We talk to our Google Assistant, soon it will talk back to us

A new development on the horizon is Google’s ‘talking web pages’. With one simple command, Google will read out the news, the content of a blog, the text on a webpage – it will even translate the displayed content of a page if it’s written in a different language. Great for people on the go.

The reason we’ve chosen this piece of news to talk about is to demonstrate just how much effort Google puts into its user experience. As a company, it probably doesn’t need to go to such effort, given that it’s the largest search engine in the world, with a turnover in the billions.

Looking after the visitors that come to your website is something that doesn’t require billions. That said, we see so many small and medium-sized businesses put up a website that fails to actually address the issues their customers may have. Little more than a digital brochure, such websites are often clunky and unresponsive, with no contact options for the company in question. Hampered by bad design, they’re either boasting about the company with no thought to what the customer wants to know, or they’re sparse and easily forgettable. You could almost believe that these companies don’t want more business…

We’re at the start of a new decade, and it’s amazing to think that, just twenty years ago, few companies – big or small – saw the merit of a website. Fast forward to today, and if a business doesn’t have a web presence of any kind, is it even a business?

The number of online-only companies has completely mushroomed, considering few even existed in the year 2000 (mainly because no one else was on the internet to sell to!). This means that all the bricks and mortar businesses are not just competing against each other, they’ve also got this mass of virtual entrepreneurs to contend with to. It’s a good thing the world wide web is practically infinite, as it houses a lot of companies vying for the attention of customers.

Why, then, if a business is lucky enough to get a potential buyer to visit their page (amongst the many others they could otherwise visit) would they even think of offering a duff, confusing or frustrating experience? Do they naively believe said customer will simply ignore the palaver they’ve just had on their website, and that they’ll still shop with them - rather than clicking away to a competitor?

Surely not? Maybe it’s that they don’t think. Or ever see their website from a user experience (UX) point of view. Maybe they’re so caught up with every other facet of their business that their website isn’t a priority. Or perhaps they know that there is a problem, they just don’t know what to do about it…and they also lack Google’s coffers.

A decent website in 2020 doesn’t cost the huge amounts designers could charge their clients two decades ago. Today, for a few hundred pounds, you could have an interactive, attractive, clearly understood website that has analytical capability and a number of other options designed to attract and keep tabs of any new visitor, so that you can go on to convert them from a mere lead into a paying customer.

As content creators, Novus specialise in giving small businesses a large online presence. From wonderful websites to magical marketing support, from vivacious video content to savvy social media…we’ll take your business to the next stage. Burying your head in the virtual sand won’t get you anywhere, and you’d be surprised how much growth you could achieve with just a modest investment.

Get in touch with us today - for a website everyone wants to talk about.