Throughout human evolution, advancement in technology has led to people losing their jobs because the machine or a tool could do it more efficiently. The recent rise of drag-and-drop website building platforms and artificial intelligence machine learning technology makes many predict web development dying due to a decrease in demand for custom-coded websites that might occur in the near future. Today, experts from Alpha Efficiency will give you their take on the emerging question of whether web development will become obsolete or not. Keep reading to find out if it’s a good idea to start a web development or web design career in the era of self-driving cars and machine learning algorithms.
Table of Contents
- Is there a need for developers while DIY web builder platforms rise?
- Why Wix and Elementor Don’t Work for Small Business Owners?
- Will Web Designers and Web Developers Become Obsolete?
- Will AI replace web developers?
- Final thoughts
Is there a need for developers while DIY web builder platforms rise?
Recently, we have witnessed the rise in popularity of DIY web-building platforms that allow people to create a website without any coding knowledge. But will web development become obsolete when more and more business owners start looking for no-code solutions instead of building hard-coded websites?
Even though no-code development platforms will become better in the future, it is unlikely that they will be able to handle complex data like professional web development and web design agency. Our prediction is that DIY platforms will become a go-to choice for smaller web development jobs, while bigger jobs and advanced tasks will still be reserved for expert web developers.
Why Wix and Elementor Don’t Work for Small Business Owners?
Website-building platforms are a go-to option for quickly creating a website, but custom code is more customizable and efficient. Sites built with Elementor and other drag-n-drop development platforms come with severe limitations that can prevent small businesses’ online growth. With custom code, you can create a website exactly the way you want it to fit your business needs perfectly. While no-code solutions might be tempting for small business owners without coding knowledge, choosing this approach usually proves to be a huge mistake for various reasons.
These limitations need to be kept in mind when analyzing whether web development will become obsolete in the near future:
Lack of scalability
Websites built with a page builder, such as Wix or Elementor, might be easy to create; however, these websites are not scalable. Using a page builder will likely result in slow loading times and poor performance if you have a large website. When building a website for your small business, you need to keep future expansions in mind. While you probably won’t witness a lot of traffic shortly after launching a website, the number of simultaneous visitors will increase as your business grows. Small business owners who want their website to be able to handle a large amount of traffic without any trouble need to hire professional web developers to build it from scratch.
And if you opt for page builders, the lack of options for exporting code will prove costly once you decide that it’s time to upgrade features or move to another content management system.
Lack of uniqueness in design
As a small business owner, your goal should be to increase brand awareness and make your company stand out in the competitive online sphere. For that purpose, you need a web design that will truly reflect your brand identity system and allow you to connect with the target audience. However, no matter the time and effort you invest into creating a website on drag-and-drop web development platforms, you won’t be able to achieve a completely unique look. Websites built with Wix, Elementor, and other page builders all look similar to some extent since they were built using the same templates, fonts, plugins, etc.
The need for tailor-made websites keeps the demand for professional web developers and web designers high among both corporations and small businesses. However, keep in mind that no-code web development platforms will keep evolving, and they might reduce the demand for front-end development jobs in the future. Still, a human factor is likely to remain important in the branding aspect of building a website.
Vulnerability to hacking
Website security should be one of the top priorities for small business owners because any data breach can lead to lasting consequences in client relationships. For example, if you were running a medical business – letting hackers obtain your patients’ accurate medical records will indeed prove disastrous. But why are websites created with page builders more vulnerable than the ones built by professional web designers?
Bloated code that DIY platforms generate makes websites more vulnerable to hacker attacks. Since many business owners use page builders, hackers invest efforts into finding vulnerabilities in popular no-code web development platforms. By hiring a professional web design agency, you will get a team of experts dedicated to protecting your business website. Their web design problem solvers will regularly audit your website’s security and make necessary updates to keep your customers’ privacy safe.
Slow page speeds
Ensuring your web pages load fast is crucial when running an online business. Slow websites can cause a lot of problems by ruining the user experience and causing high bounce rates. Websites built with Wix, Elementor, and other page builders come with a lot of unnecessary code lines that will cause slow loading times for your pages. And to get all the desired features, you’ll need to install additional plugins that can further ruin your website speed.
