The web development profession has been one of the most responsive to changes in technology since the turn of the century. In particular, the web development profession has been impeccably tethered to the evolution of artificial intelligence. Some of the world’s most prominent brands are web startups that have been built on impressive breakthroughs in artificial intelligence technology. Google’s PageRank algorithm is one of the most ingenious examples of an AI marvel developed since the dawn of the Internet.
Most of the web-based AI applications that receive the most attention work on the back end, such as PageRank. However, front-end web developers are also being impacted by promising developments in artificial intelligence technology.
A number of AI tools have helped developers create sophisticated website templates. AI allows them to use machine learning to get a better understanding of their target customers and create template mockups that will resonate with them. This streamlines the development of templates that can be used for various companies in a single industry, which significantly reduces the time it takes for front-end designers that specialize in various verticals.
Artificial intelligence is introducing fascinating changes to the front-end web development profession
Front-end web developers are rarely proficient programmers. Very few of them would have the skills necessary to create a meaningful AI algorithm from scratch.
However, the web development profession is still highly reliant on technology that uses very sophisticated AI capabilities. A number of new tools have helped with many different aspects of the web design and development process. Some of these benefits are listed below.
Automatically creating webpage code
Some applications have taken automation of the front-end web development process to an entirely new level. They are actually able to create new HTML, JavaScript and PHP code from scratch.
There are a variety of approaches that these tools can take. Some of them, such as pix2Code are able to create code with 77% accuracy for multiple platforms. They still require some tweaking by human developers, but this significantly reduces the time needed for various outputs.
Developing visual content without the need for manual wireframe building
Developing visuals can be a very time-consuming process. Designers are going to need to create a number of different iterations of their design before it can be appealing to their target audience. Finding developers working on small teams or going solo might not have the time to handle such an undertaking.
This is one of the most important areas where deep learning technology can be incredibly valuable. You can come up with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of variations of a design until the developer settles on one that adheres to their standards.
A number of companies have discovered the benefits of using this deep learning workflow to generate new landing pages from various templates. Airbnb has started using deep learning to create sketchers for new products. They describe the use of deep learning technology on their site:
Airbnb‘s design system is well documented, and each component within the system has been named. We developed a working theory that if machine learning algorithms can classify a complex set of thousands of handwritten symbols ” such as handwritten Chinese characters ” with a high degree of accuracy, then we should be able to classify the 150 components within our system and teach a machine to recognize them.
Rapidly create custom landing pages based on templates
Many e-commerce companies have found that their volume of online sales pages is highly correlated with website traffic and profitability. Unfortunately, creating hundreds of different landing pages can be a very exhausting endeavor. Fortunately, this is an area where AI and big data can improve the web design process.
Artificial intelligence has made this process a lot more efficient over the years. Some of the earlier attempts to use deep learning to streamline the process were more controversial and less successful.
One example is with article spinning technology. This technology used proprietary AI algorithms to help website owners propagate unique content from existing text. The original idea was to help SEO article writers create unique articles that would be syndicated to article directories for offsite link-building initiatives.
The artificial intelligence behind these tools was initially rather primitive. It would simply recommend synonyms for different words to create new articles that looked more unique. The problem was that this technology did not have a strong ability to understand context. It might, for example, recommend replacing the word orange with the word apple even if the original usage was meant to refer to the color rather than the fruit. Even in situations where it did understand the proper intent of the word, the recommended replacement was not always suitable.
Future article spinners were that are able to understand context. Unfortunately, they were created in such mass quantity that they led to a lot of spam. Although the prevalence of errors in the content was lower, those issues still stood out due to the sheer volume of similar articles that were syndicated across the Internet.
Front-end web developers have discovered a more constructive way to use similar and more advanced technology. Rather than creating a multitude of articles for SEO link-building purposes, they discovered that they could scale the production of landing pages with similar templates.
Here are two reasons that this can be useful:
- They can train deep learning tools to recognize different products that they are creating sales pages for. The software can then generate unique descriptions based on these inputs.
- They can create unique versions of a given sales page for different keywords to promote the same product. This is a unique strategy to help scale organic search engine traffic by targeting various keywords that are relevant to a given product in their inventory.
These benefits can be very promising for brands that require websites requiring an extensive array of sales pages.
