Small Business Trends of

Business trends are always on a constant change in this day and age. Now that we’re almost three months in on 2024, it isn’t too late to emphasize the business trends of this year. If you have a habit of not finding the right business trends, no worries. We made every aspect of the research so you don’t have to.

Don’t get us wrong though with this though. The business trends we listed below can help you grow your business, but only to a certain extent. Since everything is on a constant rotation, you can bring back the trends of the good ol’ days to spice things up a bit as well. This year’s trends are more focused on customer experience rather than what products you have.

Customer Experience is the Key

While there are many businesses that offer amazing customer service even after the sale is done, a good chunk of customers are now expecting customized customer experience. If you’re trying to target younger individuals to your business, make sure to have a personalized customer experience rather than a set way. Overall, the customer experience is going to be what you should put most of your focus in 2024.

Therefore, the quality of what you have in store is outside of this year’s trends. Instead, everything is about the customer. So in a way, this year is the year where the customer is always right, even more than right.

Table of Contents

1. Good Employee Relationships
2. Personalized Customer/User Experience
3. Remote Workers
4. The “Gigs” Economy
5. Making Generation Z Happy

1 – Happy Workplace Happy Customers

In almost all types of businesses, the pay gap is closing exponentially. This leads to workers looking for the best working environments. Knowing that the unemployment rate is at an all-time low, workers, especially the young workforce is choosing places where they can sustain a good work environment.

The pay surely do matter but keeping your employees happy is deeper than just that. If your employees know that they are a functioning important part of the business, they surely will be extra productive.

2 – Personalized Customer / User Experience

This has a direct relation with younger customers but regardless of age, everybody would choose the company that they are feeling closer to. If you don’t have any ideas about how you can make the customer’s experience personalized, it may have devastated results in the long run.

This is something you need to keep an eye at all costs. The best example of personalized customer experience is how YouTube’s algorithm works. Upon watching a certain type of video, you get suggested by similar yet still interesting videos. Although personalized customer experience is going to be available mostly in tech industries, it can still be implemented in other sectors as well.

3 – Remote Working Opportunities

Suffering from high rent prices for offices is the worse part of having a small business. If you were to locate the office in an area outside of the city to cut the costs down, it won’t be such an appealing commute destination. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to let your employees work from wherever they want.

A sizable number of people who work in tech work from their homes. While working remotely isn’t an obligation, some companies open their offices and let the employees decide whether to get to the office or not. Instead of hiring remote workers, you can let your employees decide which will further boost their happiness for the workplace.

4 – The “Gigs”

Over the years, freelancing has become a popular option. If you ask most Americans they would surely love to switch for freelancing to take control of their lives. With the rise of Uber, Lyft, and food delivery services that are similar to the two, freelancing has become not so far off.

Today, more than one-third of U.S. workers are working as part of the gigs economy. Even though not all hold these jobs as their primary job, self-employment is still not that far away. So if the gig services are in any way going to be useful for you, take advantage of it because there is no sign of them dying out soon.

5 – Generation Z

Anyone between the ages of 8 and 23 can be put into “Generation Z”. Shortly known as Gen Z, is expected to be the biggest customers of small business in the new decade. Keeping up with all the things that Generation Z likes can be the most challenging a small business owner has ever taken. This isn’t the lack of skill set of yours though. Simply, Gen Z is always changing the topics on what they like or dislike for that moment.

Although keeping up with Generation Z can be challenging, being relatable on social media has been the key point of reaching Generation Z.