Launched in the year 2003, WordPress has come a long way. When it comes to deciding on a website development platform, WordPress is the priority.
If you think whether WordPress is still relevant, then you should know it comprises 43.3% of all websites on the internet. The reason behind its wide usage is its adaptability as it keeps on changing as per the technical changes and other upgrades.
Customization is another major benefit of doing website development with WordPress, which lets you create engaging websites. You can follow an approach like PSD to WordPress conversion for a more customized website built on your specific needs.
The platform keeps adding the latest features and trends to keep your site abreast with technological advancements. This blog will highlight WordPress development trends that can make your website rule in 2024.
WordPress Development Trends: Usage Statistics
You must have heard the names of brands like Katy Perry, TechCrunch, Sony Music, The official Star Wars Blog, and BBC America. Do you know what’s common in all of them? It’s WordPress. They all have considered WordPress development for developing a website.
It is not only the world’s most renowned website builder but also a widely used content management system.
Let’s check out some statistics to understand the same.
- WordPress powers the top 14.7% of websites in the world.
- The WordPress Plugin Directory currently has 55,000+ plugins, with many new options added daily.
- WordPress powers over 70 million eCommerce shops.
Top WordPress Development Trends
Now, let’s move toward understanding the latest WordPress development trends that will help you put your business ahead of your competitors in 2024.
1. WordPress 6.1 with ReactJS
WordPress, the popular Content Management System (CMS), lets you develop everything from simple to complicated websites. It keeps on releasing its version updates on a timely basis, and by the end of the year 2022, you will have WordPress 6.1 in the market.
It allows you to use ReactJS as your frontend technology with WordPress as the backend platform. You must be wondering why ReactJS.
Why is ReactJS Chosen For WordPress 6.1?
ReactJS is an open-source JavaScript library used for the development of user interfaces. The benefit of this library is its elements that can be utilized quickly, saving time and effort.
WordPress web development companies prefer ReactJS as it gives more freedom to develop a WordPress website. It uses virtual DOM, which makes the upgradation process much quicker than updating the browser DOM.
Now businesses can have their WordPress website along with the benefits of ReactJS. Let’s find out how?
Benefits of ReactJS in Web Development
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Reuse of Code Components
Firstly, it is an open-source JavaScript library based on Graphical User Interface. It is designed to complete UI tasks more efficiently and accurately. ReactJS lets you reuse the components created earlier in other platforms that utilize the same function. If you need to acquire accuracy, ReactJS is the perfect library. ReactJS lets you start developing the application with minimal programming knowledge.
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Faster Speed
Any professional WordPress front-end developer prefers ReactJS because of its fast rendering service. ReactJS improves the whole process of writing the website structure. Additionally, this JavaScript library renders it effortless to represent multiple functions. The REDUX can re-render the necessary components on the page.
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Differentiation in Presentation and Data Separation
During rendering, web developers lose their critical data. But with ReactJS, experts can save this essential data temporarily in React State. Using REST API, developers can send all data to REDUX. Wherein ReactJS helps these data with complete separation and presentation.
WordPress VIP
You heard right; WordPress usage is no longer limited to small or medium-sized businesses. WordPress VIP is the go-to option if you are a business giant looking for WordPress website development. Unlike WordPress.com is shared hosting, WordPress VIP is built to keep enterprises and massive traffic in mind. It comes as the fastest and most secure managed hosting platform.
With WordPress VIP, businesses can maximize the effectiveness of their content. They can also evaluate its performance and build content for more channels and target audiences. Websites such as Spotify, Facebook, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Quartz, etc., use WordPress VIP as their platform.
WordPress VIP fulfills the needs of companies that want to revolutionize and scale their business. Let’s understand how WordPress VIP is different from other WordPress hosting platforms.
It is purposely built to entail the requirements of large-scale businesses. Let’s understand how it will be going to do that.
Reasons to Consider WordPress VIP
- It is a comprehensive network management tool that enables you to assign user data, publish content, access data, monitor site health, etc.
- WordPress VIP offers user-friendly analytics via Parse.ly, using which you can scrutinize the performance of your content and make data-driven decisions accordingly.
