Website development and brand management standards change quickly, so small businesses in metro Detroit must keep up with the trends in order to remain relevant.
And believe us, there is a lot of competition out there throughout Michigan for virtually every industry.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, there were 902,131 small businesses in Michigan in 2021, which represents 99.6 percent of all businesses in the entire state. Small businesses employ 1.9 million individuals, which represents slightly less than half of all Michigan employees in 2021.
What does all this mean? It means that virtually any type of business must use smart website design, development, and marketing strategies to be recognized within their industries.
5 Website Development Trends that can Benefit Small Businesses in Michigan in 2022
If you are hoping to redevelop or build a website for your southeast Michigan business, the start of the new year is a perfect time to learn about website development best practices.
As a small business in Rochester, Michigan, our marketing agency stays up to date with the latest marketing and website development trends in order to help other small and medium businesses in metro Detroit continue prospering. In other words, we will do the research and offer our expertise, but it’s important that you recognize website development trends as well so that you are your own greatest influencer.
On that note, we are beyond excited about some of website design and development trends we are seeing for 2022. As noted by HubSpot, here are just a few:
1. Even Smarter AI Chatbots
Artificial intelligence chatbots are nothing new, but they are expected to become even more intelligent in 2022. Communicating with prospects on your website and responding to social media messages and emails quickly is essential to your brand reputation. That, in turn, helps increase the overall visibility of your brand online.
Chatbots are especially ideal for small business marketing in Michigan. There are multiple time zones throughout the United States, so Chatbots make communication possible 24/7 even when there is no live person available.
2. Accelerated Mobile Pages
Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) feature continues to optimize how quickly mobile pages load. Very little can be as detrimental to a website as slow load times, so optimizing it is crucial to success.
3. Continued Voice Search Enhancements
Alexa, Siri, and your other non-human BFFs will continue getting stronger in 2022 as voice search is used more often.
In fact, voice search is one reason why we focus on optimizing content during website development for our marketing clients. If the words that people speak into a voice search tool are on your site, your site is more likely to show up higher on the search engine results page (SERP) for that query.
4. Motion UI
MotionUI allows for more interactive user experiences. The framework allows website developers to build fully responsive websites faster and easier, as well as make elements and text on a page move as desired for an optimal design effect.
5. Enhanced Mobile-Friendly Website Development
Although people spend more time online through desktop computers, more traffic is coming from mobile users. That means that as we develop websites for our customers throughout metro Detroit, we place an equal emphasis on optimizing both the mobile and desktop experiences.
No matter how prospects and existing customers access your website, the experience should be easy, fast, and seamless. Additionally, the brand elements should be the same no matter how they’re viewed, and both experiences should be intuitive.
For example, a shopper who places an item in a shopping cart through a desktop device should be able to find the shopping cart easily the next day on a mobile phone in order to complete the purchase.
For these reasons, optimization of the mobile experience through such things as location data, more intuitive e-commerce apps, and greater cybersecurity is expected to continue.
Continuing the Momentum
These are only a few of the website development trends that we are looking forward to in 2022.
Here at Basso Marketing Agency, we are always excited to learn new, effective tips that simplify and enhance our website development processes for the benefit of small businesses throughout Michigan.
Whether you are looking for new website development, a website redesign, or stronger brand marketing strategies, we are here to help. Our website developers have decades of experience in creating intuitive, easy-to-use sites, as well as employing modern technological tools to enhance the user experience. Contact us for more information about what our team can do for you.