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easyfoodnetwork · 5 years ago

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Your Reservation Has Been Cancelled

How apps like OpenTable, Tock, and Resy are pivoting to keep themselves — and restaurants — afloat in a world without bookings

Gregory and Daisy Ryan opened Bell’s, a 35-seat French bistro in Los Alamos, California, in 2018. The pair had worked in restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, and Austin before returning to Daisy’s hometown. The couple had several choices when it came to online reservation booking platforms and ultimately went with Tock, a system that they say worked so well, the restaurant didn’t even need a phone. “I didn’t want to have people sitting at the bar and listen to me explain something that someone can find on the internet,” says Gregory Ryan. “I didn’t want that to ruin someone’s experience.” During a typical dinner service pre-COVID-19, about 80 percent of guests had reservations.

Because of its location, in a small town near California’s central coast wine country, Bell’s wasn’t beholden to the early occupancy reduction mandates, and later closures, that happened so quickly in major cities like New York and San Francisco in response to the spread of COVID-19. “It wasn’t until the second week of March that we knew something was on its way — but we didn’t know what it looked like yet,” Gregory Ryan says. He tried to figure out a way to use Tock to accommodate takeout instead of reservations and events in an effort to stay open. Plus, the restaurant didn’t ever offer takeout before. “Not because we think we’re too good for it, or anything,” he says. “Because we only have two [chefs] on the line.”

But before he could figure out a technical solution on his own, he says, Tock contacted him offering a new online ordering system he could implement quickly. When he first considered takeout, Gregory Ryan says, “I was like, ‘Oh, shit, am I going to have to get a phone?’ My staff was like, ‘No, absolutely not.’” Today, Bell’s remains phone-free.

“We opened a restaurant for certain reasons,” he says. He didn’t ever expect takeout to be his business’s lifeline.

Since the spread of COVID-19 began forcing restaurants across the country to cease dining room operations, there’s been much talk about its effect on both individual restaurants and the industry as a whole. But what about the industries that support it? Reservation services like Tock, OpenTable, Yelp, and Resy are big business, and make their money by charging restaurants to use the software. Diners use them to book available tables, and restaurants also use them to manage their dining rooms’ floor plan and record notes about customers. It’s how the host knows where to seat you when you show up for your 8 p.m. booking.

Plans vary, but a restaurant can expect to pay at least several hundred dollars per month for a basic plan that includes both reservations and table management. Prices go up from there depending on additional features like custom messaging, ticketed events, or, in OpenTable’s case, the number of people it brings in the door. OpenTable collects a per-diner commission fee on each reservation it facilitates, and busy restaurants can expect a monthly bill that easily stretches into thousands of dollars.

Of all the brands, OpenTable is the largest reservations service in the U.S. In mid-March, as the national rollout of dining restrictions was just beginning, the company released year-over-year data that showed a 45 percent diner reduction in Seattle, 40 percent in San Francisco, 30 percent in New York, and 25 percent in London, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Ten days later, on March 23, every market listed on OpenTable’s COVID-19-inspired state of the industry dashboard showed a 95 to 100 percent reduction in bookings. That is: There were essentially zero reservations booked at the nearly 60,000 restaurants the company supports worldwide.

In response to the slowdown, OpenTable and its competitors have been forced to pivot as quickly as the restaurants they serve. All fairly quickly suspended most fees they charge restaurants to use their software. They’ve also proactively begun making changes to their apps and website to reflect the realities of the restaurant business today, offering both temporary and permanent solutions for restaurants that saw their operations upended overnight.

OpenTable added a grocery feature, allowing shoppers to reserve a shopping time slot at a store the same way they’d book a seating time at a restaurant. According to Andrea Johnston, OpenTable’s chief operating officer, the idea came from an OpenTable advisory board member — a restaurateur himself — who noticed that many restaurants were operating as small grocers to stay open. So far, in OpenTable’s hometown of San Francisco, just a handful of businesses offer the service, but Johnston says the company is actively onboarding several large regional grocery chains, with more to come. She confirmed that the service is free for all grocery stores and restaurants-turned-grocers, whether or not they’ve worked with OpenTable in the past.

“I hope that the world won’t continue to need a product that supports grocery store reservations.”

Johnston says she’s also encouraging partner restaurants to update their profiles to reflect current operations, including delivery, takeout, gift cards, and fundraisers, which are then displayed in the OpenTable app. The company is waiving gift card fees through June; previously, restaurants paid $25 per month to sell gift cards through the OpenTable system. And at this point more than 1,500 restaurants have added their fundraising efforts to their listings, Johnston says.

OpenTable had already added a delivery category to its app in 2019. Listings are in partnership with companies like Uber Eats and Caviar, which each charge their own fees on top of the booking service. In the last month or so, clicks on delivery options within the app have grown 172 percent.

A reservations app probably isn’t the first stop for a diner looking to support local restaurants right now, and in response, these companies have had to modify their marketing strategies. To diners, OpenTable, Tock, and Resy have all begun sending emails with lists of partner restaurants open for delivery or takeout. To restaurants, they’re sending a steady stream of news, ideas, and tactical information to survive. OpenTable has launched a dedicated restaurant resource center to share news and product information related to the coronavirus pandemic, and hosts a weekly webinar series for restaurants. Resy, too, just announced a new industry-focused podcast in partnership with the Welcome Conference.

“It has been nice to see that for the most part they’ve been doing what they can to support us — obviously knowing that supporting us supports them in the long run,” says Gina Buck, general manager of Concord Hill, a small Brooklyn restaurant that uses OpenTable. The restaurant remains open for takeout, serving food and cocktails seven days per week from noon until 10 p.m.

Speaking from the middle of her new busy workday fielding, packaging, and distributing to-go orders, Buck says she isn’t sure what more reservations services could offer to help. “I think the normal before this has completely died and will never exist again,” she says. “We’re able to stay open. We’re doing okay. It’s just two of us — we can’t afford to bring anyone else in at the moment, but we are getting through this.”

OpenTable competitor Resy has also shifted its strategy to support eating at home. Instead of reservations, diners can order takeout food directly through its app and website. They select a meal option, choose a pickup time, and pay, all through the Resy platform.

Greg Lutes is chef-owner of 3rd Cousin, one of the handful of restaurants in San Francisco that’s currently offering takeout via Resy. “It’s useful, but there’s not much volume in it,” he says, noting that they’ve sold “a few meals” through the platform. He also signed up with Uber Eats and DoorDash for the first time, but says most customers just call orders in to the restaurant directly.

