Business data predictions for 2019  

Trends are always influencing the world around us at both a local level within Australia and that abroad. Here are a few predictions we have which you may want to keep in mind for your business while we enter 2019.

1. Data Analytics

As the demand for business intelligence grows, so will the demand for analysts working within Australian businesses. Businesses will seek to make business decisions based on patterns, insights, and predictions. These data-based decisions will continue to optimise business performance both offline and online.

Your business needs to:

• Ensure your business has a cohesive business network of creative and technology disciplines to ensure you succeed in data analytics. Creativity is a skill that data can only provide through a limited scope. Ensure the maths and analytics portion of a business’s decision-making process is balanced out with creativity. Customers need to have a memorable experience they will want to return to. Not just another cookie cutter website or product.

2. The Desire For ‘Trustworthy’ Business Lives On

Customers craving for business transparency and honesty will continue into 2019 because the online market still hasn’t successfully provided it for them.

The internet provides a platform where it is easy to deceive and conjure. The virtues of transparency and honesty are almost impossible to win when it is so often tarnished by this easy ability. But, as dishonesty is presented to consumers, again and again, it becomes a more valuable treasure that customers always hope to find and will most certainly reward through loyalty.

So what can a business in 2019 do to achieve a reputation that is so desirable by your competitors?

• Achieve this foundation of honesty with your customer offline first, well away from the interactions of your competitors. Then, stand on this honest foundation built with your customer online.
• Establish honesty and transparency on a one-one communication level with the customer for startups. Not as a loudspeaker. Reputation damage takes costly resources to fix. So, be aware of putting your brand on reputation building platforms that are easy to manipulate.  Some are worse than others.

3. Virtual Reality

The limitations of screen size on smartphones and the tablet meant only one thing. virtual reality. The word is out. Major industries and entities in Australia have been spreading the word loud and clear in 2018.  It’s the presentation of virtual reality that am a massive game changer here. Virtual reality achieves a means of presenting a product that is almost 100% real. What will this mean for the retail sector? Seeing and almost touching before you buy?

Your business needs to:

• Successful businesses will be those who possess predictive analytics skills in forecasting the crossover businesses within their industry as virtual reality will be like an octopus and cross over and influence everyone, so be prepared.
• virtual reality, unlike standard presentation mediums, is one that deeply affects the psyche of consumers in ways we do not yet fully appreciate. It is largely untapped into other than through gaming. It will be very interesting to see the effects it has on society as a whole. So keep an eye on the guinea pigs in the market closely. They aren’t always the ones who succeed but who we learn a great deal from.

4. Customer Communication

There was once a king, and he dressed as a civilian and worked with them for a few months. He experienced their hardships and their joys. Why would a king do this? He could have had anyone do this job for him right? Wrong. If you are the CEO of your business you need to know what goes on first hand for your customers. Do everything you can to ensure you regularly are in tune with how they arrive and reject or buy your service or product.

As market saturation, price war, automation, robots, and technology change, so do consumer behaviours. So, revisit the product and customer life-cycle as often as you can. The business market is becoming so large and it is more difficult to grab and maintain the attention of the masses. Our predictions are showing that we will see businesses focus their attention on those directly around them. We will see more businesses paying attention to old-fashioned techniques and building relationships with their local surroundings as these have more security and reliance.

Your business needs to:

• Build an understanding of your clients’ challenges and goals through surveys, reward programs and participation in local gatherings to share your answers with them.
• Build a consumer relationship not solely based on your product or service but through communication strategies.

5. UX Design and Development

It’s hard to find a website that looks like it was built in the 1990s. If we do come across one it is one that we might even be inspired from because they are fairly unique in their graphics and UX compare to copy cat trends on the net now.

Most of your competition has had the web makeover in addition to the SEO one. There are fewer faults that you can pick out on the masses of website out there. One area that not all businesses have fine-tuned is their users’ interface. The UI of a website or app is crucial but one that many businesses fail to successfully achieve. It is a time consuming and very resourceful process. So the sooner you start analysing your UX the better. Especially keep an eye on the UX for  Mobile and Tablet devices. These devices continued to grow in 2018 across nearly all online industries.

In 2019 your business needs to :

• Have a website custom built with UX at the central key of its role. Almost primarily for purchase NOW. ]Just imagine your competitor has a buy now button incorporated on their page 1 rank URL. This is not present now but just imagine that is where the future is. Have a simpler, smarter, faster purchasing solution that outperforms your rival on ALL levels.

