As much as the internet keeps changing and improving and becoming larger and faster, one thing has remained constant... the Keyword Search.
Google and Yahoo offer a well indexed version of something that has been around from the beginning, the ability to type in some keywords and get a list of matching pages. Every medium to large online store has a search box and surfers have accepted the fact that to find the piece of information they want they will have to perform a search, browse the results and then provided they have used the correct keywords they can proceed to view the relevant page.
To reinforce in our minds the necessary steps that need to be taken, let's go to amazon.com and find out the following information
Who is the publisher of the hollow by Agatha Christie?
What videos do they have about adolescence?
What's their cheapest version of the old King James Bible?
What system do I need to run garden deluxe?
What is their return policy?
Provided you have some skill in searching for information, and you used the right keywords each time it may have taken you a few minutes to answer all the questions. (The last question requires the A9 search box to the right if you didn't figure it out!)
But wouldn't it be much easier to just type the question in the box?
Yes, much easier! But this doesn't work of course and instead what you'll get is a list of books that have titles similar to the question you typed. Here lies the difference between a traditional search engine and LiveQ+A technology. The LiveQ+A system is trained to actually *understand* a customer's question and display the relevant information instantly, basically doing all the work that the customer would usually have had to do.
To do a search in this way LiveQ+A needs to be able to do a number of things. First of all it needs to be able to interpret plain English questions. This allows it to know what the customer is asking, and means that the customer doesn't have to be an expert in keyword searching. Secondly the system needs to know where to look for that information, wether it be a products database field, a pre-written FAQ, etc. And thirdly it needs to be able to structure that information into an English response so that the customer can read the reply as easily as they entered the question in the first place.
The result of all of this is a much quicker and more user-friendly way of finding small bits of information from an overwhelmingly large website. This article gives a quick example of how LiveQ+A technology could make for a more pleasant Amazon experience but it is becoming increasingly essential for any website containing a database of products, services or any other types of data to make good use of it.
Written by Matt Reedake of SiteFX
Monday, May 28, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Every Website Needs a Resident Lazy-FAQ
How many times have you found a product you want to buy in Google, only to find it's a 2-week-expired eBay listing? Or wanted to find an item with an online store's search facility only to find that it lists only stale, unread news articles?
Gone are the days of business card or brochure sized websites, every ma-and-pa business wants an eCommerce website and a CMS backend so they can continue to add products and modify content on a daily basis. The result is a large, informative and dynamic website with to-the-minute information and data. And while this generation of website is a huge step forward from the old-school static websites, there is one main drawback;
How does a surfer or even a search facility find needed information when the content changes everyday?
As websites grow with their companies, so do their FAQ listings, their product lists, etc. They become far too cumbersome for a surfer to browse through and the search site facilities respond to any search with pages of unrelated hits. The end results are frustrated customers, swamped sales support staff, and a high turnover of surfers.
The solution of course is to have smarter search facilities. A bot that knows where to look in the database for certain information and makes the necessary queries. A module that checks the current state of the site's data when the search is taking place. A web app that has every frequently asked question under its belt, and can notify staff if it's missing one that customers want to know. And on top of all that it has to know what it's looking for from a simple, plain English question typed by the customer.
I call any belonging to this new generation of search facilities a "lazy-faq". The users can be lazy because they can type a simple question rather than trawling through the site, and the search bot is lazy because it doesn't fetch any data until the very moment it is requested by the user. Next generation website search modules such as LiveQ+A know where to go to find the price of the fluffy toilet seat cover you want, can reply to the question you're trying to ask about the size of their imitation Mona Lisa's, and are happy to tell you the store's business hours when you ask if they'll be open at 3am on Sunday. And all of these responses are in plain English, and using 100% current data.
The question entry box usually "lives" on a side panel of the website and because the system knows more specifically what you are asking about, it can reply in a few short sentences inside that box (without the page refreshing). This makes the search feature far less obtrusive than a search results page, and allows the user to quickly find information without disrupting their navigation.
"Lazy-faq" technology is well overdue in the current climate of super-dynamic web based internet and is being quickly adapted by many of the largest technology companies as a way to help their customers find what they want from a truly mammoth website. Soon the rest of the internet will follow suite and you can expect to see this next-gen search functionality as a standard fixture of all commercial websites in the very near future.
Gone are the days of business card or brochure sized websites, every ma-and-pa business wants an eCommerce website and a CMS backend so they can continue to add products and modify content on a daily basis. The result is a large, informative and dynamic website with to-the-minute information and data. And while this generation of website is a huge step forward from the old-school static websites, there is one main drawback;
How does a surfer or even a search facility find needed information when the content changes everyday?
As websites grow with their companies, so do their FAQ listings, their product lists, etc. They become far too cumbersome for a surfer to browse through and the search site facilities respond to any search with pages of unrelated hits. The end results are frustrated customers, swamped sales support staff, and a high turnover of surfers.
The solution of course is to have smarter search facilities. A bot that knows where to look in the database for certain information and makes the necessary queries. A module that checks the current state of the site's data when the search is taking place. A web app that has every frequently asked question under its belt, and can notify staff if it's missing one that customers want to know. And on top of all that it has to know what it's looking for from a simple, plain English question typed by the customer.
I call any belonging to this new generation of search facilities a "lazy-faq". The users can be lazy because they can type a simple question rather than trawling through the site, and the search bot is lazy because it doesn't fetch any data until the very moment it is requested by the user. Next generation website search modules such as LiveQ+A know where to go to find the price of the fluffy toilet seat cover you want, can reply to the question you're trying to ask about the size of their imitation Mona Lisa's, and are happy to tell you the store's business hours when you ask if they'll be open at 3am on Sunday. And all of these responses are in plain English, and using 100% current data.
The question entry box usually "lives" on a side panel of the website and because the system knows more specifically what you are asking about, it can reply in a few short sentences inside that box (without the page refreshing). This makes the search feature far less obtrusive than a search results page, and allows the user to quickly find information without disrupting their navigation.
"Lazy-faq" technology is well overdue in the current climate of super-dynamic web based internet and is being quickly adapted by many of the largest technology companies as a way to help their customers find what they want from a truly mammoth website. Soon the rest of the internet will follow suite and you can expect to see this next-gen search functionality as a standard fixture of all commercial websites in the very near future.
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