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Jaco de Wet has been practicing as a User Experience Designer for more than a decade. He worked on the award winning Private Property site as well as Nedbank & Standard Bank mobile apps to name a few. He currently works at CloudSmiths as Senior User Experience Designer. He's also a Certified Usability Analyst (2011) from Human Factors International.
NJ Webinar | The latest in AI website personalisation (2024-05-07 09:03 GMT+1) - Transcript
Jaco De Wet: I will reiterate we're going to be covering a couple of things today. The emergence of AI generative content just kind of a little precurs as to what's happening? And then leaning a little more into the AI powered chatbots understanding we're conversational Commerce comes in real world examples of AI business personalized websites. We maybe executions that we thought was interesting to kind of showcase you guys and then just a couple of tips as to how you can get started with generative AI on your website.
Jaco De Wet: but yeah a little bit about me I've been Working as easy experience designer for a little over there a little more than 14 years now. Started at property nedbanks and a bank couple of Intex and then I'm currently a ux designer at Clarence seconded in the UK. And I'm a certified usability analyst from human factors International. So whatever experience however, we're all quite new to this AI Realm. And yeah, I had to kind of really put my thinking hat on to. See what we can come up with Ferdie.
Ferdie Bester: Just before we dive into the thing where our next webinar is how AI is changing the social media landscape and we got Justine, about from Anki starfish that runs the KFC social media account to come and talk to us next month. So if you can on that webinar just follow the link in the chat and go and sign up to join us for that session. We can just going to talk about how algorithms work in the feeds and the personalisation of it. And How does the social media landscape look like at the moment with all the changes happening? book back to your crew
Jaco De Wet: And then just a side note. at any point in time, you feel like you would like to know more if you want to know something a little more specific. Please throw it in the chat put your hand up poke Ferdie, whatever you will see what we can do and if we don't know the answer straight away, we can always have a little chat afterwards and see what we can come up with. so I think in terms of actual generative AI it's something that we all starting to be really familiar with even my mother-in-law understands the concept of charitypt and she's been using it to matters may but I think one of the things that
Jaco De Wet: Despite its unbelievable power. it's thought to show some of the cracks as to what it's coming up with. It definitely starts to lack originality. I think we've seen that debate going around quite a bit. If you don't provide it with enough information you get a very broad spectrum message or Broad. Version of something that you're looking for meaning that you're not really honing in your content to audiences. And I think when it starts having that kind of generic feel to it, it's not in your own words and we can almost start saying that not using generative AI analysis becomes the competitive Advantage. Sorry because
Jaco De Wet: the originality is starting to lack and showing through and this is a very classic example of it, although The idea is quite original. The content this is a guy that built a website using articles from New York Times and he submits it to chat GPT and says rewrite this article sit in the tone of the onion a hundred years in the future and kind of understand what would the outcome be of whatever the topic was that was featured on the New York Times? So it's obviously quite quickly. It's very satirical tongue and cheek and it's not meant to be serious.
Jaco De Wet: What I did think was amazing was someone managed to do this. the entire code base is available to you and to download and you can do whatever you want with it. But this is really kind of what it's come down to right making websites. That means absolutely nothing. It's not really contributing that much to the world. However, it will be seriously funny. If one of these articles actually become a reality and I think What we need to look at the potential this The same could be said for image generation. We've all played around with Dolly majorly, trying to kind of figure out how do I actually make this useful to me? One of the
00:05:00
Jaco De Wet: the items that we struggling with Even in our own world is creating something that truly feels original but also relevant and then having that kind of inconsistency and if you start starting to try and build a theme of images that you can use throughout your website or your marketing artifacts it's really difficult because I mean a lot of brand building is based on the fact that you have a consistent experience a good user experience that the user can expect from it from your brand or your messaging
Jaco De Wet: so even though it's still amazing and it's generating something truly remarkable and would have taken ages to generate otherwise Yeah, it's starting to show the cracks. And this is really creepy and interesting at the same time. It's a website called this person does not exist the actual I think.com domain just shows an image of a person and it's generated every two seconds and what they're trying to prove is how realistic they can actually generate human faces that actually do not exist. So these are all models within with a technology stack called Style again three, I think I pronouncing that quickly But this is I think the worrying but here is not.
Jaco De Wet: So much the fact probably sometimes that look a little squint or anything but more on the lines of how do we know what to trust in future. So when you put a testimonial in front of someone How do I understand or kind of see the truth in what is being delivered? And I think these kind of questions is probably a little harder to answer right now, but hopefully in the future we'll start seeing this kind of patterns emerge from it and we can start following those guidelines and I think a lot of these companies are working really hard to establish this measures and protocols. God would help guide us.