6. Australian Backyard Businesses

Get ready to see an increase in competition from everyday Australians in addition to people living in Australia on temporary visas setting up a business from their home/property.

We advise our clients to pay a visit to Gumtree as it is a wealth of LOCAL knowledge to present day society trends which you can easily form predictions from. What happens on Gumtree will soon enough affect your business. Gumtree used to be a platform for second-hand goods. So was Ebay. Until it started to spread its corporate wings into a marketplace of everything. These platforms are the first battlefield for retail prices.

Your business needs to:

• Become a frequent web surfer of gumtree, ebay and amazon. See how low people are willing to take their profit margins and what marketing strategies they use.

7. The ‘Last’ Influencer

Influencers come in all forms. The ones that are the most important are the ones who have the last influencing say.  It’s your customers daughter, son, a younger friend, younger neighbor, younger colleague and anyone who is a little tech savvy no matter what age group they are from. These people may assist your ‘customer’. It may be a positive or negative push to or from your product. So keep these millennials in mind when analysing data from your business.

Your business needs to:

• Respect your customers and assume they know more about marketing than you do. When it comes to studying a product or service they have at least 10 strategies to use.  Online businesses should not assume and function in a way to ‘outsmart’ their customers.

8. 2019  Advertising Prediction

Small Businesses in Australia will seek advertising methods that are PHYSICALLY in front of their local market. Online ads will continue to be a popular option for online businesses such as Google ads and facebook ads however we will continue to see a shift of businesses seeking cheaper and more local methods to grab local market attention.

We predict that in 2019 Google ad prices will continue to fluctuate with market demand. If your industry is experiencing a decline in sales this will be shown through your data and the ad providers will adjust accordingly. A happy advertisement provider is one who has 1. Customers and 2. Businesses paying for ads. So, depending on the Australian consumer market, we may see a decline in online ads or an increase.

Your business needs:

• Shop around for ads:  bus ads, billboards, pamphlets, radio ads, local newspapers, a lot more neighbourhood centered ads.

9. SEO

Content clutter will be a major issue online as billions of people try to gain a view, look, share, buy, like. This massive competition means that the people who have the job of grabbing a ‘customers’ attention will resort to extreme lengths. We are already seeing the effects of: Amusement de-sensitivity and a sharp reduction in concentration span from users. What does this mean for online businesses? Firstly it is a concern primarily for Google and search engines because they want to maintain a service of quality and fellowship.

For 2019 our prediction is that Google will alter its algorithms in an endeavor to de-rank poor content and click-bait content.

Your business needs:

• Ensure your website conforms with the google requirements to ensure your business maintains an ideal ranking. Such tests you can run include several google tests: site speed, mobile responsiveness, and site map are just a few.

10. Card over Cash

 Most of our clients have an online presence so much of their transactions are made by cashless transactions. Society has moved from barter to coins, to cash, to cheque, to card swipe and pin and sign, to card pin, to card tap, to phone tap , to start-up finance companies, and let’s not forget bitcoin. It is only predictive that we would assume that these cashless transactions will continue to evolve. A cashless society would have a direct and huge impact on businesses who prefer to deal with cash.

New technology that will supersede a means of payment that has been around for centuries will be very exciting as it may bring more comfort and ease to our current life. However, it is also important to respect new technology and be aware that everything can be exploited. Innovation has many times delivered more potential than what the inventor ever predicted.

What to do:

• Consider the impact customers paying you only on a card will have on your business.
• Keep an eye on what payment methods your competitors are accepting and how. What does this allow your competition to do.
• There is a need to remember that if you use a technology that involves data and the internet then people will have access to it and they can track your customers wherever they are in the world and know how your Australian business The internet has no borders.

LIGHT HEARTED PREDICTIONS 

Music

A continual musical voyage will continue into 2019 we predict that remains not at all fantastic. So let’s continue to sail along by having a breath of music revival from the past tunes on youtube.

City Traffic

Expect to see more foot scooters, and more alternative means of transportation, even people holding A4 pieces of paper ‘Lewisham or bust’ to the masses of cars driving past on Paramatta rd in the hope a 1 driver car will pick them up and give them a ride since they’re going in that direction too.

Fashion

We will continue to see the bohemian anything goes look. However, we do predict the emergence of unique patterns that are locally knitted, sewn, adjusted quality clothing will emerge. Island floral prints, and fedora and straw hats with a more relaxed fashion statements the opposite to what society actually feels will be the hype for 2019.