The world is waiting for the next leap in web design and development. Since the beginning of the Internet, the look, feel, and performance of websites have played a crucial role in increasing the popularity of businesses. From the static text-based pages to today’s multimedia-heavy interactive user interfaces, web design and development have come a long way.

But artificial intelligence and machine learning are opening up new possibilities. These emerging technologies are shaping the future of website building. With the help of these applications and tools, bloggers and webmasters will be able to create customer-centric, elegant and beautiful websites faster than ever before.

Evolution of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been part of our collective imagination for a long time. Ramon Llull, a Franciscan philosopher/logician, was talking about artificial beings in the 1300s. But the modern era of AI started in the 1950s.

In 1956, AI pioneer Marvin Minsky gathered with his colleagues in a Dartmouth College workshop and defined the objectives for AI development. The group wanted to recreate the human learning process for machines. The enthusiasm soon spread through the research and development community. There was a widespread belief in the 50s and 60s that AI was going to change everything. But the problem of simulating human learning process was more complex than these early pioneers estimated. There were small successes like ELIZA that could talk English sentences or STUDENT that could solve algebra problems. But none of them came close to the imagined utopia of machines thinking and reasoning like human beings. As a result, AI-based research and development slowed down.

In the late 90s, AI saw a resurgence in search engines, speech recognition, and financial software. Soon there was enthusiasm for a subset of the AI algorithms known as machine learning. These algorithms can learn from large datasets and then find solutions based on the accumulated knowledge. The improvements in computer performance and storage made it possible for computers to deal with the large datasets. It was one of the primary reason machine learning started to gain traction. But it took another decade for the algorithms to mature.

Today artificial intelligence and machine learning are being used in all industries. Researchers and developers are using the theories to create applications in image recognition, speech recognition, medication diagnosis, financial predictions, statistical analysis and more. So its no wonder that AI and machine learning is also coming to the world of web design.

The Challenges of Web Design and Development

Integration: No website stands alone. It has to interact with multiple systems and services. And integration can be a big challenge. A perfectly working website can be rendered useless if it cannot properly communicate with third-party services.

No website stands alone. It has to interact with multiple systems and services. And integration can be a big challenge. A perfectly working website can be rendered useless if it cannot properly communicate with third-party services. User Experience: Putting any site on the world wide web means giving access to everyone out there. It takes a lot of knowledge and skill to understand your audience and develop a site that will appeal to the right demographics.

Putting any site on the world wide web means giving access to everyone out there. It takes a lot of knowledge and skill to understand your audience and develop a site that will appeal to the right demographics. Responsive: Modern users are multi-platform users. Your web design needs to function on all platforms like a native application. Given the number of operating systems and devices out there, it can be overwhelming for any webmaster or blogger to make there site responsive on all platforms.

Modern users are multi-platform users. Your web design needs to function on all platforms like a native application. Given the number of operating systems and devices out there, it can be overwhelming for any webmaster or blogger to make there site responsive on all platforms. Security: Users trust websites with their information. It’s pertinent for website managers to ensure that the data is safeguarded from malicious attacks. Sites with commercial transactions and advertisement need to comply with governmental laws and regulations.

Users trust websites with their information. It’s pertinent for website managers to ensure that the data is safeguarded from malicious attacks. Sites with commercial transactions and advertisement need to comply with governmental laws and regulations. Performance: Slow websites can deteriorate user experience. The design and backend technologies determine the quality of a website. Often it is a balancing act between aesthetics and performance.

Slow websites can deteriorate user experience. The design and backend technologies determine the quality of a website. Often it is a balancing act between aesthetics and performance. Retention: Companies, large or small, are trying to keep their visitors engaged and coming back for more. Companies like Amazon and Google regularly use A/B testing to collect data and learn about their customers. Gaining insight into user behavior is a difficult and time-consuming task.

