5 Best Niches for Designers and Developers in 2025 and Beyond

Trying to find a niche with plenty of opportunities? Ecommerce, healthcare, finance, education and gaming show lasting power and different ways to work in them.

There are many benefits to niching down as a web designer or developer. Building digital experiences for a specific industry or business type enables you to become a specialist vs. a jack of all trades. Specializing allows you to work more efficiently, market yourself more effectively and charge higher rates, among other things.

But what should your specialty be?

The world has changed a lot in recent years, so choosing a niche can be tricky. In this post, we’ll look at market trends, job outlook and other relevant factors to help web designers and developers choose profitable and future-proof niches.

Choosing the Right Niche

There are certain things to factor in when choosing a niche as a web designer or developer.

For starters, you want to find a niche that plays to your strengths. That’s going to give you a huge competitive advantage in the market.

Secondly, you want to choose a niche that interests you. It’s all too easy to grow bored or disillusioned with what you do if you have no love for it. What’s more, you’ll burn out more quickly if every day of work feels like a chore.

Next, you want a niche that you can profit from. I hate to say it, but there are some types of projects that just don’t pay well. Unless you’ve come up with a super quick and cheap way to develop digital products, you’re going to be dealing with the slimmest of profit margins, which can also lead to burnout.

Lastly, you need a niche with ample demand. With how much the world has changed in the last decade—especially these past few years—you need to look at demand differently. It’s not just about where there’s elevated consumer demand right now. It’s about whether or not the industry or business can sustain that level of demand in the near future.

We’re going to address this last point in the following section.

5 of the Best Niches for Web Designers and Developers

There are many different ways to future-proof your web design career. One of the ways to do this is by picking a niche that can weather disruptive events like AI job replacement, recessions and global lockdowns.

So before you settle on a niche, make sure it’s one worth committing to. Here are some industries and niches that should be safe for the remainder of the decade:

1. Ecommerce

With each passing year, consumers spend more and more on ecommerce. According to data aggregated by Forbes Advisor it’s predicted that global ecommerce sales will go from $6.3 trillion in 2024 to $7.9 trillion in 2027.

Ecommerce is showing no signs of slowing down. What’s more, mobile ecommerce is on the rise as well, with 91% of people having bought something from their phone. So having a good understanding of how to develop fast, convenient and stress-free shopping experiences from mobile browsers and within mobile apps will be a huge advantage.

There will always be a need for talented web designers and developers to craft seamless online shopping experiences for shoppers. What’s more, designers who know how to build omnichannel customer experiences and can adapt to changing trends will thrive.

What’s nice about ecommerce is that it pertains to so many different types of business. There are so many companies doing business online these days. So there are ways to choose a niche within a niche if something like traditional clothing retail isn’t your thing.

For example, you could help set up big restaurant or entertainment franchises with flawless online ordering systems. Another example would be working with independent retailers in the holistic space to sell their goods (think vegan shampoo or all-natural supplements) around the world.

2. Healthcare

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics list of the fastest growing occupations, seven of the top 20 careers are in healthcare. If you count veterinary care as part of healthcare, you can increase that number to nine out of 20.

If you’re looking to design digital products for an industry with major staying power, healthcare is it.

There are different niches within this niche you can pursue as well. For instance, you could build websites or apps for:

• Small medical clinics and individual providers
• Specialty providers like dentists and eyecare professionals
• Hospitals and large medical centers
• Health insurance providers
• Veterinary clinics and specialists

Another option would be to work on healthtech. This would be a great niche if you can find the right segment to break into.

For example, according to a recent Fast Company article, telehealth is dying. But only telehealth 1.0. Telehealth 2.0 is another story. These technologies will make virtualized healthcare smarter and more convenient for patients as well as providers.

There are other kinds of healthtech that are thriving. If you want to find ones that are thriving and will continue to do so, look for alternative medicine. Online therapy like BetterHelp and prescription services like Hims are good examples of this type of healthtech.

Getting yourself set up in the right healthtech spaces now could lead to a very lucrative and rewarding future.

