The year 2010 brings on new opportunities for businesses across the country including Indianapolis. The economy is slowly on the mend. Jobs are starting to come back. Businesses are strategizing on how to attack their marketing plans and grow. Indianapolis, in my opinion, is no different from this trend.

When I first came onto the web development scene, it was primarily about having a website. Your website was more of a brochure. There was little thought to a full web based strategy or social media community involvement for businesses. The primary focus was having a great looking web design and plenty of content for people to read.

Then came the next phase which was to measure the analytical data provided for your website. Soon, it was found that people often didn't spend more than 1-2 minutes on the site. This didn't help support the theory to have more than twenty pages of content. The next step was to find a way to convert those visits into money by creating calls-to-action. These calls-to-action were provided as forms, buttons and/or videos.

The most recent trend is how to use social media marketing and business blogging to benefit your business. Search engine marketing is taking the forefront, and more businesses are implementing corporate blogs and social media as a part of their web strategy. I believe this trend is going to add a new twist to how websites will be developed beginning in 2010.

With Google Live Search and the rise of blogging as the premiere method in getting recent and relevant content, the next trend is all about flexibility and the process of getting search content out to the masses. It will be about monitoring what people are looking for and providing that information. Businesses will be taking an ever-more increased role in talking WITH their customers (not just TO their customers). Websites and strategies will be taking on a new look to feed how people will find out about their business(es), goods and services.

I will be touching on how to take advantage of this new trend in my upcoming post. For now, I wanted to get you thinking about how sites will be developed differently with this in mind. I'd be interested in hearing some thoughts from you on what you see coming in the next year.