Is It Time To Turn Your Home Page Into a Chatbot?
It’s only a matter of time before everyone’s pumping up their landing pages with a little conversation. But how?
Let’s face it, the whole landing page thing is getting a little tired. You arrive, you scroll down past the big video image of pretty millennial people being connected, happy, and astonishingly productive, down to the features, with the pictures of the smiling, hopeful team below that, and then the testimonials from companies and more smiling people. Not forgetting the calls to action, strategically strewn around to make you go click, the whole package is something we all see an awful lot. I mean, it’s not that it’s a bad way to go. It works, and it works well, if the content and the value prop are right, but, but, it’s a bit, well, boring.
So what’s the alternative? How do you jazz things up?
Chatbots Rool OK
Unless you’ve been living under some kind of analog rock for the last year or so, you’ll know all about the rise of the #bots, my collective term for #chatbots and #vui and #alexa and #googlehome.
Talk about the Bot-ificaton of mankind is everywhere. Bots are going to take over this and take over that, and kill this approach to things, and ensure that [insert current practice here] is ‘dead’ (emphatically and profoundly dead!). You’d think the droids were about to embark on their final assault. Luckily, that’s not quite true.
The Internet does love to talk and talk, but amidst all the bluster there’s always room for a little reality. So here’s an example. The graphical user interface (GUI) is not ‘dead’. It’s just changing. And chatbots aren’t quite ready to take over the world just yet, because most of the good stuff still has to be scripted. But it turns out the scripted bots that you can create on great platforms like Octane.ai or Motion.ai can be responsively added to your website instead of getting lost on bigger messenger platform. It’s a perfect marriage of Conversational UI (CUI) with GUI, or #cooeygooey (I just made that up, but it has potential).
So what could this perfect marriage look like?
How CUI and GUI Can Get It On
Depending on your level of cajones, there are a few main ways you can incorporate a #chatbot into your landing page. (Time to break out the numbered bullet points, so now you know it’s serious).
- Chatbot As Widget: It’s standard startup procedure to have a chat widget on your site to connect with your site visitors. Apparently, they work, but if you’re not inclined to stay glued to your smartphone being available when you should be enjoying dinner, or you’re not prepared to pay someone else to do the smartphone-staring for you, you could hand the engagement element to a witty, well-written, well-crafted chatbot, which can be so much less pushy and oddly desperate. Because, really, to be honest, what you really want is an email, or even better a phone number so you can get the conversation going without worrying that the visitor drops off the page before you’ve got them hooked.
- Chatbot As Form: There’s something so boring about a form, which just sort of sits there not doing too much. And if it contains more than three fields, it almost always results in a user harumphing at how time-consuming it is. But what if the form talks to you, and asks you stuff, and tells you stuff in an engaging way so you’re smiling as you’re coughing up that email address and phone number? You can put your bot on as many pages as you want. You can make it a big part of your landing page, or you can use it to replace the call to action, or drive a deeper call to action. One thing’s for sure, if you get a user hooked on your bot (ahem, you know what I mean), and liking your style then you’ve got a good chance to get the lead and turn it into something better.
- Chatbot As Landing Page: Okay, so this is the option that separates the Women/Men from the Girls/Boys. In this approach, your home page is essentially just the bot. You’ll probably have a header with logo, and primary links, and a footer with secondaries, but the body of the page is the bot, the whole bot, and nothing but the bot. In this case, you’re relying on the bot driving your users deeper into your website. Now, the SEO peeps will snigger and say it won’t work, but as long as your title and description are solid, and your bot is well written, then it’s a ballsy and exciting way to go. Heck, you can always A/B test it to see if it delivers. My guess is that a well-crafted “landing bot” can engage users in a way that will really help you convert visitors into customers. There’s something mysterious and compelling about having a bot as your site’s gatekeeper. You can also collect data on the user as they pass through, and even direct the user to the right section of your site. The functionality can be as simple or complex as you want it to be.
Now All You Need is a Kick-Ass Bot
At this point, a landing page bot — however it’s used, is going to be highly scripted. Which means you either write and structure it yourself or get some other she or he to team up with you and help take care of it, or you just hand the whole shooting match over to this gal/guy. You’ll be totally stunned to learn that this entire article has led up to this point. Yes, it’s pitch time, where I tell you, that yes, for not a huge sum of money, I can write that bot for you, and we’ll have a tun (sic) of fun doing it. So have a think about whether a #landingbot is right for you, and if you want to take the idea for a waltz or a whirl — give me a shout, and we’ll talk.
There, that wasn’t so painful, was it?
Peace and love, to friends and bots, wherever you are. Mwah, mwah.