Jaco De Wet: So one of the things that we found really useful or chatbots and especially AI chart of power chatbots and you'll see why we can lean into this a little just to kind of understand the difference between what a regular chatbots and what a artificial intelligence powered chatbots this table will be available to you in the day once we actually publish it but just three things that I would like to focus on the technology stack the responses and the learning ability differences between these two. So the regular chatbots are quite rule-based. So in other words, it has a certain number of questions, you can ask it and we can have an algorithm that determines what the answer should be but it's very limited in this program because it's quite programmatically responsive. So it only says what it knows it should tell you it can't determine for itself what it should be able to tell you where
Jaco De Wet: The AI power chatbots can actually learn from the questions and it could adapt responses. So it's very Dynamic and something that it may not have been on to be able to answer yesterday. It can answer Tomorrow based on having more access to more information Etc. But the regular chatbots you need to program those responses and if you've ever used not just anyone in particular, but I know I'm quite familiar with certain of the banking chatbots or medical schemes and they are inferiorating Leaf frustrating because if you don't ask the right question it just simply going on to you.
Jaco De Wet: so we've seen the emergence of AI chatbots in a number of spaces. The first is in customer service delivery. Google has a platform called dialogue flow which enables people to I'm going to say quite unquote more easily be able to kind of train models and allow users to
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Jaco De Wet: Ingest information and then have quite an interesting experience accessing that data for users using kind of text or…
Jaco De Wet's Presentation: I am
Jaco De Wet: speech Etc. I've got a video here that I'm going to play back to you. it's about that's
Jaco De Wet: I would like you to just kind of see what they're kind of got leaned into is they're taking an owner's manual of a car and it allowed a person in trouble. And it's gonna sit next to them or this is a demo.
Jaco De Wet: just Something happening. I can have you are and what's happening.
Jaco De Wet's Presentation: I am
Jaco De Wet: You can actually translate that as on your language potentially. And then it's starting to kind of. also telling the user or asking them are you going to position…
Jaco De Wet's Presentation: Yes, I found it.
Jaco De Wet: where you do something and so they are like safety protocols back into the responses as well because they're gonna ask me to do something that requires them to kind of take their attention of the road and…
Jaco De Wet's Presentation: Make sure there is no debris such as leaves or mud covering the sensor then wipe the sensor clean with the soft cloth. Okay all done.
Jaco De Wet: It's quite expensive.
Jaco De Wet: But what later on sports happening is once they've actually discovered…
Jaco De Wet's Presentation: Great. Let's turn the car back on and…
Jaco De Wet's Presentation: see if things are working.
Jaco De Wet: what the problem is and how the solution would necessarily need to be resolved.
Jaco De Wet: They're able to kind of direct the user and connect with So mapping Services. Here's another example where they use voice and the voice responses if The hands are occupied. Otherwise, you can actually start engaging with the user with different media. And this looks quite futuristic, but I'm actually another example where this is local. What's happening now is that they can actually start? Telling the user. What do you want to Use this thing? I want to do something in my office. They can actually affirm certain information that they really have about user and then direct them with station in a presentation. So again, this seems very hypothetical and this is obviously quite a very slick demo on a video.
Jaco De Wet: But the reality is that it exists. It's not that far of. Another example that we found was zendesk, which has got it backed into its support chat facility where there are certain cues. So there's things supposed to Loop what I want to pause on. is
Jaco De Wet: There's an entity that it connected to it. Probably don't even have to supply that much information and it would actually be able to kind of understand what you're trying to say and then provide you with any Syrian information. again, sometimes it feels quite like this is two futuristic, but I can promise you it's not and this is where I would like to lean in fatty date me to do a live demo, but I refrain so I went up to a screenshots. Sorry Ferdie.
Jaco De Wet: And so Jenny internet is a internet service provided South Africa that offers kind of point to point internet connectivity. So they're actually quite specialized a lot in kind of bloodland areas or small towns where people denecially have access to fibers so they can do fixed by a little fixed WFi wireless connectivity. So I prompted Jenny and I said, hey I'm moving into new address. What are my options and can I check the axis? Seems pretty straightforward question and response. It prompted me to ask me what my address is and our spiteful and I only entered my street address to see what it does with it. It could obviously determine that. Hey I need a bit more information. Tell me what town you live in and I just gave it myself like my town.
