Moving From Personalised Content to Conversational UI
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Personalised content has long been on the minds of UX designers. In short, personalisation is basically looking at the user’s behaviour and organise the content in a way that makes sense to that specific customer. Recommendations, re-ordering products, even autofilling are types of personalised content and features. These tactics have significantly improved the user experience over the years. However, this is about to change.
Google Setting the Example
Ditching the traditional business model
Users utilising Google don’t just expect a list of websites anymore. Instead, it parses the information and provides the user with the best possible answer, according to Google, on the search results page. You ask Google, and Google answers like an assistant.
Users have also changed the way they interact with the search engine. For example, if you want to know if George Clooney has any children, you will literally ask “Does George Clooney have any children” and a list of children will be provided by Google. Users, especially on mobile, would probably phrase this request for information completely different. Rather than using a question, the user would use an array of relevant words, for example “George Clooney Children”.
While both queries will return the same result, many are more inclined to be enter a specific and more “human-like” request, even though we’re interacting with a system. This is part of how users are evolving in terms of their expectations when dealing with computers.
Other examples are asking for the weather, flight information, currency exchange information and the list goes on. Additionally, Google will summarise the information it has gathered from credible websites and provide a summary to give the user the best possible answer. Search for a movie, and you’ll get a summary, the list of actors, and most of the information that you’re after, without having to click on any of the links.
The AdSense and search advertising era will come to an end
Even though advertising is still Google’s cash cow, the company is diversifying its income model, partially because its traditional search advertising model might come to an end. Many users block ads and Google’s new user experience does not fit the traditional advertising model anymore, except perhaps on third party websites. For example, the right side of the results page is now used to show more information that will help the user with their search.
To pour this into BCG’s growth-share matrix, Google ads may eventually shift from being a very profitable “cash cow”, which it still is today, to a “dog” (low market share and low market growth).
Furthermore, Alphabet has a broad array of ventures aside from Google, and even though the majority of their revenue comes from advertising, their investment strategy might have a different angle. As Google Ventures keeps growing, they will have more and more stars that are and will be bringing in the cash. Think Nest, Life Science companies, AI technology and much more.
Google Assistant is a game-changer
Having discussed Google’s revenue model, which is extremely complex to map out as they profit from most of their mainstream products as well, e.g. the Google Translate API, G Suite, Storage, and so on. Google Assistant will be the next big thing on their agenda, mainly competing with Alexa.
As history repeats itself, advertising will stay Google’s course of action to monetise their AI assistant. Whether on chat or voice-enabled assistants. It’s low-hanging fruit and a cashflow enabler for the firm. However, expect more innovative monetisation models coming soon through their AI-powered assistants. It might take years, but just like their search engine, ads will become less important in the long term when it comes to their rapidly evolving AI technology.
Conversational Content
When browsing and searching for answers and information through most search engines and websites, they often results in pages with minimal dynamic content. Often, the search engine will simply return a list of links.
Whenever a user is searching or asking a question to a bot, we should not confine ourselves to a chat window or a static page. Rather, relevant and dynamic pages that are structured according the user’s need should be generated.
Highlighting information is one way of achieving this, however, there are many other UX principles that can be applied.
Let’s say that a user wants a personal loan. Rather than pushing him or her onto the website’s personal loan page, it would be more useful to ask a few questions first that will provide this person with relevant content on the page itself that is completely catered to the user’s needs.
With conversation design we dig deeper in the needs of the customer. Perhaps the user has already found the right loan, but should be able to ask questions to our AI assistant or agent to gain more knowledge and hopefully convince this person to apply for the loan. This process is especially important for complex tasks.
AI assistance as an enabler
User will be taken through different pages. It’s important that the chat functionality does not disappear. Most users don’t have the patience to pick up the phone and wait for someone to answers their questions. They want their questions answered here and now. As a company, we need to be prepared to inform the user, provide calculations and other material that will help this person resolve his or her issue.
However, when we think about chat, we think about a chat window where one can have a conversation with a AI assistant or agent that sits on top of a webpage. However, we need to break free from this thinking.
Moving From Static Pages to Dynamic and Personalised Content to Conversational UI
On desktop, we have an entire page that can be restructured based on the user’s questions and needs. On mobile, the user could switch between the conversation and screens that give him or her the right information.
Adding a recommendation box, relevant tips, notifications, have all significantly increased the user experience on all platforms. Giving control to the user, having him or her shape the website so that all information is shown in a manner that is completely relevant to what the user is looking for. This way, we’re truly creating a two-way street between the customer and the user.
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