Just be mindful of the risks involved in this field. Regulatory compliance is a big deal in healthcare, so it’s something you’ll need to be well-versed in in order to succeed.

3. Financial Services

One way to get a sense for how steady an industry and niche will be is to look at the job outlook for the people that work in it. For instance, the average job growth in the U.S. from 2022 to 2032 is around 4%. Financial analysts, on the other hand, have an 8% job outlook.

When choosing a finance-related niche, tread carefully. Similar to healthcare, there are a lot of regulations you need to know in order to keep your clients’ digital products compliant and secure.

Also, not every financial services company will have as positive of an outlook as others.

For example, while there will always be a need for banking services, many consumers are opting for alternative fintech solutions over traditional banks. So positioning yourself as a fintech designer instead of serving the entire financial services industry would be a smarter move.

There’s a lot of room to grow within fintech, especially as more people grow comfortable with managing their financial transactions online. Getting involved now and staying on top of trends will put you in a prime position to evolve alongside the industry in the years to come.

4. Education

Education is another one of those fields that’s not going anywhere. According to the BLS, post-secondary teachers, in particular, have a great job outlook at 8%.

One of the neat things about working in the education niche is how much variety there is within it. For instance, you could build websites or apps for different types of educational institutions like:

• Preschools
• Elementary and secondary schools
• Colleges and universities
• Continuing education facilities
• Driving schools
• Daycares

Another option is to develop solutions for online learning. After 2020, a lot of people discovered that much of their education could take place remotely and online. This pertains just as much for school-age children as it does for adult learners.

For instance, think of online course platforms like Udemy and Coursera.

They will always need designers and developers to build and support these technologies.

There are also opportunities to build platforms like Kajabi or Teachable.

Instead of them being a place for course creators to simply publish their courses, these platforms give them a space to create their own educational website and brand. So if you have the skills to develop these types of technologies or plugins, that will be useful.

Another way to specialize in education would be to go the route of educational mobile apps like Duolingo Language Lessons or Duolingo ABC.

5. Gaming

If you’re passionate about fun and entertainment, there are some aspects of the industry you can safely get involved in and others you may want to avoid.

Think about something like movie theaters, which were once a booming industry. They’ve now been subsumed by streaming services. While you could venture into streaming design and development, the industry is dominated by a few key players. The opportunity to work for smaller companies or startups might not be as ripe as it would be in a space like ecommerce.

Gaming, on the other hand, is a very safe niche for designers. There are a few segments you could go into that are sure to pay off, too.

Video game development would be a good one. According to Statista, the video game market is currently valued at $282.3 billion. By 2027, it’ll reach $363.2 billion.

That’s thanks to the almost 1.5 billion people who play video games.

If video games aren’t in your wheelhouse, then consider going into mobile app development. It’s not quite as lucrative as the video game market, but it’s up there. By 2027, the mobile app market will be worth $173.4 billion, according to Statista.

Another way to make it in the gaming niche is to specialize in AR or VR development. What’s nice about having that skill set is that you can apply it to a variety of use cases, like educational apps, employee training, beauty try-ons and more.

So if you have a love for games and are interested in being involved in the future development or marketing of them, this is definitely a niche that has staying power over the long term.

Wrapping Up

There are other niches that might have the stability and permanence that the five niches above do. Government is likely one. Security—everything from cybersecurity to home security—is another. Even a field like manufacturing may be safe from disruption.

Now, let’s say you’re not interested in niches that are considered more future-proof and in-demand as others. That doesn’t mean you have to give up on working in them. There are other ways to niche down and keep yourself relevant as a web designer or developer.

For example, let’s say you like developing digital experiences for newspapers and magazines. To keep yourself employed, you could offer other specialized skills and services, like website or app audits, QA and testing, SEO, security and performance optimization, website and hosting maintenance, and more.

Like I said earlier, the key to finding the right niche is choosing one that you have experience in, you’re passionate about, is profitable and there’s sufficient demand for. So while it can be helpful to find a specialty that’s relatively future-proof, there are other factors to consider as well.