Jaco De Wet: From there it managed to determine that. I'm X kilometers away from it here my options for connected connectivity. And then it's quite lengthy in copy. So I think there's a little bit of work to be done. But I was quite familiar with this because if you have A parent like mine. They send you articles instead of short messages. But what I then did is I prompted it with a question that I don't think would necessarily have been programmed before so this is now where the AI starts to actually kind of really be powerful. So asked it don't they have any five options and their response to note. they explain what they have. And then So without providing any context I then went back just a cool if I want to consider
00:15:00
Jaco De Wet: use their services. How do I plan for this? I'm moving on the 1st of June and it was able to craft a response that made me feel quite good it sit and applying at least two to three weeks before you move in. So your date on the first of June would be perfect. to me programmatically, you would never have been able to kind of Determine that type of response only AI would really be able to kind of take that information digest it in a way and then craft a message back to you that would make sense and you'd be able to kind of connect with and this is critical. This is really interesting. that starts hitting home. then I asked it via voice note.
Jaco De Wet: what would the installation fees be and it started doing a little breakdown on that? And then finally, I just said no, it's okay. I don't want anything but please can afford the prices to my email address. That's all I asked it to do and it actually sent me a quote with the information that I asked it. It's included my location details, etc. Etc. now
Jaco De Wet: this is a really good experience. This was suitably one of the better experiences. I've had probably surfing any type of service provider for internet. And the reason I feel that it's so useful was because I did not have to one go and look for this information. I was able to do this seven o'clock last night. I was able to be rude and short on my messaging and it continued being super purchase and I was able to kind of ask it what I want rather than having to sift through a website all the pricing information, etc. Etc. I could be very prompt with what I want to know and it was able to ingest and respond accordingly. So a couple observations is that
Jaco De Wet: you need data. Unfortunately, these kind of services aren't available to you just
Jaco De Wet: starting a chatbots in a row when you actually start contributing to these models to learn from the key aspects that I thought was really interesting. it's quite repetitive tasks or
Jaco De Wet: Certain things that I want out of it. having a flight code or knowing where I live. So there are certain inputs that you need to kind of be able to kind of cater to and then respond to as well. So these slightly more than just say your knowledge base that you need to import it would be in amalgamation of quite a lot of data points that you would need to kind of contribute with and…
Ferdie Bester: any questions around this chatbots And what Jacobs seen?
Jaco De Wet: it's mainly useful in kind of support orientated task and…
Ferdie Bester: You're welcome to talk.
Jaco De Wet: for sales purposes and…
Ferdie Bester: Ask it all just type it in the text.
Jaco De Wet: especially because you can run these models or these kind of bots outside of working hours or maybe even when you're called centers at capacity, quite a number of ways that this really is super useful.
Jaco De Wet: It's
Jaco De Wet: or if you have your own observation, it would be interesting to share that as well.
Jaco De Wet: sorry, I didn't see them yet, but
Jaco De Wet: cool so
Jaco De Wet: the reason this actual webinar even spoke the conversation was I came across an article written by Jacob Nielsen? He's one of the founding members of Milton Norman group. He's been in the industry for decades and he's quite a engine usability engineer and he's really kind of sit a lot of the foundations that we use today around heuristics and principles that will forever but probably be in user experience design and otherwise and he wrote an article that asked the question have we failed making the internet a better place for people with certain disabilities? So that would typically be referred to as excessive accessibility on the net.
00:20:00
Jaco De Wet: his answers. Yes, I mean, so he's measures for success of a website. But how easy is it for website to be for someone to actually learn what they are doing how productive with the person be trying to fulfill a certain task? And what is the experience how enjoyable with the website be and I think to a large degree. We weren't even like if you're able body you would not even necessarily be able to check all these boxes on quantum number of websites at the moment. he said and I consider uses with disabilities to be simply users. So I started thinking what if
Jaco De Wet: with disabilities are simply users. What if we look at all users who has an inability to do certain things and on this really speaking to accessibility standards or high contrast things like they're all the host of things that you can cost under the accessibility net but what if the users that you're trying to Target as an inability to do something based on the repletes them to kind of Consume or understand or have reference or have mental models that relate to the content that you're trying to actually put out them. So that thing kind of I was starting to think of all maybe we need to consider that it's not necessarily. making
Jaco De Wet: bigger and better websites, but making what you have on the websites more understandable and more consumable. So personalization is a big aspect to it. And I found two examples that I thought was kind of really interesting on a Survey Monkey. Obviously you fill out a whole host of things when you sign up.
