Late yesterday I set out on a mission. My goal…to find a handful of companies promoting their chatbot through a call-to-action on their website.
Easy…right?
As it turns out…NO. It’s not easy at all. There are plenty of companies promoting their chatbots on their Facebook pages, but that’s a given…table-stakes.
To narrow my search, I decided to start with large companies that have highly ranked chatbots within the “Discover” tab of Facebook Messenger. I searched the websites for Subway, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fandango, Capital One, The Weather Channel, Nike, Kohls, Sears, 1-800-Flowers, Sephoria, Walgreens, Petco, Walmart, ESPN, Kayak…and many more.
I checked homepages, footer links, help, support, customer service, pages related to mobile…you name it…and I found nothing…zero. So, as a last ditch effort, I performed a simple search for the term “chatbot” on a handful sites…but still no luck.
Then, like a mid-day solar eclipse, I found the holy grail at TechCrunch.com. I discovered that they’re promoting their Messenger Chatbot on their homepage (image below). In fact, they have provided it with one of THE highest traffic placements on the entire homepage…directly adjacent to the Search feature.
So, here’s your mission, if you accept the challenge. Try to find a call-to-action on a website driving traffic to a chatbot. The examples can be as deep and hidden as you’d like, but placements on the company Facebook page do not count.
Good Luck –