelines. To confirm that your website complies with accessibility requirements, use the WCAG checklist.
Checklist for the Accessibility
- Avoid displaying flickering or flashing content.
- Identifying a Document’s Language and Its Components
- Using Visual Characteristics as a Guide Rather than Relying on Them
- Creating Forms That Are Accessible.
- Design for Keyboard Accessibility
- Ensure that navigating or modifying content is accessible.
- Ensure that the tabs and reads are in the correct order.
- Making It Easier to Navigate.
- Web Applications Using ARIA
- Verify Your Code Using Accessible Form Validation Methods and many more.