Jaco De Wet: And with their latest AI tool you can actually build surveys really at the click of a button so they used a zero open eyes open AI service and obviously they have a huge amount of data to lean into so you can click on literally I want to do market research and it populates. There's a little text box over here saying what it is that you're looking to actually research and it from text. It would build you an entire survey and then you can start manipulating that survey to kind of better suit what you're looking to do.
Jaco De Wet: What was interesting is how it automatically started including things like I want demographic information and it really defined what some of those demographic information elements would be you can probably even start defining like you can actually Define the goals as well. So what is it that you want to know from the actual survey and it'll prompt the users with the questions that you may not necessarily even have had thought about to get to the goal that you're aiming for.
Jaco De Wet: Another example of dynamic or personalized content that you may not even be aware of is on Netflix. And so you may have noticed that they have random thumbnails, but the reality is that those thumbnails are not random by any chance. They have probably one of the biggest catalogs of TV and film on the net and especially in South Africa I suppose and they've gone through a huge efforts to try and uses attention to particular TV series is ETC.
Jaco De Wet: So just to kind of show there's an entire article that unpacks exactly what happens in the backend and how that actually managed to do this. But this is one of the examples that they gave where if someone watched romantic movies interested in Good Will Hunting and they'll show a frame we met Damon and many driver are leading into a kiss or within a romantic moment. So it managed to take that your pattern of browsing and it also managed to take a frame that speaks to romantic Behavior. And it matched those two things and gave you a thumbnail that is most likely for you to click on.
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Jaco De Wet: Then the second example was someone who might be quite interested in comedies with male leads Etc. And then they realize a cool weather. Robin Williams is a comedic actor and people recognize them for that therefore they use a frame. With Robin Williams, which is most likely going to be the reason why you click on it. Not that many drivers not funny. I suppose no, right but the reality is that's how they've kind of not manipulate by personalized information so these are very extreme examples, but I think what I would like you to do is consider when doing this for yourself. Don't jump on the band brag and without giving it some thought I think.
Jaco De Wet: It is very new technology. Like you say most of the people that actually came onto the call mentioned that they're interested in this new thing or they're interested in generative AI because it's quite fresh and I think what we need to do is at our toes into the water rather than jumping and all together. so
Jaco De Wet: Being slightly more strategic about it, having approach trying Define the framework that you want to work with and in the years experience design world, we would typically follow a user Center design protocols or methodologies that would help us kind of take us through the process instead of just doing something so in short, I think Focus if it's where the users are struggling most so find out where people are having an issue converting and don't necessarily just go to the source of where the users are but maybe look at the entire Journey.
Jaco De Wet: And look into your call center data. Look at your analytics playback some user Journeys. There's some great tools out there that would actually do full-on recordings of user patterns and I can promise you can watch Tina ten videos and you'd start seeing or recognizing certain patterns. And if you notice that page is being a problem then hone in on that page, but don't forget the fact that it's a journey. So if you're missing something along the journey that might be the reason why people drop of it it's certain point as well. The second thing is when coming up with a solution. make sure that you not trying to always reinvent the wheel. Sometimes this comfort of familiarity with certain things. look at what patterns you could. Jump start from and then see how you would, be a bit more.
Jaco De Wet: differentiate yourself a little more but don't necessarily try and always be cutting edge because there are reason why patterns exist, but you can build on top of those patterns don't ignore those patterns and problems that have really been solved before and Over time we're really actually within my current workplace. They started looking at just certain of the AI patents but maybe more from a UI perspective, but I think we'll see more and more patterns emerge as these platform starts expanding and we can really start seeing more and more documentation actually emerging from your Geminis and chatbots as well. and then lastly once you've implemented Your solution don't leave it like
Jaco De Wet: review it make sure that the hypothesis or the plan you had is executed and if it isn't working be willing to Vivid and move and tweak it continuously test and move forward with what you kind of set out to achieve.
Jaco De Wet: If you look at your website, specifically I've broken it up into three major parts, I think.
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Jaco De Wet: You need to consider the fact that the user needs to move from point A to point B. So look at your call to actions on a website areas where they are if you posing 10 options to use it that's implying a complex decision making point. So those are the typical areas that you can focus on to maybe improve the experience and then also looking at user preferences allowing users to kind of filter elements and enabling them to kind of have a more pleasant experience things that they can relate to things that they can see that appeals to them. That's all part of that user Journey. then content we know that, websites many built from text video and images, but make sure that
Jaco De Wet: Have the right piece of content at the right point in time. So complex matters might actually be better communicated via video or audio along with some visual style as well. So text generally can be quite overwhelming try and look at making takes more concise to the points scannable all of those kind of things that relates to the content on the website anything that would communicate back to the user. And then visual design lastly, it's not necessarily what we would just imagine is our images or graphic design, but the accessibility of it is the contrast of my text on my buttons high enough. Am I using two red? Therefore my red button is completely going missing within the page. So all of those kind of things
Jaco De Wet: Speaks to visual designs the accessibility standards visual hierarchy and relevancy making sure that it all. is cohesive and these three things together really amalgamates and would kind of Advance your user experience…
Ferdie Bester: I think I just want to mention to everybody on the call.
