Nothing like a year-end feature. There are always lots of technical changes to keep up with in a business, and things usually accelerate a bit every year. 2025 was definitely the year of huge A.I. advances - but AI isn’t the only issue you’re facing.

Here’s a list of some biggies and at least basic starting point advice on what to do. Let’s get proactive in 2026.


1) AI Adoption and Integration
Small businesses are exploring AI for automation, marketing, customer service, and analytics, but struggle with cost, training, and other issues. It’s easy and impressive to type a question into ChatGPT, but integrating it into your workflow is another thing.
Best Quick Advice: Small businesses should start with one simple, repeatable task for AI to automate, prove its value, and then gradually expand so adoption stays affordable and manageable.

2) Cybersecurity Threats
Ransomware, phishing, and sophisticated cyberattacks target small businesses disproportionately, making cybersecurity a pressing concern. It’s a tough strain on businesses that don’t have large IT teams.
Best Quick Advice: Small businesses should invest in basic, automated security tools and regular employee training, because the simplest protections stop most attacks even without a large IT team. You won’t stop everything, but at least don’t make the rookie mistakes.

3) Low-Code/No-Code Platforms
Small businesses are adopting these tools to build apps without extensive coding knowledge, but may face limitations in scalability and security. And once it’s time to do something unusual or requires more sophisticated code, how do you do it? Or integrate an expert’s help?
Best Quick Advice: Small businesses when choosing low-code tools should plan early for when they'll need expert help by choosing platforms that allow smooth handoff to developers

4) AI-Driven Customer Support
Chatbots and virtual assistants promise to reduce support costs, but can impact customer satisfaction if poorly implemented. Are you creating ill will where there was none by putting in a frustrating or incomplete chatbot?
Best Quick Advice: Implement chatbots carefully-prioritize clarity, helpfulness, and always try to have a way to escalate to humans, even if that’s just an email to a delegated person at your office.

5) Automation of Repetitive Tasks
RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and AI can handle invoicing, email campaigns, and reporting-but misconfigured automation can create errors. And again, how do you integrate these into your workflow?
Best Quick Advice: Start small. For email, for example, integrate AI into email marketing by using it to personalize content, optimize send times, and analyze engagement, while monitoring results to refine your strategy.

6) Software Integration Challenges
Linking CRM, accounting, marketing, and project management tools is essential but often complex and error-prone. Multiple silos in even a small organization sometimes don’t talk to each other well.
Best Quick Advice: My first guideline is to ask yourself does the same data get typed or entered into more than one place at your company? If so, you should make code changes for interfaces or APIs or web services to pull that info from wherever it already exists.

7) Mobile-First Strategy
Small businesses need apps and websites optimized for mobile to reach customers, impacting UX design, development, and cost. Any design worth its salt is already mobile-responsive, but not all are great.
Best Quick Advice: Apps instead of responsive websites can be prohibitively expensive and not as much in demand as you think.

8) E-commerce Platform Selection
Choosing between Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or custom solutions affects scalability, fees, and SEO potential. It’s critical that everything is completely optimized or it obviously costs you money and sales.
Best Quick Advice: Choose your e-commerce platform carefully and run a LOT of tests and limited beta testing programs before you rely on it fully to make sure you don’t have an unanticipated costly mistake in there.

9) Emerging Payment Technologies
Adopting crypto payments, digital wallets, or "buy now, pay later" solutions introduces technical, legal, and security considerations. And how do you integrate those into your current systems?
Best Quick Advice: Integrate crypto, digital wallets, or BNPL cautiously by ensuring secure, compliant connections to your existing systems and thoroughly testing transactions before going live.

10) Voice Search and AI Assistants
Optimizing for Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri is increasingly relevant for local businesses but requires technical and marketing know-how. It was hard enough to get on the "first page of Google". Now you need the be THE FIRST answer for voice assistants.
Best Quick Advice: Optimize for voice search by structuring your content for clear, concise answers, using local SEO best practices. And testing how various major assistants interpret your business information.