On the other hand, experienced web developers and web designers know how to utilize clean code to build a completely functional, visually appealing, and fast website that provides an enhanced user experience and performs well in search engines.
Bad SEO performance
Increasing the organic amount of traffic is essential for every small business because running extensive PPC campaigns can be expensive. But to be able to obtain more visits from search engines, your website needs to be built with the best SEO web design practices in mind. There are many different factors that Google and other search engines take into account when deciding which pages to rank high, and hiring professionals who know how to build websites that satisfy Web Core Vitals is a much better option for small business owners than using drag-and-drop development platforms. Since the demand for well-optimized websites is high, we don’t see web development dying in the near future because of Wix, Elementor, and other page builders.
Will Web Designers and Web Developers Become Obsolete?
No, web development and web design will not become obsolete. In fact, those are among the most in-demand skills in the market today, and by choosing a web development or web design career, you won’t make a mistake. There are many reasons for this. First, the demand for web development services is growing because more and more businesses are looking for ways to improve their online presence. And there is still no better way to build a unique website than coding it from scratch. Even though no-code development platforms will improve in the future, it is unlikely that they will be able to handle complex data like professional web development and web design agency.
However, what concerns many web developers besides the evolution of page builders are advancements in AI machine learning technology. Keep reading to find out whether web development will become obsolete because of machine learning algorithms or not.
Will AI replace web developers?
Artificial intelligence computer science deals with the design of intelligent agents, which are systems that can reason, learn, and act autonomously. – take robots within the production industry and self-driving cars as an example. AI machine learning algorithms are also already overtaking customer service jobs with the extended implementation of chatbots. It is safe to conclude that artificial intelligence will probably cut the need for human employees across many different industries in the future. But can AI replace humans in creative jobs, and will web development become obsolete because of it?
The answer is – No; AI will not replace web developers, at least not in the near future. While artificial intelligence systems might overtake smaller web design jobs, they will also create new job opportunities for people capable of managing such systems and utilizing AI machine learning algorithms in web design. This cycle in which jobs are redefined is easy to notice throughout human evolution.
How can AI help web developers in the future?
While some people see web development dying in the future because of artificial intelligence machine learning technology, we believe that it will only help professionals improve the quality of their work. Actually, web developers are already building automation tools that help them create better websites, social media apps, and more. Let’s see how the artificial intelligence paradigm shift can change the web development industry:
AI can make coding quicker
Artificial intelligence can help developers code faster by identifying coding patterns and suggesting solutions. This technology can also help developers find errors in their code more quickly, saving time and preventing errors from happening in the first place. That is excellent news for both business owners and web developers. Clients will get their web projects completed faster, while web developers won’t have to face the stress of finding errors and writing repetitive lines of code when working under time pressure.
AI can improve User Experience
Web developers can utilize artificial intelligence technology in various ways to improve the user experience on their websites. For example, one of the latest UX trends is using AI machine learning technology for analyzing data from a website and then creating a bot that can automatically fill in forms on the website, which saves users time. AI can also help website owners present more personalized content for website visitors based on their past interactions with the site and similar.
AI can make Quality Assurance easier
Artificial intelligence can help web developers ensure that the quality of a website meets the expectations of the end users. It can help them save time and improve the accuracy of results by automating both technical and non-technical tasks.
AI can help you analyze User Behaviour
AI will also allow website owners and web developers to analyze traffic data more efficiently and better understand what needs to be changed to improve conversion rates across landing pages. Digital marketing agencies will have much better insight into customers’ preferences, allowing them to deliver the right message at the right time for each potential buyer.
As you can see, web developers will be able to use artificial intelligence in the future to deliver better-performing websites to their clients. That’s why, instead of fearing inevitable changes in the web development industry, we advise you to find ways to incorporate new technologies into your work.
Final thoughts
So, will web development become obsolete? No. It will definitely change, but the demand for web developers will keep rising in the following years. As an experienced web development agency in Chicago, we can assure you that there is nothing to fear if you keep learning about new technology and obtaining the necessary skills to help businesses grow in the digital environment. If you believe this article helped you with that, there are other interesting topics you can explore on our blog.