Jaco De Wet: if you actually have it deep diving into these three elements.
Ferdie Bester: What Jaco and…
Ferdie Bester: we are in the sage the Practical session section. Now, we're going to explain…
Jaco De Wet: This might seem cocky…
Jaco De Wet: but pork your ego and…
Ferdie Bester: what practically to do with in terms of AI and…
Jaco De Wet: I know how sentimental we can be about two-year project launching something and…
Ferdie Bester: ux so this is the most important section,…
Jaco De Wet: then someone comes along and…
Ferdie Bester: but I think just to eat the right.
Jaco De Wet: tells you that, …
Ferdie Bester: Yeah what your question is just saying earlier was It's a very important to decide…
Jaco De Wet: you've screwed up your visual hurricane. We need to do all of it again. Please don't be.
Ferdie Bester: where to apply the stuff.
Ferdie Bester: We're going to show you now because if there's lots of AI tools and…
Jaco De Wet: Don't get to attach to it.
Jaco De Wet: The idea is that you've ever need to be able to change and…
Ferdie Bester: it's incredibly complicated space at the…
Jaco De Wet: pivot and understand that…
Ferdie Bester: So nothing just two things that I picked up one is Understand…
Jaco De Wet: what might have been true two years ago is no longer true anymore or…
Ferdie Bester: where there is a problem then go and fix something that's not a problem.
Jaco De Wet: that users They've been exposed to better and…
Ferdie Bester: That's the first one and secondly it's about the users not about us or…
Jaco De Wet: that you need to move along with that as well.
Ferdie Bester: ai ai is a feature. It's not a benefit.
Ferdie Bester: So the user and…
Jaco De Wet: so one of the things that We definitely need to kind of lean into is user-centric copy.
Ferdie Bester: taking a user-centric approach to AI is incredibly important. Otherwise, you're just going to waste your time with new shiny thing.
Ferdie Bester: So we've got five tips of five or…
Jaco De Wet: I think a lot of the times especially with generative AI we run the risk of just creating.
Ferdie Bester: six things that yaku is going to remain recommend that you look at the website starting now.
Jaco De Wet: But We're not refining. maybe before I lean into that. Is there any other questions or anything people want to know?
Jaco De Wet: So I think various saying it's an assistant AI should be able to assist you to get to where you need to be. I don't think it should be the core of what you're trying to achieve. one of the tools that I use extensively because English is a second language and I'm not always the best copyrighter but creating card content that engages was and I'm not a copyrighted by no means but
00:35:00
Jaco De Wet: Having used Hemingway. It's taught me a lot about how to really distill the message that you're trying to communicate. So if you don't know what Hemingway is it's a tool that really kind of helps you to kind of refine what you're trying to say. What they do those they use an automated readability index that determines on a US grade level what the readability of your content is so you can see here on the right hand side. It's stating that this copy. I used from I think it was
Jaco De Wet: Wikipedia about followed Fallout the TV series and you can see it's just red but it's telling me on the right hand side here is that five of the six sentences of very hard to read. So the one sentence not hard to read is no line that Nolan directed the first three episodes and it's currently graded at a great 15 reading level and you need to aim for grade 9 level of reading which I suppose they are some guidelines as to how to do it that the AI can help you do this and achieve. What you're looking out to or setting out to do so.
Jaco De Wet: when I hovered over it, it's at the sentence too long and complex and then it's asked me to fix it. And then in the suggestion, I mean the only thing that really did to fix it was break up the sentences and it also gave the sentence slightly more context based on the role based on the role. It's assuming you understand what you're talking about. We're just added this little bit of texture to say the show is based on the role So minut changes changes the readability score by sixth grades
Jaco De Wet: seven I suppose which is insane and it's not something that you as maybe a professional copywriter or like a scientist or marketing Specialists would have considered necessarily to do at the time of writing this but using tools like that would really kind of help us to be a bit more precise and a bit more guided as to what we trying to achieve. The one thing I read which is really interesting was. Even though I'm able to read at a great 15 level doesn't necessarily mean that.
