. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
Here are five things in technology that happened in the last week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them?
1 – Google says the secret to SEO success is making sure your most important page isn’t terrible.
According to Google, if the most important page of your website is not top quality, the website as a whole is unlikely to rank well. Pages with low-quality content can drag down the performance of the entire domain, although experts at Google did not specify an exact percentage or number. (Source: Digital Information World)
Why this is important for your company:
“Here’s an example: if a site’s most important page (eg homepage) is ‘terrible’ (in the sense of any algorithm), that’s a pretty big deal. If that same site has a randomly archived page that is “terrible”, not so bad. deal,” wrote John Mueller, a senior search analyst at Google at Mastodon. “There’s no absolute ‘page-percentage’ number for this, I’d think of it more as ‘what would the average user think when they went through / saw your site.'” By the way, if you want 57 other great tips from Mueller for to improve your site’s search results, check out this summary here.
2 – “Buy now, pay later” has taken over holiday shopping.
This Christmas shopping season, “Buy Now Pay Later” (BNPL) is increasing in popularity. According to Cardify’s recent study, BNPL is the third most popular option for buying gifts, with more than 45 percent of consumers choosing it as their primary payment method this Christmas shopping season. The top choice was debit cards with 65.7 percent of users choosing that method, 54 percent saying they would use a credit card, and 31.1 percent choosing cash as their payment method. (Source: Consumer Affairs)
Why this is important for your company:
The good news is that BNPL offers another financing option that customers can use to purchase your products. The bad news is that BNPL is often misunderstood by some consumers, especially younger buyers. It is a short-term credit with large penalties if the debt is not repaid. So do yourself and your customers a favor and make sure they are fully aware of the pros/cons before you buy.
3 – Amazon has a new drone for 30-minute city deliveries.
Amazon will have a new, small, silent drone ready for use in 2024, with the potential to make consistent deliveries in major cities by 2030. The hexagon-shaped drone weighs 80 pounds and measures about 5.5 feet in diameter. According to reports, the drone is agile enough to fly in densely populated cities like Seattle, Atlanta and Boston. (Source: Axios)
Why this is important for your company:
Here’s one more way Amazon will compete for your business—by cutting costs and improving delivery times with drones. My prediction is that, like its other technologies, Amazon will license this technology to other businesses that want to take advantage of it, for a fee, of course.
4 – What is the AI chatbot phenomenon ChatGPT and can it replace humans?
Dialogue-based AI chatbot prototype ChatGPT has the ability to understand natural spoken language and create accurately written text similar to a human. The system is trained by machine learning and AI, can answer questions and deliver information through its “conversational interface.” The latest AI chatbot comes from OpenAI, an independent research foundation founded by Elon Musk. (Source: The Guardian)
Why this is important for your company:
As AI-powered chatbots improve, businesses will use these applications to create written content that will be as good as if an actual human wrote it. Compared to my stuff, probably better.
5— NRS launches a B2B e-commerce platform for independent retailers.
National Retail Solutions (NRS) recently launched a B2B e-commerce platform. The new platform is specifically aimed at independent retailers joining suppliers, wholesale distributors and owner-operated tobacco shops, liquor stores, bodegas and convenience stores using the point of sale (POS) from NRS. (Source: Pymnts)
Why this is important for your company:
The new solution will enable distributors and suppliers to access independent dealers who were previously unable to meet minimum order requirements or deal with logistical issues.