When a customer books a pickup on Resy, it’s communicated to the restaurant the same way a reservation would be: in an app that’s meant for a front-of-house staffer to manage. Lutes was recently surprised by a customer who showed up at the restaurant to pick up a family meal he had only just ordered. Even so, he plans to continue offering takeout through Resy, and isn’t worried about accepting orders from multiple sources. “We need all the revenue we can get,” he says. Resy has also modified the format of the restaurant pages on its website to allow operators to link to outside initiatives, like fundraisers. “It’s so that customers can see all of the preferred ways that their favorite restaurants are asking for support,” says Resy co-founder and CEO Ben Leventhal.

Tock went a step further, building out an entirely new product — in a week.

While all the big booking services have adjusted their functionality to meet the moment, reservations and event ticketing service Tock, used by more than 3,000 restaurants worldwide, went a step further, building out an entirely new product — in a week. Tock To Go launched March 16 for existing and new Tock customers. It allows customers to reserve and purchase restaurant meals for pickup or delivery and charges the restaurant a fee of 3 percent per order. (Tock has waived its regular monthly fees.) “We cannot operate without doing that,” says Nick Kokonas, Tock’s co-founder and CEO, who’s also the co-owner of Chicago’s Alinea Group restaurants.

Tock’s To Go system has allowed restaurants to sell completely new, exclusive-to-takeout offerings, something that’s proven useful for the kind of fine dining and higher-end establishments that Tock has become known for. In New York, Dan Barber’s Blue Hill restaurants are offering takeaway boxes of various goods at both the Manhattan and Tarrytown locations. Customers can select from a variety of options, including stews and purees, garden vegetables, grass-fed beef, dry-aged pheasant, bread, and even a sommelier-selected bottle of wine to accompany a diner’s selections.

In San Francisco, Tosca Cafe recently reopened under new ownership in the midst of the pandemic by selling family-style dinners — shrimp alfredo, spaghetti alla Norma — to go on Tock, and in LA, sister restaurants Bestia and Bavel are both offering weekly changing menus that have sold out within days of being listed on Tock. Proceeds go to maintain employee health care, and chef-owner Ori Menashe says if demand remains high, he may even be able to re-hire some staff to keep up.

Kokonas says that Tock currently supports close to 400 restaurants offering takeout across the U.S., Europe, and Australia, with another 650 in some stage of onboarding. One month in, the company already processes nearly $1 million in to-go sales per day. On one weekday earlier this month, restaurants on the platform sold 11,700 orders for nearly 40,000 meals.

“Tock is not just a booking system,” says Kokonas, “it’s a sales engine ... and it links and leverages, meaningfully and transparently, to the largest networks — search and social media.”

At Bell’s, Gregory Ryan uses social channels to promote the restaurant’s current offerings on Tock To Go, including kits for making the restaurant’s popular egg salad sandwich at home, and other a la carte offerings, like CSA-style produce boxes. Ryan likes that Tock’s system of pre-ordering gives restaurant staff some idea of what to expect each day. It also helps him know how much of which ingredients and supplies to purchase.

“That’s why takeout is always tough, because you’re never really sure when something’s going to come,” he says. “But if you’re able to wake up in the morning and know, ‘We have seven takeout orders, six chicken dinners tonight, and an egg salad,’ you’re at least working toward something. As those continue to populate [throughout the day] you’re a little bit better able to handle the information.”

He’s also happy that it’s allowed him to continue to keep 11 of his employees on payroll, though he says everyone has taken “a little bit of a haircut” on their paychecks. (Ryan and his wife stopped paying themselves completely.)

Still, even with new measures in place, not all booking platforms are pivoting as gracefully. So far, Yelp is the only major reservations provider to announce a reduction in staff, laying off or furloughing 2,100 of its approximately 6,000 employees. OpenTable’s Johnston says for them, anything related to a layoff would be “an absolute last resort.” At Tock, Kokonas says he will be hiring soon. “We never really stopped,” he says. “The only tricky part to bringing on new employees is training... We will figure that out.”

As they work to support restaurants, executives at reservations companies are asking the same questions as chefs and restaurateurs: How long will this last? Will anyone even want to come and sit down for a meal in a few weeks? “Restaurants are going to reopen at some point with occupancy restrictions, extra and important safety measures, and lower demand,” says Kokonas. “Yet — and this is very important — the fixed costs of rent and utilities remain the same, and the business model was built with high demand in mind.”

Leventhal indicates that Resy would likely continue to support its expanded initiatives in the future, but stops short of confirming any product changes. “This is without a doubt a reset moment for the industry,” he says. “Evolution, innovation, and creativity are going to be crucial for restaurants, and the tech platforms that support them, to survive in a post-COVID world.”

Tock To Go is now a permanent part of Tock’s functionality moving forward, built directly into the product’s dashboard. It’s an acknowledgement that the industry isn’t going to go back to “normal” anytime soon, and much about the future of the industry is unknown. “Will there be a market for $35 takeout meals in 2022? Who knows?” says Kokonas.

For OpenTable, Johnston says the company will continue to offer new options as long as restaurants need them. “I hope that the world won’t continue to need a product that supports grocery store reservations,” she says, “but we will keep it free and available as long as necessary.”

Disclosure: Resy’s Ben Leventhal was one of the co-founders of Eater, but is no longer involved in its operations.

Kristen Hawley writes about restaurant operations, technology, and the future of the business from San Francisco. She’s the founder of Expedite, a restaurant technology newsletter that’s existed, in some form, for the last seven years.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2VrjjGv https://ift.tt/34TS7Dq

How apps like OpenTable, Tock, and Resy are pivoting to keep themselves — and restaurants — afloat in a world without bookings

“We opened a restaurant for certain reasons,” he says. He didn’t ever expect takeout to be his business’s lifeline.

“I hope that the world won’t continue to need a product that supports grocery store reservations.”

Tock went a step further, building out an entirely new product — in a week.

“Tock is not just a booking system,” says Kokonas, “it’s a sales engine ... and it links and leverages, meaningfully and transparently, to the largest networks — search and social media.”

Disclosure: Resy’s Ben Leventhal was one of the co-founders of Eater, but is no longer involved in its operations.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2VrjjGv via Blogger https://ift.tt/34VEbc1

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years ago

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Realms of Arkania: Basic Training

The party death screen. I got this a lot this session.