- You can scale and check your performance functions, such as built-in content delivery network (CDN) and Enterprise Search Service, 24/7 monitoring, and hourly backups.
- It emphasizes global security as the only enterprise WordPress provider with SSAE SOC compliance and FedRAMP authorization.
- It is a secure cloud platform that supports Single Sign On, complete authentication of traffic from edge to origin, and Two-Factor Authentication (2FA).
- Apart from this, WordPress VIP relies only on its hardware rather than third-party platforms.
3. Text to Speech
Yes, you read right. Now with WordPress, it is possible to create audio versions of your website text. It has emerged as the best WordPress development trend, as an audio format helps a publisher increase customer engagement with the website.
It is mainly a useful trend for long reads and will facilitate the users who prefer to listen to audio content while traveling or exercising. You can add such a feature to your website and let users listen to your articles.
It will majorly help visually impaired people and those who find it easier to listen to a longer article rather than read it on a smaller screen.
WordPress offers various TTS plugins such as ResponsiveVoice Text to Speech, Voicer, Trinity Audio, BeyondWords Plugins, and many others. By hiring a reliable WordPress development company, you can incorporate text-to-speech functionality into your website by effectively using such WordPress plugins.
4. WooCommerce
You must have noticed that the eCommerce industry is booming exponentially. WordPress has its WooCommerce plugin using which businesses can develop a new eCommerce website. Plus, this WordPress plugin is also helpful in converting an existing WordPress website to an eCommerce site in just one click.
As per Statista research, it is the world’s most commonly used eCommerce platform, with a market share of 36.68%. These numbers indicate that the use of WooCommerce with WordPress will emerge as a WordPress web development trend in the upcoming years.
Its versatility and simplicity make this plugin apart from its rivals. The WooCommerce plugin is updated with various functionalities to meet the changing needs of eCommerce businesses.
Let’s find out what WooCommerce can offer to you.
Reasons to Consider WooCommerce for Developing eCommerce Websites
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Enhanced Product Pages
With WooCommerce, you can enhance your product page capabilities. When your products look more appealing, the chances of your product purchase increase.
WooCommerce allows you to utilize high-resolution images, AR & VR technology, infographics, 360-degree image feature, etc., that provides a pleasing look to your website.; when your products look more appealing, the chances of your product purchase increase.
Moreover, by adding videos to your product pages, you can illustrate your product’s look, work, functions, and other aspects.
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Personalized Shopping Experiences
Personalization makes shopping experiences more compelling and intriguing for your potential customers. With WooCommerce integration, you can use customers’ geolocation and send them targeted coupon codes and tracking codes based on their country, state, or region.
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Greater Flexibility
One of the significant benefits of utilizing WooCommerce is that businesses can use it to sell various products. It can be physical products such as hair products or couches, downloadable products like books and novels, external products like Amazon affiliates, or invites to seminars or webinars.
5. Headless WordPress
The concept of headless CMS” has begun to make noise in the market, and the WordPress platform is embracing it.
A headless WordPress website has WordPress as the content management system and any other technology to develop the front end and showcase content to the website visitors. WordPress utilizes a decoupled architecture; you can manage your website’s assets in the dashboard and its appearance through themes and plugins.
By sharing the content with WordPress REST API, any WordPress installation can become headless. Perhaps the best thing you can do with headless CMS is to future-proof your WordPress content.
Headless offers greater flexibility in content migration (if needed) as you are not tightly packed with themes and plugins. It is the best option for businesses that want to deliver content to Android and iOS platforms from the same backend.
The alternative use case for a headless structure is applications or websites that utilize JavaScript frameworks like VueJS, AngularJS, or others.
It is going to be one of the emerging WordPress development trends. You must be eager to know the benefits of headless WordPress. Let’s find out.
Benefits of Considering Headless WordPress:
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Increased Scalability
With headless architecture, you can scale your website very quickly. You can keep adding content without delay as you will be an API-first shop and respond to user needs on time.
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Tighter Security
A headless or decoupled approach reduces the risk to your content. Your content is not exposed to third-party application issues, as your content lives separate from your frontend delivery.
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Lightweight Solution
When you opt for headless, you shed some serious weight. Your system now comprises API calls and a content base, so your content delivery can be responsive, sleek, and fast.