Jaco De Wet: I should sometimes people are scanning content and all really consumed and already have worldly stressors. That doesn't allow me to have the cognitive capabilities of consuming the content that you put out there. So if you work with a high-end brand or if you're working with, super intellectual people, it doesn't necessarily mean that you should speak to them in that way either because they already have a cognitive load. Just living and that sometimes it's a relief seeing something that is easy to read. So that's just also something to consider when we start looking at segmenting audiences and it's okay. These people can read at a high level. It doesn't necessarily mean that they should So it's just like a takeaway that I actually doing some of this work.
Jaco De Wet: In the support chatbots Arena. What was interesting is they are quite a number of players within this field. I looked down the little deeper into this one. I lost the name now, but What they have done is they've actually integrated into multiple chatting platforms that allows you to ingest your content into a centralized space and that allows you to then have any chatting capability across multiple environments, which I thought was really interesting. What I did.
00:40:00
Jaco De Wet: discover though was your tolerance for longer messages on Whatsapp versus a whip chat and that is something to consider that depending on the channel. The user might expect a different experience. So we started experimenting a bit with WhatsApp with a Nitro and with
Jaco De Wet: Reasonable feedback but I think the consideration here is that you can reach quite a large audience with a tool WhatsApp again. I think if you look at your Market that you speak to and especially in South Africa the adoption of WhatsApp is massive versus maybe some of the other Technologies of platforms and you have quite an age range that is able to send voice notes take photos and engage with you continuously versus maybe a Web Bot or maybe even one of the other meta products. I think what's up is an incredibly powerful tool that we should probably consider more as a mechanism to integrate AI chatbots with
Jaco De Wet: and it would seem that the tool sets have matured enough for us to kind of look at that as more of a solution more so than we probably would have done a year or two ago.
Jaco De Wet: images so we've looked at the AI generated images and like I said, we Met Jenny and dolly or really good examples, I think. The one thing that we've learned from say something like my journey is also allowing you to kind of tweak the information and maybe try and create a slightly more consistent experience. And this was an example. someone asked it to
Jaco De Wet: To create a photo of a hipster working in a trendy coffee shop now. I think it's pretty spot-on the beanies and interesting choice in all the hipsters I suppose but I think what my Jenny does Elize you to do, which is really cool is obviously the editing capabilities. This is all done through I think Discord but then Ferdie she had this thing with me where they allow you to personalize an appearance with a tool called style tuner and you can actually tune into the style choice that you like and you can save that and apply that styleistic choice into future projects.
Jaco De Wet: So that consistency issue that we just discussed at the beginning of the session that is something that they started obviously realizing as well and allowing you to then kind of almost create a template for what it is that you're trying to do I think is really interesting and that's something that maybe you should look into when looking at generative images AI generated images.
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Jaco De Wet: Another tool that I found was use Galileo and this speaks a little to the visual design where someone asked to the user ask the platform really landing page for a coffee shop in San Francisco. As he has a Euro image with sections including featured coffee best selling beans and…
Ferdie Bester: To take us up on those free three hours. You're welcome to do so back to you Yoku.
Jaco De Wet: popular breakfast. what I thought was scary and unnerving was that it generated the designs and offered the figma files to the actual designs now. I mean if you've ever had to design something in figma and you like me, I love using templates and then kind of adjusting them to seek my need, but if you can actually query.
Jaco De Wet: The platform to generate exactly what it is that you're looking for. The amount of tweaking required subsequently becomes really minimal and what would probably be running in the background as well? And you'll notice that is they would start baking in some of that visual design hierarchy elements that are already spoke to you about now, they've included titles they've included font hierarchies. They've included clear sections that would allow the user to understand what they're looking at. They've created a high contrasting buttons, they are certain principles now banked into this design. You didn't ask for any of that you just asked for a design And they've given you something that's already practically very usable maybe even more so than what you've been able to come up with to start with.
Jaco De Wet: And then they continue with I like the second design more. Can you add it like a landing page subscription page so you can continue within context?
Jaco De Wet: Asking it questions and building Pages out with the preferences that you've now already defined which I thought was incredibly powerful and it's a massive Time Saver. So consider using tools like this to jumpstart your website building again or looking at how do I take my website further? Maybe it's not even about rebuilding your website according to this design. Maybe it's just finding inspiration from designs that you can build using these platforms and applying it to your existing website. So I wouldn't necessarily always throw things out just using some form of inspiration often leads to a better experience that you can then off on your own platform. Before I continue I think fatty do you want to interject quick?