One thing I like about modern games is that they seem to share a philosophy about their initial stages. For the first roughly 4 hours, you don’t expect any particularly difficult combats in a modern RPG. You expect rather that the game is going to ease you into its mechanics and conventions–sometimes with an explicit tutorial covering the first few battles–before throwing you to the wolves. You expect that you’ll gain one level without any fuss before you really have to work for it.

Realms of Arkania is a game clearly developed before this kinder era. I have virtually nothing of substance to cover in this entry because I spent most of the five hours since the first entry trying to win a single battle against some bandits in the starting dungeon. This battle alone took me almost three hours, partly because of its difficulty and partly because combat in this game just takes an insanely long time.

When I closed my first entry, I had explored the town of Thorwal, had received the main quest (to stop an uprising of orcs by finding the subtitular Blade of Destiny), and had received a side quest to explore the “old fortress” and find out who was stealing all the supplies. I explored one level, killed a few bandits, and thought I was done, but I hadn’t taken secret doors into consideration. There are two types of secret doors in the game: illusory ones that you can just walk through, and hidden ones that some character has to “perceive” before you can open them.

If you suspect this type of door is there, you have to wander back and forth until “Perception” kicks in.

In the case of the old fortress, my first secret door led me to a small room stocked with wine, brandy, and rations. I took them all and sold them to the shop on the surface. I spent a lot of this session porting items out of the dungeon and selling them on the surface. The game is so relentless with its encumbrance system–combat movement is restricted if you’re overweight–that you don’t want to carry any extra items for long.

When this happens on Bourbon Street, trust me–keep walking.

The second secret door was the illusory type, and it led to the battle with half a dozen bandits. As I covered in the first entry, Arkania blends the combat mechanics of the SSI games (Wizard’s Crown, Gold Box) with the rotated axonometric perspective of British RPGs of the era. The SSI mechanics are fantastic–I’ve repeatedly heaped praise on their Gold Box iteration–but here they’re coupled with a horrid interface that depends far too much on the mouse and refuses to let you attack, shoot, or cast on anything but straight lines (no diagonals).

One huge annoyance is that when targeting an enemy, you not only have to click on his square but first hover your cursor over it and wait for the game to acknowledge (by highlighting the square in blue) the targeting. It’s annoying enough when targeting squares to the west and south of the character. To the north and east, where the squares are partly hidden by the perspective, it’s a nightmare. Adding to it is the need to specify a normal, aggressive, or careful attack every time you attack. A good game would accomplish this entire thing by having the player strike “A,” “N,” or “C” on the keyboard and then an arrow direction, not fiddle around with all this clicking.

A very difficult battle with brigands. I had to fight it multiple times.

Aside from the interface, the combat options are solid. There’s even one that mitigates the interface by having the character simply repeat what he did last round. (Although I’m not sure I trust it–it feels like it fails more often than entering the same actions “from scratch.”) I just didn’t expect to have to explore all of them to survive the third battle. Each round, each character has a number of movement points that he can expend on an attack, guarding (a free attack when the enemy walks into an adjacent square), casting, using an item, changing a weapon, or delaying until later in the round. These are the lessons I learned while trying to win the bandit battle:

Never walk up to an enemy when you can “guard” and wait for him to come to you.

At least with my Level 1 characters, “aggressive” attacks don’t seem to succeed more, or do more damage, than “normal” ones–and they leave characters open for retaliatory strikes.

You want to have a backup weapon to a bow and arrows because enemies will rush into melee range.

At Level 1, your physical attacks fail about 95% of the time.

Missiles are kind of useless anyway because they can only be fired in direct lines with no obstacles (including characters). Maneuvering archers into place is more trouble than it’s worth.

Spells almost never work either–at least, not the ones I invested points in.

The only spell that works reliably is “Lightning Find Thee,” which doesn’t do any damage but rather blinds the target. Four of my characters can cast this spell, so in my one successful game I had them blind each target before moving on to melee.

The only spell that never lets me down.

Enemies (and characters) can only parry once per round, so it’s best to gang up on individual enemies and take them down while still trying to avoid having more than one enemy target a single character.

The game has a “quick combat” option–which would normally be a godsend given the interface–but it’s one of the worst that I’ve ever experienced. In combat with the brigands, it made my spellcasters waste all their points on ineffective spells before rushing the closest enemies in melee combat. Even against single enemies, it tends to put the worst fighters adjacent to them while leaving the best ones in back with nothing to do. I occasionally activate it towards the end of combat, when everyone is in place and there’s nothing left to do but attack round after round, but otherwise I haven’t been able to make much use of it.

Given its difficulty, I rather hoped that the brigand battle would elevate us with enough experience points for Level 2, but it wasn’t even close. Instead, it gave us access to some decent loot (potions), a lot of money from the bandits’ sold weapons, and to the stairway to the next level.

Selling excess stuff after the bandit battles.

Level 2 of the tower had a few treasure chests, locked doors, and yet another brigand battle nearly as difficult as the first one. I suppose it was as difficult, although I’d learned quite a bit more about combat tactics. This one only took me about an hour to win and left me in the same position as the first one. There was one door that I couldn’t open–not with picks, not with bashing, and not with the one key that I found. Nonetheless, the nature of the encounters made it clear that the brigands had been stealing the supplies. There was a ladder down to a shore cave, which answered the question of how the brigands were getting in without Master Dramosch seeing them.

When I returned to the surface, Dramosch awarded me for solving his quest. His congratulations came with some experience points, and I thought surely this would bring me to Level 2 . . . but no, I was only about 2/3 of the way there. I have definitely stopped saving outside of temples, which costs everyone 50 experience points per save.

Solving the first side quest.

Meanwhile, Bart got tetanus. I’m not sure how it happened–I guess maybe brigands don’t regularly scrub their weapons. Nothing I tried allowed me to cure it. Trying my characters’ own “Cure Disease” abilities not only failed to help–it made it worse. So did visiting the healers in town. No amount of rest seemed to work, and praying at temples got me nothing. I don’t know what I’m missing. Normally, I’d like to roll with the punches on something like this, but the game had already been needling me so much with combat and encumbrance issues that I just reloaded before the combat where he presumably got it and ran through the final stages of the dungeon again.

Back on the surface, I sold my loot. The good news is that I have a lot–or what seems like a lot–of money. The bad news is that there’s no Sword +2 waiting at the shop for me. I could buy some improved armor, but that would just exacerbate my encumbrance issues.

How, pray tell, does the two-handed “war axe” belong to the “Swords” category?!

With nothing else to do (barring finding a way through that locked door in the fortress), I decided to hit the road. I could travel to a number of destinations from Thorwal depending on the exit. The Hetman had suggested that I go to Felsteyn to find the last surviving descendant of Hygellik, whose name is Isleif Olgardsson. The game map showed Felsteyn directly north, along a branch of the river that runs through Thorwal.

You can click anywhere on the map to get a description of places, but you can only travel along fixed routes.

You can’t just walk around on the overland map. You have to right-click on it and choose from pre-set destinations depending on where you are. I could travel to several places from Thorwal depending on the exit that I took. A northern exit led by foot to the city of Vaermhag, north along the coast, and a southern one led to the coastal city of Serske. By ship, I could travel to the next two cities north on the coast (Vaermhag and Varnhome) or the next two to the south (Merske and Etherdun). I decided to go east to Tjoila Ferry Station along the river, trusting that I could keep hopping river ports all the way up to Felsteyn.

We spent one night on the road but otherwise made it to Tjoila without incident. The ferry station was tiny and had only a few houses and an inn, so I didn’t bother to map it. Sure enough, one of its exits led me to the next port, Rukian. It wasn’t any more exciting.

The dusty streets of a small river town.

On the second night to the next port, Angbodirtal, the game gave me the option to track a group of wild pigs that had wandered by the camp. We lost them, but the experience reminded me that I probably wanted to shift my druid, Bart der Wald, to the front of the party while we were on the road. Almost all the game’s skill checks are made against the party leader, so it’s useful to have someone who specializes in wilderness navigation (“Track,” “Animal Lore,” “Survival”) for the road, someone who specializes in towns (“Streetwise,” “Lie,” “Human Nature”) for towns, and someone who specializes in dungeons (“Danger Sense,” “Perception,” “Locks”) for the underground. I had arranged for my dwarf to be my dungeoneer, my magician to be my townswoman, and my druid to be my forester, but I haven’t been good about moving them around.

What were we even chasing them for? Food?

There wasn’t much to do at the Angbodirtal Ferry Station, but when I explored the nearby town of Angbodirtal, I randomly stumbled upon the house of an NPC named Beorn Hjallasson. The game gave me the option to tel him about our quest for Hyggelik’s Sword, and it turned out that he is also somehow a descendant of Hyggelik. He told us we might find luck asking Hjore Ahrensson in Ottarje or Ragna Firunjasdotter in Vidsand. Both were a bit west of my current location, so I decided to continue on to Felsteyn.

You’re making those names up, right?

And thus through Auplog, Vilnhome, and Upper Orcam I traveled, staying in the inn at each town and paying for a square meal, but otherwise finding nothing interesting except the occasional smith, temple, or tavern. These towns could of perhaps been better handled as menu towns if travel was going to be menu-based anyway. It would be nice at least if the different types of shops were discernible from the outside, so you don’t have to bash into every one of them. As it is, you can only tell taverns from the facade.

We finally made to Felsteyn, a moderate-sized town, and found Isleif Olgardsson living on its outskirts. When we told him our quest for Hyggelik’s blade, he suggested that we consult . . . Beorn Hjallasson in Angbodirtal. But he also gave us the name of Umbrik Sevenstones in Orvil and he gave us a piece of a map that looks like it might ultimately have 9 pieces.

The first of probably 9 map pieces.

I hope that the bulk of the game isn’t going to involve the party going from one nondescript town to another so that we can talk to interchangeable NPCs hoping to find map pieces. If this game does it right, it will be like Ultima VI, where there’s a lot of variance in the length and type of quest needed for each piece. Perhaps by next entry, we’ll know.

Time so far: 10 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/realms-of-arkania-basic-training/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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golehyas · 7 years ago

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The Voice Playbook Building a Marketing Plan for the Next Era in Computing

Posted by SimonPenson

Preface

This post serves a dual purpose: it's a practical guide to the realities of preparing for voice right now, but equally it's a rallying call to ensure our industry has a full understanding of just how big, disruptive, and transformational it will be - and that, as a result, we need to stand ready.

My view is that voice is not just an add-on, but an entirely new way of interacting with the machines that add value to our lives. It is the next big era of computing.

Brands and agencies alike need to be at the forefront of that revolution. For my part, that begins with investing in the creation of a voice team.

Let me explain just how we plan to do that, and why it's being actioned earlier than many will think necessary.

Jump to a section:

Why is voice so important? When is it coming in a big way? Who are the big players? Where do voice assistants get their data from? How do I shape my strategy and tactics to get involved? What skill sets do I need in a "voice team?"

Introduction

"The times, they are a-changing." Bob Dylan

Back in 1964, that revered folk-and-blues singer could never have imagined just what that would mean in the 21st century.

As we head into 2018, we're nearing a voice interface-inspired inflection point the likes of which we haven't seen before. And if the world's most respected futurist is to be believed, it's only just beginning.

Talk to Ray Kurzweil, Google's Chief Engineer and the man Bill Gates says is the "best person to predict the future," and he'll tell you that we are entering a period of huge technological change.

For those working across search and many other areas of digital marketing, change is not uncommon. Seismic events, such as the initial roll out of Panda and Penguin, reminded those inside it just how painful it is to be unprepared for the future.

At best, it tips everything upside down. At worst, it kills those agencies or businesses stuck behind the curve.

It's for exactly this reason that I felt compelled to write a post all about why I'm building a voice team at Zazzle Media, the agency I founded here in the UK, as stats from BrightEdge reveal that 62% of marketers still have no plans whatsoever to prepare for the coming age of voice.

I'm also here to argue that while the growth traditional search agencies saw through the early 2000s is over, similar levels of expansion are up for grabs again for those able to seamlessly integrate voice strategies into an offering focused on the client or customer.

Winter is coming!

Based on our current understanding of technological progress, it's easy to rest on our laurels. Voice interface adoption is still in its very early stages. Moore's Law draws a (relatively) linear line through technological advancement, giving us time to take our positions - but that era is now behind us.

According to Kurzweil's thesis on the growth of technology (the Law of Accelerating Returns),

"we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century it will be more like 20,000 years."

Put another way, he explains that technology does not progress in a linear way. Instead, it progresses exponentially.

"30 steps linearly get you to 30. One, two, three, four, step 30 you're at 30. With exponential growth, it's one, two, four, eight. Step 30, you're at a billion," he explained in a recent Financial Times interview.

In other words, we're going to see new tech landing and gaining traction faster than we ever realized it possible, as this chart proves:

Above, Kurzweil illustrates how we'll be able to produce computational power as powerful as a human brain by 2023. By 2037 we'll be able to do it for less than a one-cent cost. Just 15 years later computers will be more powerful than the entire human race as a whole. Powerful stuff - and proof of the need for action as voice and the wider AI paradigm takes hold.

Voice

So, what does that mean right now? While many believe voice is still a long ways off, one point of view says it's already here - and those fast enough to grab the opportunity will grow exponentially with it. Indeed, Google itself says more than 20% of all searches are already voice-led, and will reach 50% by 2020.

Let's first deal with understanding the processes required before then moving onto the expertise to make it happen.

What do we need to know?

We'll start with some assumptions. If you are reading this post, you already have a good understanding of the basics of voice technology. Competitors are joining the race every day, but right now the key players are:

Microsoft Cortana Available on Windows, iOS, and Android.

Amazon Alexa Voice-activated assistant that lives on Amazon audio gear (Echo, Echo Dot, Tap) and Fire TV.

Google Assistant Google's voice assistant powers Google Home as well as sitting across its mobile and voice search capabilities.

Apple Siri Native voice assistant for all Apple products.

And (major assistants) coming soon:

Samsung Bixby Native voice assistant for Samsung products.

(Yet to be named) Facebook assistant They already have M for Messenger, and Mark Zuckerberg is personally testing "Jarvis AI" in his home.

All of these exist to allow consumers the ability to retrieve information without having to touch a screen or type anything.

That has major ramifications for those who rely on traditional typed search and a plethora of other arenas, such as the fast-growing Internet of Things (IoT).

In short, voice allows us to access everything from our personal diaries and shopping lists to answers to our latest questions and even to switch our lights off.

Why now?

Apart from the tidal wave of tech now supporting voice, there is another key reason for investing in voice now - and it's all to do with the pace at which voice is actually improving.

In a recent Internet usage study by KPCB, Andrew NG, chief scientist at Chinese search engine Baidu, was asked what it was going to take to push voice out of the shadows and into its place as the primary interface for computing.

His point was that at present, voice is "only 90% accurate" and therefore the results are sometimes a little disappointing. This slows uptake.

But he sees that changing soon, explaining that "As speech recognition accuracy goes from, say, 95% to 99%, all of us in the room will go from barely using it today to using it all the time. Most people underestimate the difference between 95% and 99% accuracy - 99% is a game changer...

When will that happen? In the chart below we see Google's view on this question, predicting we will be there in 2018!

Is this the end for search?

It is also important to point out that voice is an additional interface and will not replace any of those that have gone before it. We only need to look back at history to see how print, radio, and TV continue to play a part in our lives alongside the latest information interfaces.

Moz founder Rand Fishkin made this point in a recent WBF, explaining that while voice search volumes may well overtake typed terms, the demand for traditional SERP results and typed results will continue to grow also, simply because of the growing use of search.

The key will be creating a channel strategy as well as a method for researching both voice and typed opportunity as part of your overall process.

What's different?

The key difference when considering voice opportunity is to think about the conversational nature that the interface allows. For years we've been used to having to type more succinctly in order to get answers quickly, but voice does away with that requirement.

Instead, we are presented with an opportunity to ask, find, and discover the things we want and need using natural language.

This means that we will naturally lengthen the phrases we use to find the stuff we want - and early studies support this assumption.

In a study by Microsoft and covered by the brilliant Purna Virji in this Moz post from last year, we can see a clear distinction between typed and voice search phrase length, even at this early stage of conversational search. Expect this to grow as we get used to interacting with voice.

The evidence suggests that will happen fast too. Google's own data shows us that 55% of teens and 40% of adults use voice search daily. Below is what they use it for:

While it is easy to believe that voice only extends to search, it's important to remember that the opportunity is actually much wider. Below we can see results from a major 2016 Internet usage study into how voice is being used:

Clearly, the lion's share is related to search and information retrieval, with more than 50% of actions relating to finding something local to go/see/do (usually on mobile) or using voice as an interface to search.

But an area sure to grow is the leisure/entertainment sector. More on that later.

The key question remains: How exactly do you tap into this growing demand? How do you become the choice answer above all those you compete with?

With such a vast array of devices, the answer is a multi-faceted one.

Where is the data coming from?

To answer the questions above, we must first understand where the information is being accessed from and the answer, predictably, is not a simple one. Understanding it, however, is critical if you are to build a world-class voice marketing strategy.

To make life a little easier, I've created an at-a-glance cheat sheet to guide you through the process. You can download it by clicking on the banner below.

In it, you'll find an easy-to-follow table explaining where each of the major voice assistants (Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant, and Alexa) retrieve their data from so you can devise a plan to cover them all.

The key take away from that research? Interestingly, Bing has every opportunity to steal a big chunk of market share from Google and, at least at present, is the key search engine to optimize for if voice "visibility" is the objective.

Bing is more important now.

Of all the Big Four in voice, three (Cortana, Siri, and Alexa) default to Bing search for general information retrieval. Given that Facebook (also a former Bing search partner) is also joining the fray, Google could soon find itself in a place it's not entirely used to being: alone.

Now, the search giant usually finds a way to pull back market share, but for now a marketers' focus should be on Microsoft's search engine and Google as a secondary player.

Irrespective of which engine you prioritize there are two key areas to focus on: featured snippets and local listings.

Featured snippets

The search world has been awash with posts and talks on this area of optimization over recent months as Google continues to push ahead with the roll out of the feature-rich SERP real estate.

For those that don't know what a "snippet" is, there's an example below, shown for a search for "how do I get to sleep":

Not only is this incredibly valuable traditional search real estate (as I've discussed in an earlier blog post), but it's a huge asset in the fight for voice visibility.

Initial research by experts such as Dr. Pete Myers tells us, clearly, that Google assistant is pulling its answers from snippet content for anything with any level of complexity.

Simple answers - such as those for searches about sports results, the weather, and so forth - are answered directly. But for those that require expertise it defaults to site content, explaining where that information came from.

At present, it's unclear how Google plans to help us understand and attribute these kinds of visits. But according to insider Gary Illyes, it is imminent within Search Console.

Measurement will clearly be an important step in selling any voice strategy proposal upwards and to provide individual site or brand evidence that the medium is growing and deserving of investment.

User intent and purchase

Such data will also help us understand how voice alters such things as the traditional conversion funnel and the propensity to purchase.

We know how important content is in the traditional user journey, but how will it differ in the voice world? There's sure to be a rewrite of many rules we've come to know well from the "typed Internet."

Applying some level of logic to the challenge, it's clear that there's a greater degree of value in searches showing some level of immediacy, i.e. people searching through home assistants or mobiles for the location of something or time and/or date of the same thing.

Whereas with typed search we see greater value in simple phrases that we call "head terms," the world is much more complex in voice. Below we see a breakdown of words that will trigger searches in voice:

To better understand this, let's examine a potential search "conversation."

If we take a product search example for, let's say, buying a new lawn mower, the conversation could go a little like this:

[me] What's the best rotary lawn mower for under 500? [voice assistant] According to Lawn Mower Hut there are six choices [reads out choices] Initially, voice will struggle to understand how to move to the next logical question, such as: [voice assistant] Would you like a rotary or cylinder lawn mower? Or, better still [voice assistant] Is your lawn perfectly flat? [me] No. [voice assistant] OK, may I suggest a rotary mower? If so then you have two choices, the McCulloch M46-125WR or the BMC Lawn Racer.

In this scenario, our voice assistant has connected the dots and asks the next relevant question to help narrow the search in a natural way.

Natural language processing

To do this, however, requires a step up in computer processing, a challenge being worked on as we speak in a bid to provide the next level of voice search.

To solve the challenge requires the use of so-called Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), interconnected layers of processing units designed to mimic the neural networks in the brain.

DNNs can work across everything from speech, images, sequences of words, and even location before then classifying them into categories.

It relies on the input of truckloads of data so it can learn how best to bucket those things. That data pile will grow exponentially as the adoption of voice accelerates.

What that will mean is that voice assistants can converse with us in the same way as a clued-up shop assistant, further negating the need for in-store visits in the future and a much more streamlined research process.

In this world, we start to paint a very different view of the "keywords" we should be targeting, with deeper and more exacting phrases winning the battle for eyeballs.

As a result, the long tail's rise in prominence continues at pace, and data-driven content strategies really do move to the center of the marketing plan as the reward for creating really specific content increases.

We also see a greater emphasis placed on keywords that may not be on top of the priority list currently. If we continue to work through our examples, we can start to paint a picture of how this plays out

In our lawnmower purchase example, we're at a stage where two options have been presented to us (the McCulloch and the BMC Racer). In a voice 1.0 scenario, where we have yet to see DNNs develop enough to know the next relevant question and answer, we might ask:

[me] Which has the best reviews? And the answer may be tied to a 3rd party review conclusion, such as [voice assistant] According to Trustpilot, the McCulloch has a 4.5-star rating versus a 3.5-star rating for the BMC lawn mower.

Suddenly, 3rd party reviews become more valuable than ever as a conversion optimization opportunity, or a strategy that includes creating content to own the SERP for a keyword phrase that includes "review" or "top rated."

And where would we naturally go from here? The options are either directly to conversion, via some kind of value-led search (think "cheapest McCulloch M46-125W"), or to a location-based one ("nearest shop with a McCulloch M46-125WR") to allow me to give it a "test drive."

Keyword prioritization

This single journey gives us some insight into how the interface could shape our thinking on keyword prioritization and content creation.

Pieces that help a user either make a decision or perform an action around the following trigger words and phrases will attract greater interest and traffic from voice. Examples could include:

buy

get

find

top rated

closest

nearest

cheapest

best deal

Many are not dissimilar to typed search, but clearly intent priorities change. The aforementioned Microsoft study also looked at how this may work, suggesting the following order of question types and their association with purchase/action:

Local opportunity

This also pushes the requirement for serious location-based marketing investment much higher up the pecking order.

We can clearly see how important such searches become from a "propensity to buy/take action" perspective.

It pays to invest more in ensuring the basics are covered, for which the Moz Local Search Ranking Factors study can be a huge help, but also in putting some weight behind efforts across Bing Places. If you are not yet set up fully over there, this simple guide can help.

Local doesn't start and end with set up, of course. To maximize visibility there must be an ongoing local marketing plan that covers not just the technical elements of search but also wider marketing actions that will be picked up by voice assistants.

We already know, for instance, that engagement factors are playing a larger part of the algorithmic mix for local, but our understanding of what that really means may be limited.

Engagement is not just a social metric but a real world one. Google, for instance, knows not just what you search for but where you go (via location tracking and beacon data), what you watch (via YouTube), the things you are interested in, and where you go (via things such as Flight search and Map data). We need to leverage each of these data points to maximize effect.

As a good example of this in action, we mentioned review importance earlier. Here it plays a significant part of the local plan. A proactive review acquisition strategy is really important, so look to build this into your everyday activity by proactively incentivizing visitors to leave them. This involves actively monitoring on all the key review sites, not just your favorite!

Use your email strategy to drive this behavior as well by ensuring that newsletters and offer emails support the overall local plan.

And a local social strategy is also important. Get to know your best customers and most local visitors and turn them into evangelists.

Doing it is easier than you might think; you can use Twitter mention monitoring not only to search for key terms, but also mentions within specific latitude/longitude settings or radius.

Advanced search also allows you to discover tweets by location or mentioning location. This can be helpful as research to discover the local questions being asked.

The awesome team at Zapier covered this topic in lots of detail recently, so for those who want to action this particular point I highly recommend reading this post.

Let's go deeper

There is new thinking needed if the opportunity is to be maximized. To understand this, we need to go back to our user journey thought process.

For starters, there's the Yelp/Alexa integration. While the initial reaction may be simply to optimize listings for the site, the point is actually a wider one.

Knowing that many of the key vertical search engines (think Skyscanner [travel], Yelp [local], etc.) will spend big to ensure they have the lion's share of voice market, it will pay to spend time improving your content on these sites.

Which is most important will be entirely dependent upon what niche you are working in. Many will only offer limited opportunity for optimization, but being there and spending time ensuring your profile is 110% will be key. It may even pay to take sponsored opportunities within them for the added visibility it may give you in the future.

There's also the really interesting intellectual challenge of attempting to map out as many potential user journeys as possible to and from your business.

Let's take our lawnmower analogy again, but this time from the perspective of a retailer situated within 20 miles of the searcher. In this scenario, we need to think about how we might be able to get front and center before anyone else if we stock the McCulloch model they are looking for.

If we take it as a given that we've covered the essentials, then we need to think more laterally.

It's natural to not only look for a local outlet that stocks the right model, but when it may be open. We might also ask more specific questions like whether they have parking, or even if they are busy at specific times or offer appointments.

The latter would be a logical step, especially for businesses that work in this way; think dentists, doctors, beauty salons, and even trades. The opportunity to book a plumber at a specific time via voice would be a game changer for those set up to offer it.

Know your locality

As a local business, it is also imperative that you know the surrounding areas well and to be able to prove you've thought about it. This includes looking at how people talk about key landmarks from a voice perspective.

We often use slang or shortened versions of landmark naming conventions, for instance. In a natural, conversational setting, you may find that you miss out if you don't use those idiosyncrasies within the content you produce and feature on your site or within your app.

Fun and entertainment

Then, of course, comes the "fun." Think of it as the games section of the App Store - it makes little logical sense, but in it lies a whole industry of epic proportions.

Voice will give birth to the next era in entertainment. While some of you may be thinking about how to profit from such an active audience, the majority of brands would be smart to see it as an engagement and brand awareness world.

Game makers will clamber to create hit mind games and quizzes, but those that play around the edges may well be the monarchs of this opportunity. Think about how voice could change the dynamic for educators, play the part of unbiased referees in games, or teach birdsong and the birds to which they relate. The opportunity is endless - and it will claim 25% of the overall pie, according to current usage research.

The monetization methods are yet to be uncovered, but the advertising opportunity is significant, as well as how clever technology like Blockchain may enable frictionless payments and more.

User journey mapping

So how do you tie all of this together into a seamless plan, given the complexity and number of touch points available? The answer starts and ends with user journey mapping.

This is something I find myself doing more and more now as part of the wider marketing challenge. Fragmented audiences and a plethora of devices and technology mean it's more difficult than ever to build an integrated strategy. Taking a user-centric approach is the only way to make sense of the chaos.

Voice is no different, and the key differentiator here is the fact that in this new world a journey is actually a conversation (or a series of them).

Conversation journey mapping

While the tech may not yet be there to support conversations in voice, given the point at the beginning of this piece around the law of Accelerating Returns, it's clear that it's coming - and faster than we realize.

In some respects, the timing of that advancement is irrelevant, however, as the process of working through a series of conversations that a potential client or customer may have around your product or service is invaluable as research for your plan.

To go back to our lawnmower example, a conversation mapping exercise may look a little like this:

[me] What's the best lawnmower for under 500? [voice assistant] How large is your lawn? [me] It's not very big. I don't need a ride-on. [voice assistant] OK so would you prefer a cylinder or rotary version? [me] I don't know. How do I choose? [voice assistant] If you want stripes and your lawn is very flat, a cylinder gives a better finish. If not, a rotary is better. [me] OK, definitely a rotary then! [voice assistant] Good choice. In that case, your best options are either the McCulloch M46-125WR or the BMC Lawn Racer. [me] Which is best? [voice assistant] According to Trustpilot, the McCulloch has 4.5 stars from 36 reviews versus 3.5 stars for the BMC. The McCulloch is also cheaper. Do you want me to find the best deal or somewhere nearby that stocks it? [me] I'd like to see it before buying if possible. [voice assistant] OK, ABC Lawn Products is 12 miles away and has an appointment at 11am. Do you want to book it? [me] Perfect.

Where are the content or optimization opportunities?

Look carefully above and you'll see that there are huge swathes of the conversation that lend themselves to opportunity, either through content creation or some other kind of optimization.

To spell that out, here's a possible list:

Guide Best lawnmower for 500

Guide Rotary versus cylinder lawnmowers

Review strategy Create a plan to collect more reviews

Optimization Evergreen guide optimization strategy to enhance featured snippet opportunities

Local search Optimize business listing to include reviews, opening times, and more

Appointments Open up an online appointment system and optimize for voice

In developing such a roadmap, it's also important to consider the context within which the conversation is happening.

Few of us will ever feel entirely comfortable using voice in a crowded, public setting, for instance. We're not going to try using voice on a bus, train, or at a festival anytime soon.

Instead, voice interfaces will be used in private, most likely in places such as homes and cars and places where it's useful to be able to do multiple things at once.

Setting the scene in this way will help as you define your conversation possibilities and the optimization opportunities from it.

What people do we need to create all this?

The one missing piece of the jigsaw as we prepare for the shift to voice? People.

All of the above require a great deal of work to perfect and implement, and while the dust still needs to clear on the specifics of voice marketing, there are certain skill sets that will need to pull together to deliver a cohesive strategy.

For the majority, this will simply mean creating project groups from existing team members. But for those with the biggest opportunities (think recipe sites, large vertical search plays, and so on), it may be that a standalone team is necessary.

Here's my take on what that team will require:

Developer with specific skill in creating Google Home Actions, Alexa Skills, and so on.

Researcher to work with customer groups to understand how voice is being used and capture further opportunities for development.

SEO to help prioritize content creation and how it's structured and optimized.

Writer to build out the long-tail content and guides necessary.

Voice UX expert A specialist in running conversation mapping sessions and turning them into brilliant user journeys for the different content and platforms your brand utilizes.

Conclusion

If you've read to this point, you at least have an active interest in this fast-moving area of tech. We know from the minds of the most informed experts that voice is developing quickly and that it clearly offers significant benefits to its users.

When those two key things combine, alongside a lowering cost to the technology needed to access it, it creates a tipping point that only ends one way: in the birth of a new era for computing.

Such a thing has massive connotations for both digital and wider marketing, and it will pay to have first-mover advantage.

That means educating upwards and beginning the conversation around how voice interfaces may change your own industry in the future. Once you have that running, who knows where it might lead you?

For some, it changes little, for others everything, and the good news for search marketers is that there are a lot of existing tactics and skill sets that will have an even bigger part to play.

Existing skills

The ability to claim featured snippets and answer boxes becomes even more rewarding as they trigger millions of voice searches.

Keyword research has a wider role in forming strategies to reach into voice and outside traditional search, as marketers become more interested in the natural language their audiences are using.

Local SEO wins become wider than simply appearing in a search engine.