With WordPress headless as a trend, you can use this platform in the backend to manage content and any other technology in the front end. Using an optimized frontend makes websites incredibly responsive with superfast loading speed.
6. Drag and Drop Page Builders
Page builders are an emerging WordPress development trend, allowing you to edit, create and customize your website layout. With the drag and drop builders, you can create a website according to your project requirements. You can quickly build a customized website even if you do not have a technical knack.
Besides that, another major reason behind the increasing popularity of WordPress is predefined themes using which websites can be styled.
Here the page builder comes as a handy option. It allows you to edit and customize your page layout. Also, users can have complete control over the site’s look and feel. So, you can easily create a unique website with a page builder’s drag & drop functionality.
When adding them to your website, you must check page builders’ compatibility, builder type, and responsiveness. Elementor, WPBakery, and Genesis are the latest WordPress page builders among various plugins available for drag-and-drop functionality.
Some Useful WordPress Page Builders
Let’s know about the best options available:
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Elementor
Elementor has built its reputation as a powerful and user-friendly drag-and-drop website builder plugin for WordPress to transform websites. This free-to-use and popular website builder offers various standout features like testing page layouts in mobile view.
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WPBakery
If you have ever used a paid WordPress theme, you must have heard about WPBakery. WPBakery specializes in making pages with detailed and complex page layouts. Because various WordPress themes are built around the plugin, and it is bundled with themes.
This WordPress plugin matches any theme and allows easy and faster page development with an advanced template library, responsive, and grid builder.
7. Multilingual Support
WordPress itself does not support multilingual or bilingual functionalities, but there are plugins created by the WordPress community that let a developer create a multilingual WordPress website.
A multilingual site serves the same website content in different languages based on the site visitor’s region. It provides stronger user engagement to the site owner as most users prefer visiting websites in their native language.
By providing a better user experience, a website’s multilingual functionalities help improve the corporate image. A better user experience can enhance your website’s conversion and bounce rates. Moreover, it builds trust and credibility in a business.
WordPress Plugins to Create Multilingual WordPress Websites
Now, let’s see the WordPress plugins that can help you incorporate multilingual features into your website.
- TranslatePress – It is one of the best WordPress translation plugins that let you do translations at the same time. This translation plugin can be used by anyone. It is one of the quick ways to create a multilingual or bilingual website on WordPress. Besides that, it also lets you add a language switcher as a navigation menu item. It can be displayed as flags, language names, or both.
- WPML – It is an acronym for ‘WordPress Multi-lingual.’ WPML is the oldest and most widely used WordPress plugin for integrating multi-lingual functionalities in a WordPress website. This plugin automatically detects the site’s language and makes it really handy to translate every area of your WordPress site into multiple languages.
- Polylang – It is another WordPress multi-lingual plugin that also lets you easily create a multi-lingual website. This plugin is helpful in translating posts, media, pages, custom post types, and others. Using polylang, you can add a customizable language switcher as a navigation menu item or widget.
8. Chatbot Integration
Chatbots are a robust approach for an accessible mode of communication between human beings and machines. It maintains seamless communication among customers and service providers. Moreover, it uses text or voice-based user queries and responds to them in real time.
A chatbot is an excellent addition to business websites, enabling them to resolve customer issues efficiently. Chatbots will allow them to deliver quick and efficient customer support. Businesses can opt for chatbot integration with custom WordPress development.
9. Voice Search
Nowadays, customers look for the most convenient options; this is the reason it is rising as WordPress development trends. With voice search integration into your WordPress website, businesses open doors for new opportunities. Customers are no longer required to type their queries, as results can be achieved with simple voice commands.
With the incorporation of WordPress plugins, businesses can enhance their website functionality with a voice search option.
If you want to know the cost of WordPress website development, then you can consult WordPress experts.
Future of WordPress!!!
So there you have them. Maybe you are familiar with a few, and some seem entirely new to you. To develop a website using WordPress or update your existing website, keep these WordPress development trends in mind.
Utilize them to enhance your online presence and improve your customer experience. You can also collaborate with a WordPress web development company to integrate these trends and build a market-ready website.
