Bots
A software agent that assists a user.
User’s, Services and Interfaces
- Bots act as an interface, connecting a user to a service.
- A service is anything you want to access.
- User might be human but could be some other software.
Bots for E-Commerce
We will generally have to make the following decisions concerning bots:
- For customer assistance?
- For employee/company assistance?
- Can third party bots use the service?
Customer Support
We may see the following different types:
- Dumb bots/similar to human support.
- Information only/can take actions.
When making a customer support bot we should keep the following in mind:
- High authority requires high reliability.
- Licensing existing bots works well for complex bots.
- Scripts/flowcharts for human support can often be used as a basis for a bot, especially when less sophisticated.
You should weigh whether the bot is really better than a FAQ or human customer support. If so you should still provide it alongside the alternatives.
Encouraging Bots
- Define an API that bots can interact with.
- This also shows what functions you allow users to interact with.
Creating API documentation encourages users to use the correct endpoint for their data.
Discouraging Bots
robots.txt
This is a file, generally aimed at search engines, that discourages bots from reading certain pages or following links on pages.
A bot doesn’t have to comply with robots.txt or robots meta tags.
Blocking Bots
- If there is a large amount of traffic from a single or small range of IPs then they can be blocked if poor behaviour is detected.
This may create false positives but this can be acceptable anyway.
CAPTCHA
We can use CAPTCHA checks, like reCAPTCHA, to ensure any users are human:
- This is becoming harder with AI models that can solve modern CAPTCHA problems.