Modern web design is increasing in complexity every day. There are multiple design and performance issues webmasters and site creators have to keep in mind to host a successful website. Here are some factors to consider:

Artificial intelligence and machine learning applications can help website creators with all of these problems. Web developers can use AI-based solutions to test integration and security issues. They can use advanced machine learning algorithms to improve user experience and customer retention. AI-based solutions can be used to tweak site performance and check the responsiveness of websites. So companies are putting their efforts to develop AI-based applications and tools that will help the web design community.

AI-based Web Design Applications

Experienced web designers and developers are valuable resources. If you look at the knowledge and skills necessary to overcome the challenges of web development, you realize why it’s difficult to find good talent. With amateur designers and developers, you can end up with a subpar looking website with poor performance. But talented designers are expensive. So bloggers and webmasters are always looking for cheaper alternatives. The rise of content management systems (CMS) can be attributed to the search for cheaper solutions.

But CMS systems can only produce cookie-cutter results. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are trying to change that. The following applications are examples of AI-based web design.

Wix ADI

Wix is a cloud-based web development platform. It has a popular drag-and-drop design application for HTML5 and mobile sites. But with Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI), Wix is taking web development to the next level. It will ask you about your design and business requirements and create a website based on your answers. The artificial intelligence will provide you with high-quality and high-performing combinations to choose from. In CMS systems, templates look the same. But in Wix ADI, the AI-based algorithms ensure that your site looks and feels unique.

https://www.wix.com/blog/2016/06/wix-artificial-design-intelligence/

The Grid

The Grid considers itself an AI-based website builder. Its AI bot Molly helps you through the development process. Molly finds out your color preferences and asks you to supply logos and images. Once you provide the information and the assets, Molly uses them to create a site for you. The Grid doesn’t have a robust feedback mechanism to change the designs. But if you need to develop a custom website fast, The Grid can be a good choice.

https://thegrid.io

Firedrop

Firedrop specializes in creating landing pages. Sacha, Firedrop’s personal AI web designer, will help you through the process. The company intends to simplify website designs for small business owners. It even allows users to design websites from their mobile application.

https://firedrop.ai

Not all AI-based applications are trying to take over the web design space. Developers are creating AI-based small tools that can help with your day-to-day operations. WordPress is benefitting from some of these endeavors. There are a number of artificial intelligence and machine learning based plugin developed for WordPress that can be useful. Here are a few:

Breinify

WordLift

Breinify collects visitor information and uses real-time analytics with the help of AI-based algorithms. It can help you determine the behavior and preferences of your visitors. You can find out the kind of sites users are likely to visit and the kind of activities they are likely to engage in. The predictions can help you better target your audience.

Aimojo

WordLift helps bloggers and content creators with AI-based SEO. It suggests links, facts and media assets to increase human readability and machine searchability of your web pages. It can improve the rating and engagement of your website.

Watsonfinds

Aimojo uses AI constructs of your website components to self-organize the content. The contextualization of the content leads to stickiness and better conversion.

Primal

Watsonfinds for WordPress uses IBM Watson, the AI business platform. It helps you analyze the emotion of your content. After you write a post, you can run Watsonfinds to see the levels of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear in your post. The emotion analyzer keeps track of the emotions over time. Bloggers can use this AI-based tool to improve the engagement of their content.

Quttera Web Malware Scanner

Primal uses its patented AI technology to learn about the preferences of your visitors and deliver targeted information. It displays contextual links tailored to each page of your website. It works like an AI assistant for the readers. The personalization can help build better relationships with your audience.

The Client Relations Factory

Security is one of the big challenges for any webmaster. Quttera helps detect viruses, trojans, worms, backdoors, spyware, code injections and more. But it uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to achieve its goals. It also helps you figure out if Google has blacklisted your site.

In Conclusion

The Client Relations Factory helps you build a virtual robot platform for your website. The virtual robots can interact with your customers to create a more interactive experience. It can lead to better conversion and higher customer satisfaction.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are already making huge impacts on the financial, transportation, and health industries. The current progress of AI-based web design and development is only at the beginning stages.

You can expect to see more companies invest in AI-based platforms and tools in the coming years. These applications will make it easier and faster for bloggers and webmasters to create and maintain better quality websites.

Further Reading: