I Built A Bot (And You Can Too)
What will limit us is not the possible evolution of technology, but the evolution of human purposes. — Stephen Wolfram
I have been meaning to build a chatbot for my websites. I took a run at it two years ago, but there was a lot to build to get them to answer questions the way I wanted, to reply in my voice and a few other things that I can’t remember, which pushed me off of getting one up and running. I had a search icon on the sites, so that was good enough at the time. The build was too big a lift for the benefits I thought I would gain.
Chad Davis asked what we did with AI last week, which motivated me to go back to my bot-building. This little thing called AI has come along since I first attempted my chatbot, and whoa doggie, did it make it simple to build my bot this go around. I used an app called Chatbase, and I was up and running in less than five minutes.
Yup, less than five minutes! I spent more time creating a name (Decimal) and mucking in ChatGPT to create an icon image for her than to actually get her running it on my site. In the end, my overthinking the image and name led to ones I don’t love, but it was time to get back to the actual work I had scheduled.
She’s not fully formed yet. But the more-than-good-enough version is up. Essentially, all I had to do was feed little Decimal my website URLs, and she took it from there. Right now, she just searches my website for the answers, so it kind of replicates my search bar, but in a waaaay cuter and more interactive manner.
She needs me to get my act together and develop some SOPs and possible Q&A scenarios for her. I went with the free version - just to get started - so I can only give her limited resources to help folks who come to my site. Once I upgrade, I can add more website URLs so she can crawl my blogs for data, too.
I’ve added building Decimal out to my short-term list of things to do. Actually, I’m going to get my #RightHandGem, Maddie, to help train Decimal (shhhh… I haven’t told Maddie that yet). I’ve also decided to build a family bot - so she can answer my husband’s, kids’ and parents’ repetitive questions ⬅️ bet y’all relate to that one 🤣🤣🤣
I know some of you have been thinking about putting a chatbot on your site (and you can add them to your socials), but maybe, like me, you thought getting even the most basic one up and running would be too much of a lift. But if you have 10 minutes to spare and want to do something fun (nerds unite!), consider giving this a go. Or delegate it. Either way, I guarantee you it’s easier than you think to add this little bit of fun and modernization to your website.
Kellie :-}
I had my friend ChatGPT create the image for this blog in less than a minute. Cute, right?!
