Trend pieces are mostly recycling. Same five ideas every year, dressed up differently. Here is my version.
What I would ignore
“AI is changing everything”. Yes. So is rain. The interesting question is which specific bits of your digital experience AI changes, and the answer is mostly “writing first drafts” and “answering FAQs”. Both useful. Neither requires a “rethink your business model” conversation.
“Personalisation will be the differentiator”. Personalisation has been promised as the differentiator for fifteen years. Some of it works (recommendation engines on retail). Most of it is theatre. Putting someone’s first name in an email subject line is not personalisation, it is a mail merge.
“Voice search is the future”. Has been the future for ten years. Still 5% of search.
What I would actually pay attention to
Search results are getting weirder. Google’s AI Overviews are pulling answers from the page. The traffic that used to land on your blog is now reading the answer in the search result. This affects content strategy more than any of the design “trends” do. If your traffic is dropping but rankings are stable, this is probably why.
Web Core Vitals are being enforced more strictly. Sites that fail mobile Core Web Vitals are quietly losing rankings. Not fast, but steadily. Worth checking if you have not.
The bar for accessibility just went up. The European Accessibility Act came into force in June 2025. UK businesses selling into the EU need to comply. Lots of sites do not, and most do not realise. This is one of the few “trends” that has actual legal teeth.
That is the short list. Everything else is mostly noise. If your team is debating whether to “embrace” some new digital experience trend, the honest answer is usually “fix the boring stuff first”.
If you want help figuring out which is which, book a call.