With the crazy year that was 2020 over, many businesses are looking to get refocused and rejuvenated for 2021. If there was one key takeaway from 2020, it’s that businesses need to get online, and need to put effort into growing and maintaining awareness.
Every year there are new trends and advancements in technology that businesses must focus on.
Here are five trends we are following in 2021.
1. Ecommerce
As a result of lockdowns throughout 2020 for most countries, businesses will be adapting their sales channels to incorporate and focus on selling through the internet (ecommerce).
There are many ways businesses can easily start selling online, however there are a plethora of various things to consider when doing so. Hence why it’s important a business uses an professional agency to do so.
Selling online grew from 2019 to 2020 around 34%! This is a massive increase reflecting the reliance that people have put into shopping online.
We recommend Shopify as a quick-start ecommerce platform if you’re wanting to do something yourself.
At RAZOR Web Design, we use our Zulu platform which is easy to use and built for New Zealand businesses.
2. Progressive Web Apps
Native apps, are those that run on the likes of an iPhone and are downloaded from the App Store. They are built ‘native’ to that specific device. Thats how apps have been primarily built over the last 13 years.
However, Progressive Web Apps is essentially a website having the ability to be ‘installed’ onto the users phone. Thus becoming both a website / application all-in-one.
This saves small businesses massive app development costs, by allowing businesses to have a simple ‘progressive web app’ perform both as a website and a perceived ‘native’ app on their customers phones.
Progressive web apps are now compatible with more main-stream browsers / smart-phones, meaning they have the potential to be used more than ever before by consumers and businesses.
3. Social Media Presence
Social media, you love it or you hate it. But regardless, its a continually growing trend where people find their daily entertainment, and keep in touch with friends.
The list of social media platforms grows every year, some of the main platforms include:
- Snapchat
- TikTok
Businesses in many cases can utilise certain platforms to advertise their products and services.
We recommend you advertise your product or service on social media platforms with engaging content. If you yourself, have interesting and engaging content, you can use social media to build a following who naturally follow your business and engage with you.
Using social media regularly, and posting the correct content, you can generate some excellent results for your business. Without spending too much either.
Talk to our team about social media marketing.
4. Dark Mode / Dark Theme
You’ve probably seen it on many modern smart-phones and apps, the ability to activate ‘Dark mode’.
Dark mode allows users to browse a website in contrasting light depending on their preference (usually dictated by the background / ambient lighting).
Still rarely seen on actual websites, we think this will change in 2021, and websites will start adopting user controllable UI elements (such as Dark Mode).
5. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
While AI is a familiar term everyone has heard, it’s still in its infancy stages and is only really found in websites when you engage with a smart chat bot that asks “how can I help you today”… (sometimes these are annoying!)
Any-who, we expect AI will branch out into other areas that serve the visitors much better than current. For example, helping with complex questions and diagnosis. Finding suitable products for a customer based on questionnaires and more complex fact-finding exercises the user can do.
AI can benefit also in relation to managing processes such as booking appointments and even paying for them online!
AI is already hard at work in the advertising space - depending on what you’re doing online, Google and other advertising platforms identify what content it thinks you will be interested in and shows it to you. Great for advertisers!
We think this will be more adaptable within a businesses own website too, so ultimately customers can be served better online and the business can sell more product, without requiring human-intervention.
Think somethings missing on this list? Let us know! We are excited to see how 2021 changes the way we use the web. And we’re excited to be the ones making these changes for our clients. If you’d like to take up any of these trending ideas, please contact us.