Ferdie Bester: And Jacob, I just wanna explain in English what this means. So what Jaco is saying is if you apply schema, which is just this way. to format the code on your website Google and Microsoft being would be able to access the information better. It would give it without but understand it better. Why it's important is because then you can start ranking inside chat GDP. So if somebody types in base medical then it will start ranking inside GDP which is going to happen more and…
Jaco De Wet: cool so Dynamic content generation
Ferdie Bester: more. so you can eat two flies with one it way. The schema is better for users and…
00:50:00
Jaco De Wet: The only example not an example…
Ferdie Bester: usability and these added benefit all the increased visibility exposure on and…
Jaco De Wet: but one of the examples that I considered was really useful. We currently have the transcripts of our webinars on the website as well.
Ferdie Bester: these chatbots and chat GDP.
Jaco De Wet: Obviously, there's certain screen readers is here benefits all of those kind of things. What I did is I actually pulled that transcript into Gemini and I said to summarize the entire webinar in a couple of points and it did so quite accurately and with a lot of Grace and consider the amount of time it would have taken to kind of condense all that information into a summarized version or having someone to sit through and try and concentrate on some other highlights within that session. This is an example where Dynamic content is quite unquote used. But it's allowing you to take something and make something better out of it. And you can probably automate.
Jaco De Wet: Some of this capability but this is just an example where I did it manually but the apis and the toolsets would probably be available for you to actually query Gemini asking they say you wouldn't necessarily have editing control over it. You would need to kind of then just accept what it's putting out which I wouldn't necessarily again recommend. I would try and refine it and then make sure that it's targeting and meeting the audience requirements that you're trying to aim for.
Jaco De Wet: Visual and audio enhancements so I think it's quite interesting topic because I believe that. Whatever we put out there some extent already been solved sometimes. So even if I looked at connecting takes to speech capability within my website that may be completely unnecessary.
Jaco De Wet: All I need to ensure is that my website abides to the typical SEO schemas those easier schemas really are a blueprints for quite a number of platforms that would try and consume your website. So it's not unique to Google to obviously use those Investments, but your jaws which is a used by blind people to kind of consume websites make use of all of those prescribed tagging requirements that Google is saying you should do for good SEO when in reality Google asked you to do that because it makes it better use experience for people with certain disabilities High contrasting things not hiding things making it easy for people to actually stuff on mobile. This is taste of all of those requirements on there for better this year. It's actually for better.
Jaco De Wet: Experiences and it's rewarding you with SEO because you're offering a better user experience.
Jaco De Wet: What you would do is if you buy by these rules is that it will future-proof your website. It will make sure that whatever chat mechanisms are out there that potentially can crawl your website to understand what it is that you're doing. You would have given it the right definitions and it would be able to understand the information that you're providing it and it'll be able to respond if you have to query that information that it managed to consume.
Ferdie Bester: Yep, Can I want to challenge everybody in the call go to your website take their own page copy and cut and paste it into aiming way and I will get you 90% of your content will be to complicated and it basically sucks. So if you just allocate one hour today and just go and do that. You are applying AI to your website. That is a problem and it is user-centric. So just go and do that today.
Ferdie Bester: Because you're good. The problem is we look at our own websites every single day and you stop noticing the issues that you have on your own website.
00:55:00
Jaco De Wet: So social platforms would also make use of some of these tagging capabilities and it's able to better interpret the information that you then kind of giving out as well.
Jaco De Wet: how you can actually Provide a better experience using product and service design with AI. And the only example I could really come up with is again going back to some of the tools that were enabled me to build a website or…
Ferdie Bester: any questions from anybody?
Ferdie Bester: And Melissa's got a question. How would you recommend balancing the need of content Simplicity with recommended content length for web pages to rank in terms of SEO?
Jaco De Wet: to kind of create a better experience and this speaks to that kind of Journey aspect. And that are referred to if you remember, you…
Ferdie Bester: Work that's a good question.
Jaco De Wet: and the journey the kind of content and…
Ferdie Bester: You want to take a joke, or should I?
Jaco De Wet: then also the visual design.
Jaco De Wet: Fig Jam if you're familiar with Miro and there I think they're quite a number of these kind of sketch platforms. If I can put it that way. They've implemented a generative tool set that allows me to kind of query it and it would actually be able to render something that I could then use as a jumping off point and still instead of using a template which is usually just Blank versions of a flow diagram or something. I could be really specific. So I said men are the typical user Journey from Banner advert to lead form for someone who's looking to purchase an expensive holiday.
Ferdie Bester: Melissa, I'm gonna give you a slightly different angle. so I've been an ACO for 15 years now.
Jaco De Wet: And what was really?