Micro-moments become more numerous and even more specific than ever before. Research to uncover these becomes even more pivotal.

New opportunities to consider

Increases in content consumption through further integration in daily life - so think about what other kinds of content you can deliver to capture them.

Think Internet of Things integration and how your brand may be able to provide content for those devices or to help people use connected home.

Look at what Skills/Actions you can create to play in the "leisure and entertainment" sector of voice. This may be as much about an engagement/awareness play than pure conversion or sales, but it's going to be a huge market. Think quick games, amazing facts, jokes, and more

Conversation journey mapping is a powerful new skill to be learned and implemented to tie all content together.

Here's to the next 50 years of voice interface progress!

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bloodyslytherxn-blog · 7 years ago

Text

The Voice Playbook Building a Marketing Plan for the Next Era in Computing

Posted by SimonPenson

Preface

My view is that voice is not just an add-on, but an entirely new way of interacting with the machines that add value to our lives. It is the next big era of computing.

Brands and agencies alike need to be at the forefront of that revolution. For my part, that begins with investing in the creation of a voice team.

Let me explain just how we plan to do that, and why it's being actioned earlier than many will think necessary.

Jump to a section:

Introduction

"The times, they are a-changing." Bob Dylan

Back in 1964, that revered folk-and-blues singer could never have imagined just what that would mean in the 21st century.

Talk to Ray Kurzweil, Google's Chief Engineer and the man Bill Gates says is the "best person to predict the future," and he'll tell you that we are entering a period of huge technological change.

At best, it tips everything upside down. At worst, it kills those agencies or businesses stuck behind the curve.

Winter is coming!

According to Kurzweil's thesis on the growth of technology (the Law of Accelerating Returns),

"we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century it will be more like 20,000 years."

Put another way, he explains that technology does not progress in a linear way. Instead, it progresses exponentially.

In other words, we're going to see new tech landing and gaining traction faster than we ever realized it possible, as this chart proves:

Voice

Let's first deal with understanding the processes required before then moving onto the expertise to make it happen.

What do we need to know?

Microsoft Cortana Available on Windows, iOS, and Android.

Amazon Alexa Voice-activated assistant that lives on Amazon audio gear (Echo, Echo Dot, Tap) and Fire TV.

Google Assistant Google's voice assistant powers Google Home as well as sitting across its mobile and voice search capabilities.

Apple Siri Native voice assistant for all Apple products.

And (major assistants) coming soon:

Samsung Bixby Native voice assistant for Samsung products.

(Yet to be named) Facebook assistant They already have M for Messenger, and Mark Zuckerberg is personally testing "Jarvis AI" in his home.

All of these exist to allow consumers the ability to retrieve information without having to touch a screen or type anything.

That has major ramifications for those who rely on traditional typed search and a plethora of other arenas, such as the fast-growing Internet of Things (IoT).

In short, voice allows us to access everything from our personal diaries and shopping lists to answers to our latest questions and even to switch our lights off.

Why now?

Apart from the tidal wave of tech now supporting voice, there is another key reason for investing in voice now - and it's all to do with the pace at which voice is actually improving.

His point was that at present, voice is "only 90% accurate" and therefore the results are sometimes a little disappointing. This slows uptake.

When will that happen? In the chart below we see Google's view on this question, predicting we will be there in 2018!

Is this the end for search?

The key will be creating a channel strategy as well as a method for researching both voice and typed opportunity as part of your overall process.

What's different?

Instead, we are presented with an opportunity to ask, find, and discover the things we want and need using natural language.

This means that we will naturally lengthen the phrases we use to find the stuff we want - and early studies support this assumption.

The evidence suggests that will happen fast too. Google's own data shows us that 55% of teens and 40% of adults use voice search daily. Below is what they use it for:

But an area sure to grow is the leisure/entertainment sector. More on that later.

The key question remains: How exactly do you tap into this growing demand? How do you become the choice answer above all those you compete with?

With such a vast array of devices, the answer is a multi-faceted one.

Where is the data coming from?

To make life a little easier, I've created an at-a-glance cheat sheet to guide you through the process. You can download it by clicking on the banner below.

Bing is more important now.

Now, the search giant usually finds a way to pull back market share, but for now a marketers' focus should be on Microsoft's search engine and Google as a secondary player.

Irrespective of which engine you prioritize there are two key areas to focus on: featured snippets and local listings.

Featured snippets

The search world has been awash with posts and talks on this area of optimization over recent months as Google continues to push ahead with the roll out of the feature-rich SERP real estate.

For those that don't know what a "snippet" is, there's an example below, shown for a search for "how do I get to sleep":

Not only is this incredibly valuable traditional search real estate (as I've discussed in an earlier blog post), but it's a huge asset in the fight for voice visibility.

Initial research by experts such as Dr. Pete Myers tells us, clearly, that Google assistant is pulling its answers from snippet content for anything with any level of complexity.

At present, it's unclear how Google plans to help us understand and attribute these kinds of visits. But according to insider Gary Illyes, it is imminent within Search Console.

Measurement will clearly be an important step in selling any voice strategy proposal upwards and to provide individual site or brand evidence that the medium is growing and deserving of investment.

User intent and purchase

Such data will also help us understand how voice alters such things as the traditional conversion funnel and the propensity to purchase.

To better understand this, let's examine a potential search "conversation."

If we take a product search example for, let's say, buying a new lawn mower, the conversation could go a little like this:

In this scenario, our voice assistant has connected the dots and asks the next relevant question to help narrow the search in a natural way.

Natural language processing

To do this, however, requires a step up in computer processing, a challenge being worked on as we speak in a bid to provide the next level of voice search.

To solve the challenge requires the use of so-called Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), interconnected layers of processing units designed to mimic the neural networks in the brain.

DNNs can work across everything from speech, images, sequences of words, and even location before then classifying them into categories.

It relies on the input of truckloads of data so it can learn how best to bucket those things. That data pile will grow exponentially as the adoption of voice accelerates.

In this world, we start to paint a very different view of the "keywords" we should be targeting, with deeper and more exacting phrases winning the battle for eyeballs.

Keyword prioritization

This single journey gives us some insight into how the interface could shape our thinking on keyword prioritization and content creation.

Pieces that help a user either make a decision or perform an action around the following trigger words and phrases will attract greater interest and traffic from voice. Examples could include:

buy

get

find

top rated

closest

nearest

cheapest

best deal