By Danielle Holmes, co-founder of Black Nova Design, specialists in web design and IT solutions based in Wiltshire.
At Black Nova we are specialists in using WordPress, a CMS (content management system) used by 43 per cent of all websites on the internet.
Some people may be sniffy about ‘WordPress’ however its sheer size, compatibility and flexibility means it is the fastest-growing CMS in the world with around 500 new websites created daily and a growth of around 12 per cent a year since 2011.
WordPress has been chosen by some of the most successful companies on the planet and it is estimated it has around 75 million users the word ‘WordPress’ is searched around three million times a month.
An incredible 38 per cent of the top 10,000 websites in the world are powered by this system including household names like Disney, Sony and Facebook.
Given these astonishing statistics, the dawn of 2024 is the perfect time to look at the key WordPress website trends you need to know about in the new year.
Headless WordPress
One key trend to look out for in 2024 is what has been referred to as ‘Headless WordPress’. While we won’t delve too deeply into the structure and details of the tech behind this, it essentially means you can have the functionality and ease of use of a WordPress back end with an upscaled, unique and very fast front end (the bit people see when they visit your site). While all our websites have bespoke designs, this frees up our designers to use some very cool tools to create even better websites for our clients.
WooCommerce and WordPress grow together
WordPress is a fantastic platform for e-commerce websites, with a range of plugins available to enable payments and order fulfilment. The fastest-growing e-commerce plugin is WooCommerce, which was the platform for 23 per cent of the top 1 million e-commerce websites in 2023. We predict this collaboration will grow even more in 2024.
WordPress and AI
So far, the integration of AI into WordPress has been more wrong than it has been helpful, but this will change. By its definition, AI is constantly learning and in time, you should be able to supercharge your website with ease thanks to AI.
For example, what about having an AI-powered bot that can answer your web visitors’ FAQs with ease – and even a sense of humour – freeing you and your staff up to convert warm leads and work hard to deliver your services? Or an AI plugin that creates content for you and knows your business inside out? It is all a distinct possibility!
Multilingual support for international growth
If you have an online shop built on the WordPress CRM and you dream of taking it international, this is good news. Until now, website managers have had to use plugins to ensure content is visible in multiple languages, but they need updating by developers on a regular basis. Gutenberg Phase 4, which is expected to launch in 2024, will see multilingual support added to WordPress Core, automatically flexing your site’s language depending on the location of a visitor.
Collaboration like never before
If you and your team ever use Google Docs or Microsoft Teams to collaborate on projects, you will know how much smoother they make working together. Well, the same UX project we mentioned above – Gutenberg Phase 4 – will enable multiple authors to collaborate on a blog or other content on your WordPress site at the same time.
UX and Google SEO trends
As well as these WordPress-specific changes that are coming, you can expect plenty of changes to UX (user experience) trends, as well as the usual raft of Google tweaks that impact your site’s visibility in their results pages.
Other useful resources on this topic can be found here –
https://www.viget.com/articles/demystifying-wcag-2-2/