Now is an opportune time to take a step back and assess the website trends for the coming year. By identifying website trends for 2010 now, you will be able to develop a progressive plan for your website that will achieve greater results for your business this year.

So, let’s dig in and check out some of the biggest trends to expect:

10 Website Trends for 2010

Digital Keystone

Your web identity now goes way beyond your company website. Think about your blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page, Flickr images and any involvement you have in online social conversations. However, your website still acts as the keystone of your corporate digital profile. Just expect it to integrate more with your expansive digital footprint.

Practicality Reigns

The economy still stinks. And this means that companies are taking a more practical approach to websites. It’s not going to be about flashiness and novelty this year. Instead, brainstorm ways to make your website as useful to your target audience as possible.

The Power of Blogs

Blogs are still a tremendous vehicle for enhancing your online brand and for raising your visibility in the search engines. Setting up a blog is extremely easy. The value proposition is just too outrageously strong for companies to ignore it in 2010. Although some people said that blogs were dead upon the arrival of Twitter, that is simply not the case. Expect not only more blogs this year, but also better integration with corporate websites and also more video blogs.

Digital Integration

With the explosion of social media and social networking, expect a lot of social marketing integration with websites this year. Take a look at Skittles.com for a great example of this. Skittles has gone to the extreme of dropping you on their Facebook Fan Page when you head to their website, with a dashboard panel that connects you with its Twitter feed, YouTube videos, product pages, etc.

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

The iPhone and iTouch have reached an adoption rate 8X that of AOL after its launch. More than 3 billion iPhone apps have been downloaded to date. Mobile app downloads are to reach $5 billion by 2014. More than 50 million people access the web via their mobile device. Face it, we are mobile. Get used to it. And this means ensuring that your website is viewable and optimized on mobile devices. It also means you should explore all mobile specific options for your site.

Interactivity

Expect more interactivity in 2010. Interactivity is a key advantage of the web over many offline marketing vehicles, and the technology keeps making it easier to incorporate interactivity into websites. Explore options such as forums, Q&A, surveys, polls, contests, suggestions, commenting, crowdsourcing, etc. If you do not provide options for interactivity, users will take it into their own hands — just check out Google Sidewiki, which enables users to comment on ANY website.

Video Everywhere

People love video. It’s as simple as that. YouTube serves roughly 10 billion videos on a monthly basis. Expect to see videos EVERYWHERE in 2010. They will be on home pages, on product pages, in educational content, on YouTube.com and MetaCafe.com, and in blogs. A good example of this is Wine Library TV, with more than 125,000 monthly unique visitors.

Clean, High Quality Design

Expect design to get better this year. There has been an overemphasis on DIY and free templates/tools for the small business community in the past. For anyone serious about their website, they need to take their website design seriously. This typically means hiring a professional website designer. The investment is worth it. In 2010, expect a higher level of quality of illustrations. Check out Meomi Design’s website, and it will open your mind to the possibilities of exceptional design for your site.

Personalization

Leveraging the examples of Threadless.com, Zazzle.com or Lulu.com, expect more personalization in websites in 2010. What the world is really waiting for is a simpler, easier and more scalable way to implement personalization in small business websites. The Website Marketing NOW team believes that such platforms will start to appear in 2010.

Big

There’s a trend towards big now. This means big headers, big type, big images, big calls to action. Think big, big, big. For examples, check out Matt Mullenweg’s blog, Infusionsoft and PixelResort.

Looking at trends for the rest of 2009, here are three Website Design Trends to help you increase your site conversion rates.

Horizontal Navigation

Ever since iTunes introduced its scrolling horizontal carousels and horizontal, flipping album cover navigation (e.g., their movies, TV shows and music videos pages), horizontal navigation has caught fire.

You can now see horizontal navigation in various modes and presentation styles on a wide range of websites. In addition to iTunes, examples include:

* StellaMcCartney.com

* FedEx.com

* Pepsi.com

The Stella McCartney site is notable in that it integrates video into the horizontal navigation. The FedEx site is notable in that it provides a circular carousel. The Pepsi site is notable in that the horizontal navigation ties together the brand’s family of websites.

Focus on Forms

The bottom line is that if you improve your online forms, you will improve your conversion rates. With this type of direct ROI in mind, expect to see a great deal of focus on form design, layout and conversion techniques this year.

Website Marketing NOW recently wrote about the top 10 tips for improving online form results in “Do Your Online Forms Need a Facelift?“.

The book Web Design for ROI has an entire section devoted solely to online forms. Expect much more coverage of online forms this year.

High Quality Photography

Check out online retailers, and a major trend you will find is their focus on amazing photography. Not only do we now get to see more photos for a single product than ever before, we also get to zoom in and out, turn products around and see multi-angle shots. In certain sites we get to change the color of the products we are viewing with the click of a mouse.

Check out the Martin + Osa website. There, you can see photos not only of the clothing you are interested in, but also of even the stitching and buttons of the apparel. The trend toward this level of quality and granularity is only going to intensify.

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

In its December 2008 issue, Entrepreneur magazine has detailed its list of trends for the coming year in the feature article "2009 Trends to Watch".

Below, Website Marketing NOW examines each of the trends listed under the "Web" category from the article:

* Web Apps
We agree with the main premise presented by Entrepreneur, that there is a great deal of opportunity for new web apps and tools. The key for small businesses is to create web apps that are truly useful, and either help customers achieve their objectives or solve their problems.

