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WordPress has helped countless businesses get online in the past two decades. It is used by 45.8% of all websites on the internet and continues to be the world’s leading content management system (CMS). Let’s learn more about the future of WordPress.
WordPress’s future looks even more promising as we look forward to 2024, primarily as Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy recently published a proposed roadmap.
To prepare yourself and your website for what is to come, we look at seven WordPress trends that will gain considerable momentum in 2024.
Future of WordPress
1. Headless WordPress
Headless WordPress has gained momentum in recent years. Decoupling your website’s front end (the presentation layer) and back end (the CMS) allows for more flexibility in design and development.
While it’s still a bit complicated to navigate, adopting this trend can give your website the performance, scalability, and personalization makeover it deserves while keeping WordPress’s power as a CMS.
Some Managed WordPress hosting providers, like Hostinger, are already making it easier to jump on this trend.
2. Artificial Intelligence Integration
You must have expected the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) to be on this list as the technology continues to take over multiple industries (and, dare we say, the world!).
WordPress is already incredibly proficient with AI, but further integration could revolutionize how websites are designed, developed, and managed. Here are just some of the ways you can leverage AI in 2024:
- Chatbot plugins, powered by natural language processing (NLP), can interact with website visitors on your behalf – providing instant support and creating a competitive user experience.
- Machine learning (ML) algorithms can suggest ways to enhance website content for improved user engagement and higher search engine rankings. Some tools can generate content ideas and help you write articles by analyzing user data and identifying trending topics.
- Developers can utilize deep learning (DL) algorithms to create more advanced features and functionalities, such as media management through image recognition or more precise suggestions based on user behavior.
So, AI is a feasible way to boost a WordPress website’s overall performance, improve the user experience, and streamline processes. However, these opportunities may challenge users while developers navigate quickly developing AI technologies.
3. Mobile-First Designs
Web-enabled devices, particularly smartphones and tablets, have become part of everyday life for millions of people and have evolved into essential tools for staying entertained and connected, shopping, and absorbing information.
In the first quarter of 2023, mobiles comprised 58.33% of global internet traffic. As this number continues to rise, we can expect WordPress to increase its mobile-first designs, plugins, and themes in 2024 to adapt to how people view the internet.
In addition, websites with a mobile-first design will rank higher on search engines, which increases visibility and engagement. We expect even more developers to prioritize a mobile-first strategy that focuses on the layout and function of websites on mobile devices.
4. Green Web Design
The internet is one of the most carbon-polluting industries on the planet, consuming an estimated 416.2TWh of electricity per year.
In an era where more people are becoming sustainably conscious, another expected WordPress trend is the growing importance of a green web design.
Sustainable web design practices aim to reduce a website’s power consumption, energy use, and carbon emissions. Here are some ways you can hop on the green web design bandwagon:
- Choose a green hosting company, such as Krystal, that offsets its carbon emissions by using 100% renewable electricity from sun, wind, and sea to power its website.
- Optimize your website’s page performance by reducing page load times, which lowers energy usage and enhances user experience.
- Opt for a simple, streamlined design with effective navigation, which reduces the time spent on a website and energy usage.
- In addition, opt for light colors and themes or dark mode plugins, as these use less screen energy and ultimately improve a device’s battery life.
Adopting these sustainable web design practices shows your business has a social responsibility to protect the planet.
5. Voice Search
Voice search has become increasingly popular, thanks to virtual assistants like Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, and Amazon’s Alexa. In 2022, 50% of US consumers used voice search daily.
So, as even more people search for web results using their voices, optimizing your website for voice search will be a crucial trend in 2024.
To adapt to voice search queries, designers and marketers need to adjust how they write the content on their websites, as a voice search differs from a text search, as we phrase our queries closer to how we speak in real life rather than how we type.
6. Enhanced Site Security
Unfortunately, cybercriminals are getting smarter, and Cybersecurity Ventures expects cybercrime damage costs to grow globally by 15% per year over the next three years, reaching $10.5 trillion annually by 2025.
Heather Ricciuto of IBM Security told CNBC: “Honestly, we’re all at risk, whether you’re talking about a large enterprise or an individual.”
WordPress is becoming a desirable target for hackers; website security will be prioritized in 2024 with more advanced plugins and themes designed with safety in mind.
In the meantime, here are some things you can do to keep your website safe:
- Use Managed WordPress hosting, which offers automated backups, automatic Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate setup, malware detection and removal services, and automatic WordPress updates.
- In addition, the most important thing is to keep all elements of your WordPress website up to date, including core software, plugins, and themes.
- Use a password policy manager plugin to enforce solid and unique passwords for all users on your website.
- Allow the IP addresses that are allowed access to your WordPress dashboard. Users with IP addresses not on the allowlist cannot access the dashboard.
7. Introduction of Multilingual Support
To reach a larger audience, your website should be more comprehensive than a single language. This is especially important for eCommerce business owners, as 72.4% of surveyed consumers said they would be more likely to buy a product if the information was in their language.
Website managers who want their text-based content and online store to be available internationally use plugins to ensure they are visible in multiple languages. Still, developers need to update these plugins regularly.
However, phase four of the Gutenberg project will see multilingual support added to WordPress Core, automatically changing your website language depending on the visitor’s location.
Phase four will launch in 2024, following the previous phases of easier editing, customization, and collaboration.
Wrapping Up
As the human attention span gets shorter and shorter—it is currently 8.25 seconds, which is less than a Goldfish—the key to web design is enhancing and streamlining the user experience to keep them engaged.
You may have noticed that almost all of the above trends will enhance the user’s experience in some way: optimizing your page performance so consumers don’t get bored of slow loading speeds, using AI to power interactive chatbots, developing a mobile-first design to cater for the device most humans are exploring your website on, optimizing your website for voice search as more people use voice commands, and making your website more readily available in multiple languages.
As we look forward to what 2024 may bring to the world of web design, be ready to accept new WordPress trends, adapt to new technologies, and create digital experiences that engage consumers.
