Uses of AI in your Web development career

World Wide Web or the Internet, has evolved at a rapid pace. This technology invented in the year 1983 (initially called the ARPANET) took the world by storm and today – in the year 2018 – tends to control most aspects of human life. Evolving from simple static text-based webpages, websites today are dynamic as well as responsive in nature. Long hours of coding are no longer required as most websites can now be coded and designed with a few drags and drops.

As web development tends to become easier, the competition amongst the developers has risen. According to a report by National Statistics’ (ONS) Labour Force Survey, London alone has seen an increase of 45% in the number of web developers between 2016 and 2017.

In times of such heavy competition a web developer, to survive, needs to acquire new skill sets, enroll into machine learning or artificial intelligence courses, which will allow him to develop as well as come up with user-friendly websites – one which not only helps businesses in obtaining users but in retaining them.

One of the simplest, as well as the smartest ways to improve user experience, is to enhance the level of engagement and interaction any user has with the website. Leveraging machine learning as well as artificial intelligence tools, websites can be made more responsive as well as better suited to the customer’s need.

AI-powered assistants (Siri, Cortona etc.) have already proven to be of great help to customers, and their commercial acceptance has cleared a path for next-gen web development – one powered through AI.

Image Credit : Pixabay

Natural Language Processing

With the growing use of social media as well as free-form text now being used by people for searching and browsing the need for artificial intelligence in web development is more than ever. Chatbots deployed in most websites, till now were only able to answer specific user queries however with the advent of AI these can be coded to not only assist users but solve or answer any query he has in the best possible manner.

Similarly, search buttons on websites often tend not to deliver appropriate results if the exact keywords aren’t entered. With AI, they can be programmed to analyze keywords as well as user sentiment to deliver content which is personalized according to the user's specific need.

Making Purchase Fun

AI can be leveraged to provide users with personalized experiences at various e-commerce stores or brand websites. Not only can AI bots work as the salesman on your website but can also suggest the pros and cons of buying a particular product as well as giving any other information about the product a user might require.

Showing user products which they may need, combined with prices which change in real time and adjust according to their thresholds, AI can help businesses acquire customers and build better relationships in no time.

Can Boost Your SEO

Being ranked on top of search engine’s list is the primary and most important objective of any website. And today with SEO heavily focused towards delivering user focussed content AI can be a helping hand to all of the developer’s optimization efforts. Not only does AI cater to the user requirements, but can also in real time monitor user behavior and sentiment, thus allowing developers and business owners to create and deliver a personalized user interactive atmosphere.

Can Speed Up Development Process

Defining layouts, colour schemes and interface of websites often tends to consume a lot of time of web developers and designers. AI in such cases can be a beneficial tool to help come up with real-time designs and schemas based on user input (in this case the designers and web developers). On the basis of inputs provided as well as the predefined branding components of a brand, it can help designers by giving them various options for the design.

As far as development is concerned the knowledge of AI can help boost the testing process of a website. An AI assistant can help a developer in identifying bugs at a faster rate and can speed up the whole QA testing process which takes days if done by humans. This will give developers a flexibility to strengthen the wireframe of the website while the other nitty-gritty details would be taken care of by the assistant.

Finally, AI can help web developers build assistants or programs which can help in requirement gathering from the client, analysing these and giving developers insights into the key factors which drive a website's development.

So Why Hasn’t It Been Adopted Yet?

Because it isn’t easy, or at least wasn’t until now.

Artificial intelligence is still in its early stage, and until, say two years back it was nothing but gibberish to the mainstream web developers. However, seeing the potential AI has to transform human lives, most tech giants, as well as AI experts, have come up with artificial intelligence courses to help developers understand and implement AI solutions to the modern web development practices.

One, of course, needs to get hold of a few new terminologies as well as syntax, however, using the artificial intelligence courses available online this shouldn’t take long to master. There are plugins as well as APIs which allow you to incorporate AI to your website’s chatbot, search boxes as well as to the entire wireframe, without changing the intermediate code. This gives developers the flexibility to code in the language they know and later include AI functionality to the same.

So what does the future look like, can AI help?

Any technology has its pros as well as cons; however, in the case of AI in web development, the impact is more positive than negative. Some people still argue that AI is here to replace humans, but it is helping developers explore their creativity rather than performing redundant tasks.

Humans have always been afraid of change, but incorporating AI into web development will bring a change which will benefit developers as well as businesses in both the long and short run.