But therein lies the attraction for Web professionals, and much of the opportunity as well. Businesses that strive to stay ahead of the curve will have a much greater chance at success. Business owners that can accurately predict the next trend. Well, that’s how multibillion dollar  companies are born.

We make no promises about the latter, but we can definitely improve your odds of achieving the former. To that end, we have identified the most important trends to watch in the year 2011. Before you examine the following pages, however, it is important to understand our definition of an important trend.

You may be tired of hearing about social media, for instance, and you hardly consider it a new development. But if you employ the same social strategies in 2011 as you did in 2010, and fail to account for the changes coming in the next year, your business will suffer the consequences.

Therefore, the most important Web trends in 2011 are those developments that your online business cannot afford to ignore. With that said, here are the trends to which every Web professional should pay close attention in the coming year, as well as some predictions, plenty of solutions and even more instructions along the way.

Everything’s in real time
The developments taking place in real-time technology will impact every industry across the Internet in 2011 from SEO to e-commerce to Web design. Google fired the loudest shot when it introduced Google Instant real-time search in 2010, but versions of the technology have been around for several years.

What are now more significant than the technologies themselves are the many different ways in which they can and will be used. Real-time search, real-time content distribution, real-time ad bidding, real-time analytic and real-time content translation are just some of the areas in which the technologies are changing the Web, thus creating the need for a new set of strategies across the board

To ensure that your website stays ahead of this trend, direct your focus on providing continually fresh and useful content that matters in real time content that addresses the current needs of your audience. There is no better way to achieve this than by engaging with your customers on social networks.

Create and distribute helpful blog posts and informational videos on which users can comment and share with one another, and invite them to write reviews about your products, services and business. Build an application or optimize your website to ensure that users can access your business on their mobile devices and get the information they need right away.

To monitor the engagement, explore some real-time analytic solutions to determine how visitors are interacting with your site while they are on-site. Optics provides just one of the solutions in this rapidly growing space, giving website owners instant analysis that allows them to immediately address the needs of their visitors.