Ferdie Bester: Initially, it was all seo seo and…
Jaco De Wet: Interesting and again if you've had to do this,…
Ferdie Bester: with length and…
Jaco De Wet: you would understand the amount of collaboration.
Ferdie Bester: you have to use the keywords,…
Jaco De Wet: Sometimes it requires to make sure that you've identified all the spots that they would be a positive or…
Ferdie Bester: and I'm more. in the favor of it being really good user copy and…
Jaco De Wet: negative choice that the user would need to make and how does that connect back to the flow?
Ferdie Bester: even if it's shorter and…
Jaco De Wet: How do I take the use of from point A to point beat Point C and…
Ferdie Bester: bullet points and one of the reasons is Google uses two signals to determine the quality of the content as well.
Jaco De Wet: maybe back to point having to consider this is quite a lot of work that our short circuited literally typing it out in less than a minute and…
Ferdie Bester: So it's when you do a search on Google, let's say you type in medical aid cover and you click on the thing and you read it and I leave immediately three minutes late or…
Ferdie Bester: three seconds later. They click the back button. That's a signal to Google that this isn't good content.
Jaco De Wet: Again, it's not to…
Jaco De Wet: then go. Okay, cool. I've got my blueprint. I need to kind of run with us.
Ferdie Bester: So even…
Jaco De Wet: No, the idea is that you actually use this as jumping off point and…
Ferdie Bester: if it was 300 words like that's
Ferdie Bester: That's not good. And any other thing is Google analytics it gets that signal in terms of engagement on the page.
Jaco De Wet: you start tweaking it to accommodate for what you're trying to achieve. so I think in my final remarks here is that You need to kind of be slightly more strategic and…
Ferdie Bester: So you have the correct 300 or 400 words with 3% keyword density. But if the users don't read the content then being like you can get a bad quality signal that's the first thing and…
Jaco De Wet: use a focused when looking at these toolsets. It's not about the content generated.
Ferdie Bester: secondly 300 word doesn't convert.
Jaco De Wet: It's about does this content?
Ferdie Bester: If you have really hard to read content when we look at Microsoft Clarity data.
Jaco De Wet: Is it suitable for my users? And how do I use AI to better? And make it more suitable for my users.
Ferdie Bester: People don't read anymore.
Ferdie Bester: They scan bull. ET Point they don't read paragraph So I think the copy and the usability and…
Jaco De Wet: So don't necessarily just apply chat GPT into your website for whatever reason be slightly more strategic with it discover the user problem.
Jaco De Wet: So make sure that you are solving an actual problem and…
Ferdie Bester: the Simplicity of the copy is more important. Than it for being good for SEO.
Jaco De Wet: that you're not introducing new ones.
Ferdie Bester: So that's my view.
Jaco De Wet: So using tools like Microsoft Clarity or…
Ferdie Bester: Go with Runner of time.
Jaco De Wet: analytics data. Make sure that you actually,…
Ferdie Bester: I'm going to stop the recording now, but you're welcome.
Jaco De Wet: looking at those conversion points and…
Ferdie Bester: We're gonna spin another two minutes if there is any questions,…
Jaco De Wet: optimizing and…
Ferdie Bester: miso's got a question.
Jaco De Wet: improving them rather than finding the problem somewhere else that you assume is the problem.
Ferdie Bester: My question was AI generative content. Does it not have a bias or…
Jaco De Wet: And then quite frankly content sucks having people read through Reams and…
Ferdie Bester: skewed towards UK or you can narrative by virtue of the language being used do we not run?
Jaco De Wet: reams of content. This simply no time for we don't have the space or…
Ferdie Bester: The risk of losing authenticity and Nuance content.
Jaco De Wet: the market for that anymore.
Ferdie Bester: Absolutely. I completely agree with that statement.
Jaco De Wet: People are quite used to short consumable pieces of content.
Ferdie Bester: That's why you shouldn't use the copy on the website.
Jaco De Wet: Make sure it's easy to reduce the overload and…
Ferdie Bester: I think go in generated to get going and…
Jaco De Wet: the stressors that people are experiencing today already.
Ferdie Bester: then you add the nuances and the authenticity and the Africa view the problem is that most of the content that's being cruel is us and UK and waste and Centric. So the African context is an angle is lost because there's just the volume of training that it's like this and African volume of training devices like that.
Jaco De Wet: yes.
Ferdie Bester: So that's my view on it any other yo, could you have anything to add?
Jaco De Wet: I think it's unnerving and really humbling to do that because you discover how much you probably did wrong to your users in the past.
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