What’s going to happen with web design and development in 2025?

The ‘official’ stance on the future of web design is ‘web 3.0’, but this is a relatively broad and vague definition and, although it’s happening, is slow and we’ll certainly not notice any huge changes in the immediate future.

In this article we’ll explore, in easy-to-understand language, what I believe is going to happen with web design and development in the near future.

Web 3.0

Firstly, what is web 3.0? Well, it’s a decentralised and open web, which won’t mean a lot to most. But essentially have everything working without central databases, a bit like the way crypto currencies don’t have banks, but work on ledgers (lists) that ‘float’ around the internet. This will mean that you don’t need to worry about companies going bust or exploiting your data etc.

As you can see, that doesn’t help you see how your website is going to be different... So, what do I think?

AI

It is no secret that AI is starting to appear everywhere. In some ways it’s obvious, in others less so.

For better or worse, lots of companies are already using AI for textual and image content. They are also using it to write content for search engines, and because of this search engines are learning to detect AI-generated text. There is a battle starting to heat up.

AI however, can be used in more ways, such as chat bots to help with customer support, language translation, automation of repetitive tasks, improvements in search results, or changing a website’s content for different audiences.

It is also being used in negative ways, such as fake reviews, false news and fake personas on social media. It can be very influential.

It’s a mixed bag, and going to be huge.

The team at Webbed Feet, for example, have developed a system that automatically translates a website in to different languages, and can change the reading level of articles, provide a summary of what a page says, or even make it rhyme or make it sound as if it’s been written by like a pirate.

Seamlessness & Integration

More and more often websites are sharing logins between platforms. For example, you can use a Facebook account to log in Square Space, or use your Discord account to use Midjourney. Google also do this a lot, for example using their login for YouTube (owned by them).

This can make things very useful for people, but has the obvious implication that if one login is compromised, the hacker could gain access to many platforms. Other downsides are the dependencies on providers; how can you stop using Facebook, for example, if you use it to login to 3rd party services.

There are lots of other ways that things are made seamless, for example using Apply Pay or Google Pay to purchase something rather than entering your credit card details in.

An example of integration is in cars. My car is a BMW EV, and this links to my phone via the BMW app, the BMW website, my energy supplier (Octopus) and my charger company (MyEnergi). I can locate, open, lock and control the aircon in the car with my phone, and say how and when it charges. It’s great, and convenient, but there are inherent risks and complications. We see this happening more frequently with the web.

The end result, of course, is making life easier for users.

DIY Solutions

These days there are lots of tools such as WiX or Square Space that allow non-web folk to create their own websites. Shopify, for example, is a great eCommerce platform.

In the past these have been of a very poor quality, and so they were a cheap compromise for those not wanting a professional website. Most of these still have limitations, but are slowly improving and users can make increasingly better websites themselves. We have seen examples of DIY websites being better than low-end ‘professional’ ones.

This means that over time entry-level web agencies will specialise in increasingly higher quality work, and in turn, higher-level professional web agencies will offer more enterprise solutions.

Web agencies will not be redundant any time soon, and we’re a very long way from a DIY tool producing the work that we offer, but it means we can’t compete price-wise on low-level budget projects.

It’s worth noting that, at the moment these platforms give users the tools they need to do the job, but not necessarily the knowledge to produce something effective. Novice users will not know much about user experience, search engine optimisation or marketing strategies, for example. These may make or break the success of a website, as the small bits add up to make a website really work.

Ease of Use

This is the biggest one, a very important one, and one we are advocates of; UX, or the user experience.

Everything should be getting easier to us. Websites should be faster, seamless (as above) and work nicely on all devices with functionality suitable for each.

Google already uses a website’s usability, speed and mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor, and more importantly users are becoming more and more impatient and want everything to work fast and flawlessly. That’s where web agencies come in!

Summary

The main way that the web is evolving is to make life easier for users, which has to be a good thing.

This will be done in obvious ways that an end user can see such as shared logins, plus more subtle changes that have a lot going on behind the scenes such as a website’s speed.

AI will be used in a variety of ways, which is very exciting, but there is likely to be a battle going on behind the scenes with developers fighting to keep the positives of it without the negatives.

Here at Webbed Feet we are excited about implementing and developing the technologies that lie ahead, and have already started using AI to aid the user experience – watch this space, or get in touch!