Looking ahead to 2024’s key WordPress trends

We’re writing this blog as the end of the year is looming. It’s the perfect time to write a blog that looks ahead at the key WordPress website trends you’ll need to know all about in 2024.

Like virtually all businesses out there (perhaps bar seasonal Santa’s and professional elves…) our focus has been on 2024 for some time. We need to ensure we have a healthy sales pipeline so that when our staff come back to the office after the holidays there are plenty of projects waiting for them. We also have exciting growth targets for the next 12 months and beyond, so we need to be thinking about our sales and marketing strategy to ensure we meet them! Plus, we need to be able to advise our customers on the best website design strategy to ensure their project works hard for them from the word go.

That’s why we have our finger on the pulse of the latest WordPress website design and development trends for 2024 – and we’re sharing them with you here.

And if you’re wondering why we’re focusing on WordPress for this blog, here’s why. At Black Nova Designs we’re WordPress specialists. Our team of web designers and developers are experts at creating bespoke WordPress websites for our clients no matter how big or small their website is! A bespoke WordPress website has no limitations and it’s flexible and adaptable for changing business needs. You don’t have to keep starting again if you want to add a new feature, shop, page or function. If you use WordPress templates and themes, it won’t be so easy to make changes…

WordPress is a very popular choice around the world. In fact, WordPress has been chosen by some of the most successful companies on the planet. An incredible 38% of the top 10,000 websites in the world are powered by WordPress, including household names such as Disney, Sony and Facebook. A WordPress CRM can be used for everything from five-page information websites to large e-commerce platforms and everything in between, and anyone can easily learn how to edit and update it. When you’re next on the lookout for a new website, we strongly encourage you to consider a WordPress website! So, without further ado, let’s dive into the WordPress website trends you need to know about for 2024.

WordPress… but different!

One key trend to look out for in 2024 is what’s being referred to as ‘Headless WordPress’. While we won’t delve too deep 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 more exciting websites for our customers!

If you are so inclined to read more on the tech side of these changes there are some really good reliable online sources that we can share.

WooCommerce and WordPress grow together

As we mentioned in the introduction to this blog, WordPress is a fantastic platform for ecommerce websites, with a range of plugins available to enable payments and order fulfilment. The fastest-growing ecommerce plugin is WooCommerce, which was the platform for 23% of the top 1 million e-commerce websites in 2023.

That’s an extraordinary statistic, and we’re excited to see WooCommerce and WordPress grow together in 2024 and beyond. If you want to add an ecommerce function to your existing WordPress site or commission a new ecommerce website, you know where to turn.

WordPress and AI combine for powerful results

So far, the integration of AI into WordPress has been more wrong than it’s 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 those hot leads and work hard to deliver your services. Or, what about an AI plugin that creates content for you and knows your business inside out? It’s all a distinct possibility!

The hottest topic of course is always SEO (search engine optimisation) and you can boost your rankings for free with the Yoast SEO free plug in implementation of AI.

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 huge 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’ll 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. We think that’s pretty cool and can’t wait to see how it works.

UX and Google SEO trends

As well as these WordPress-specific changes that are coming down the tracks, 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. We make sure we always have our finger on the pulse of the latest website trends, and we’re happy to share our latest findings with you – just drop us a line! And, of course, if you would like to speak to us about a new WordPress website or updates to your existing site, just get in touch.