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Here are five tech events that happened in the past 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 on your website is not top quality, the site as a whole is unlikely to rank well. Pages with poor quality content can reduce performance for the entire domain, although Google experts didn’t specify an exact percentage or number. (Source: Digital Information World)
Why it matters to your business:
“Here’s an example: If the most important page on a site (e.g. the home page) is ‘terrible’ (in any algorithm’s sense), that’s a big deal. If the same site has a random archived page that is “terrible”, that’s okay okay,” wrote John Mueller, senior research analyst at Google on Mastodon. “There is no absolute number of ‘percentage of pages’ for this, I would rather see it as ‘what the average user would think when browsing/seeing your placeholder.’ By the way, if you want to get another 57 Mueller’s great tips for improving your site’s search results, check out this summary here.
2 – “Buy now, pay later” has taken over holiday shopping.
This holiday shopping season, “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) is growing in popularity. According to recent Cardify research, BNPL is the third most popular option for buying gifts, with over 45% of consumers choosing it as their primary method of payment this holiday shopping season. The top choice went to debit cards with 65.7% of users choosing this method, 54% said they would use credit cards and 31.1% chose cash as their method of payment. (Source: Consumption)
Why it matters to your business:
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 shoppers. 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 and cons before they make their purchase.
3 – Amazon has a new drone for urban deliveries in 30 minutes.
Amazon will have a new, small, quiet drone ready to go in 2024, with the potential to make regular deliveries to 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 nimble enough to fly in densely populated cities such as Seattle, Atlanta and Boston. (Source: Axios)
Why it matters to your business:
Here’s yet another way for Amazon to compete for your business – by reducing costs and improving delivery times with drones. My prediction is that, like its other technologies, Amazon will license this technology to other companies that wish to take advantage of it, for a fee of course.
4 – What is the ChatGPT AI chatbot phenomenon and could it replace humans?
The ChatGPT dialog-based AI chatbot prototype has the ability to understand natural spoken language and create accurate human-like written text. The system is trained by machine learning and AI, can answer questions and provides information through its “conversational interface”. The newest AI chatbot comes from OpenAI, an independent research foundation founded by Elon Musk. (Source: The Guardian)
Why it matters to your business:
As AI-powered chatbots improve, businesses will use these apps to create written content that will look as good as if a real human had written it. Compared to my stuff, probably better.
5— NRS launches B2B e-commerce platform for independent retailers.
National Retail Solutions (NRS) recently deployed a B2B e-commerce platform. The new platform is aimed specifically at independent retailers joining vendors, wholesale distributors, and owner-operated tobacco stores, liquor stores, bodegas, and convenience stores that use the point-of-sale system ( POS) of NRS. (Source: Pymnts)
Why it matters to your business:
The new solution will allow distributors and suppliers to access independent retailers who were previously unable to meet minimum requirements for orders or faced logistical challenges.