* Mobile Apps
Mobile keeps getting hotter and hotter. Whereas countries like Japan have been used to high-powered cell phones for years, the US is now catching up and going mobile fast. Website Marketing NOW believes that the areas of greatest opportunity in the mobile apps space for 2009 belong to retail, restaurants, tickets, news & informational services, and financial services.

* Online Video
Online video has been hot for a while, but in 2009 Website Marketing NOW believes that small business websites should really do whatever they can to add relevant video to their websites. Video for video’s sake should be avoided, but those small businesses that are able to truly help their customers through online video should benefit. For those small businesses that do not add online video to their websites in 2009, they run the risk of being outmaneuvered by the competition.

* Blogging
Website Marketing NOW is a HUGE advocate of small business blogging. The benefits are countless. You can communicate directly with your customers and prospective customers. You can seek their feedback and engage with them. You can educate and prove your expertise. You can enhance the quality of your website. You can add content to your website that can be picked up by the search engines. There really is little reason for a small business to not have a blog in 2009.

* Web 2.0 Consulting
Many small businesses are having a hard time understanding Web 2.0 and how to get involved. Whenever there is confusion, there is an opportunity for consultants to help small businesses get things done. Website Marketing NOW cautions, though, that small businesses should not dive into Web 2.0 without a plan and a longer-term strategy for leveraging the efforts into actual business value.

Additional Trends

In addition, Website Marketing NOW identifies the following areas as small business web trends in 2009:

* Customer Voice
We see the customer voice as an important element in small business websites in 2009. This can take various forms, including customer video testimonials, customer reviews, and other types of customer-generated content.

* Personalization
Website Marketing NOW has written about Personalization multiple times in the past, including our post Website Trends: Personalization. We see this trend only intensifying in 2009, with many smaller businesses taking advantage of evolving technologies to offer a more individualized product/service.

* Verticalization
Up to now, we have seen many Web 2.0 sites gain popularity such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. These are generic sites geared to the masses. In 2009, look for more verticalization in this area. For example, social media and social networking sites that focus on specific industries and topics will become more prevalent.

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Online shoppers’ expectations of retail websites are changing, as these shoppers trend towards expecting and demanding more and more from their website experiences.

In eMarketer’s article Shaking Up Online Shopping, it is clear that retail websites are going to need to add features and enhance the website experience in order to satisfy online shoppers and maximize revenue from their sites this holiday season.

According to an Allurent survey after last year’s holiday season, a full two-thirds of respondents confirmed that they expected online retailers to keep up-to-date with the changing online landscape, including technology improvements and innovations similar to those introduced continuously by Google and Facebook.

The leading site feature that online shoppers are seeking is clear, easy-to-access product information. Apparently, too many retailers are simply not providing users with the full slate of information that they seek in order to make a final purchase decision. This should be relatively easy for an online retailer to correct.

Another area where online retailers can better meet user expectations is by providing a mechanism for user reviews, user ratings and user forums. Additional useful retail website features include relevant product recommendations, buying guides, blogs, interactive personalization tools/surveys, video, demonstrations of the product "in action" (rather than in static images alone), etc.

In addition to all of the above, Website Marketing NOW has noticed another large opportunity for online retailers. One area that is commonly ignored by retail websites is the implementation of effective audience segmentation strategies to better meet the expectations of specific audience types. This can have a dramatic impact on a retailer’s conversion rates.

For example, instead of treating all visitors to the website in the same exact way, cater to their individual preferences. Instead of being exclusively product focused, provide a unique website experience for each audience segment, and allow the products to appropriately fit within these customized environments aligned to the customer’s lifestyle. A music site should treat visitors who love punk rock differently than those into folk, jazz or classical music. By customizing the website experience for the retailer’s main audience segments, visitor satisfaction should increase as well as site conversions (e.g., sales, live chat, request a catalog, locate a store look-ups, etc.).

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

There is a cool website trend that is taking shape around personalization. Last month we told you about Keds Studio, which enables consumers to place their own designs on Keds shoes and then sell them on Zazzle. Very cool!

Other websites are following the same personalization path, and Website Marketing NOW applauds these companies. The more you engage your consumers, the more you empower them. The more you empower them, the more they will feel connected to your brand, think about your brand, and tell others about your brand. Very cool!

In addition to Keds, here are a few of the big brand websites bringing personalization to their consumers:

Coca-Cola
Design your own Coke bottle!
http://www.coca-cola.com/olympics/

Colt 45 – Ink the Colt 45 Can
Design your own Colt 45 can!
http://www.talesofcolt45.com/inkthecan/

Samuel Adams – American Homebrew Contest
Submit your own beer recipe. Sam Adams will package and sell the winning recipe in stores!
http://www.samueladams.com/promotions/LongShot/Default.aspx

M&M’s – My M&M’s
Apply your own text, image or logo to M&M’s chocolates.
http://www.mymms.com/

Smaller brands that have incorporated personalization into their very DNA include:

Threadless
Design and sell t-shirts.
http://www.threadless.com

Zazzle
Design and sell merchandise such as t-shirts, posters and art.
http://www.zazzle.com

Lulu
Create your own books.
http://www.lulu.com

How about your website?
Can you brainstorm a way to empower your consumers to personalize products and services? Can you brainstorm a way to empower them to sell their own creations? Can you brainstorm a way for you to sell the best consumer-generated products?

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.