How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Website Management

With the relevancy of AI growing exponentially, it might have you wondering how that will affect your website and the growing trends you should be aware of. Artificial Intelligence can be a daunting topic with a lot of uncertainties on how you should approach it. 

The good thing is that AI probably isn’t as unfamiliar as you might think. Artificial intelligence is already being used to recommend products on e-commerce websites, curate TikTok algorithms, spit out search results, and more. It’s being used all around you all the time.

Recently, there has been a boom in AI tools that can generate your marketing content, simplify workflow processes, build entire websites from scratch, and design your advertising graphics, the list is endless. But which emerging AI trends should you be aware of regarding your website?

Here are some ways that AI is currently affecting websites and what you should consider. 

Trend #1: Optimizing SEO Efforts for Conversational Content

With companies creating their own take on ChatGPT, it is becoming increasingly important to think about how you can optimize your website content for conversational queries.

What are conversational queries?

Conversational queries are simply questions that sound similar to how a friend would ask you a question. Think of how you interact with Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. These questions use full sentences with proper grammatical structure as opposed to isolated keywords. Similarly, with follow-up questions, the context of the conversation is already assumed. For example: “What time is Wicked playing in NYC?” Followed by “Are there any tickets available?”. Conversational queries would already assume that you are looking for available tickets in NYC for Wicked. 

This type of advancement in search will make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for with less effort. It also means your content needs to equally adapt so your website is more likely to be put in front of users. 

Here are some easy ways you can prepare:

• Use long-tail keywords – Long-tail keywords include three or more words that a user would use to find your content. This can include words such as “who, what, where, when, how”. Most importantly, ask yourself which questions your content is answering.
• Use headings & subheadings – Headings make it easier for search engines to crawl your content and create a summarized version for users.
• Think of local SEO – If you have a physical location that customers go to, local SEO is extremely important, especially for AI-generated responses. You can improve your local SEO by making sure your Google My Business profile is up to date.
• Use a conversational tone – Ensure you are using a conversational tone by reading out loud. That way it’s easier to catch if your content sounds robotic or impersonal. Try to incorporate words such as I, you, and we. And avoid using jargon and overly complicated language.
• Use lists or steps – Anything such as lists, bullet points, numbered steps, and tables can be easily summarized in an AI-friendly format.

Trend #2: Leaning Into Website Personalization

Website personalization is the process of using collected user data alongside machine learning to create a tailored user experience with targeted messaging, recommendations, and offers. Its growth in popularity is mainly due to a personalized user experience being far more likely to resonate with your users. In fact, they are starting to expect it, with 59% of consumers believing that businesses should use their collected data to personalize their experiences. 

Website personalization has been around for some time but now with artificial intelligence, these methods are becoming more advanced. Now AI can take into account browsing history, search behaviour, and purchasing patterns to create an entirely unique experience. Real-time dynamic content generation is one way this is being applied. By analyzing user behaviour, AI can adapt the content on your website in real time to best suit individual users. The result is higher conversion rates and increased customer loyalty.

Our Thoughts

While website personalization is incredibly useful to provide a top-tier user experience, it’s equally important to consider data privacy. It is incredibly important to remain transparent and inform users how you are using their data. Always give users the option to decline tracking and follow data privacy regulations.

Trend #3: Using AI Chatbots to Improve Customer Support

AI chatbots are quickly growing in popularity with website owners loving that they can easily embed them on their website and use their existing knowledge base to answer prompts. Chatbots are created using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and are built to answer frequently asked questions, solve common customer problems, retrieve important information, and move users along the sales funnel.

What is Natural Language Processing?

Natural language processing (NLP) is a branch of artificial intelligence that gives computers the ability to understand, interpret, and manipulate human language. In the same vein as conversational queries, NLP analyzes content and creates human-like responses. This is also used for tools like voice search, spell check, and content creation.

Our Thoughts

With these AI chatbots being incredibly easy to embed and program, the question is, is there a catch? It might seem like an easy solution but with the technology still being new, there have been a lot of reports of bugs with responses not properly aligning with an organization’s services or tone. The last thing you want is to provide a bad customer experience and risk losing potential customers. 

If you still want to use a chatbot on your website, instead of using a fully automated chatbot look into AI-suggested responses that your internal team can approve or edit before sending to a user. This way you can speed up your workflow while still ensuring you are providing users with a positive user experience.

Trend #4: Improving Your Workflow

Arguably the biggest advantage of AI for your website is all the tools available to save you time on your recurring tasks. Working in marketing means that you wear several hats throughout your workday, making it difficult to juggle all the manual tasks that are required to do your job. Things like content creation, analyzing user data, and keyword research can all be automated using AI tools, saving the average employee almost 2.5 hours a day on menial tasks.

How you can start using AI to improve your workflow:

• Perform topic and keyword research
• Write blog outlines and social media captions
• Spell-check your content
• Analyze your website’s performance
• Automate your marketing campaigns

Our Thoughts

While there are a lot of useful tools that can improve your workflow and save you time it’s important to consider copyright and plagiarism. Artificial intelligence never truly produces something of its own creation, it uses bits and pieces of various information found across the web. While it is a good starting point for inspiration and first drafts, you should avoid using entirely AI-generated content.

Overall, artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the way websites operate and interact with users. It is an incredibly useful tool that website owners should consider implementing to enhance their user experience, improve search engine optimization, and provide better customer support. However, it is important to keep in mind that AI tools still have limitations and are continuously evolving. As with any new technology, it is crucial to evaluate its effectiveness and tailor its implementation to meet specific business needs. By embracing AI trends while remaining aware of their limitations, website owners can stay ahead of the curve and provide a better overall user experience for their customers.