Search engine technology is constantly evolving and the glorious gem of the Crown is voice search technology. Most people now prefer to use voice technology to search anything online instead of the good old text search. It is indeed making the life of a human a lot easier. Not only search engines, but many industries are taking advantage of this technology and one of them is e-commerce. It not only offers a better user experience to the visitors but also provides better convenience. Voice commerce technology is popular among people because it induces interest in people.
The E-commerce industry is no longer what it used to be. It has grown rapidly and now its services are just a few clicks away from the customer. You can also customize e-commerce solutions to make your services better accessible and easy to use for the customers.
What is Voice Commerce?
Voice commerce is a trading voice. It is integrated with smart devices like Amazon Echo, Google Home, or any other attendees of portable devices. Using this technology, customers can buy products just by saying it out to the smart devices. But wait, voice commerce is more than that, it also allows you to perform rather more complicated functions like solving queries and simple orders.
It may sound a little out of the box but smart speakers and voices are now becoming important aspects in the process of making sales. This has made businesses ranging from top brands to startups change their strategy to involve voice commerce technology in their action plan.
This shouldn’t come out as much of a surprise because AI and virtual voice assistants are currently disrupting many business sectors around the world. They are transforming the way people consume information or the way brands offer information services. This is now becoming a new way of shopping for people.
Voice commerce changes the way brands communicate with their target audience as well as the consumption habits of people. The emergence of this technology is making the market more competitive at all levels. But before we go out predicting the future, let us understand what voice eCommerce is.
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Understanding Voice Search in E-commerce
Most of the top e-commerce brands have already implied voice-controlled virtual assistants in their digital strategies. There is no doubt that voice technology has made a significant impact on e-commerce. For example, Amazon Echo is powered by Alexa.
This is good for customers because the support of voice-controlled virtual assistants is not limited to shopping only. It can do so much more than that including searching for relevant information, ordering food, and listening to music. And that’s not it. Remember, it’s a smart voice assistant. So, next time when a user wants to place an order, the virtual assistant can check the order history as well as search history so that it can come up with a good suggestion for the users. Hence, the future of e-commerce is bright.
People are busy, they don’t like to waste their time. So, they often do things in such a way that often saves their time. One such approach is multitasking. So, it may happen that they might be shopping for the products when they are working or maybe traveling. Here’s where voice search technology may come in handy. It simplifies the online shopping process for the user when they are often involved in some other tasks too.
This can be one of the reasons why voice technology is considered the future of online shopping. It is extremely convenient to the users for not only their first-time shopping but also for repetitive orders. Because it consists of voice search algorithms.
How Does Voice Commerce Work?
In reality, there are various types of voice commerce trends that would define how exactly voice commerce would work. In the case of customers’ usage, it completely depends on their requirements. Here, we are going to discuss some of those needs:
- You want a Virtual Voice Assistant Device: This may include smartphones or voice-controlled devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home.
- You want to Activate a device simply by giving a command: You can give a command for every function. But that device needs to know that a certain command is given by the user to it. So, you need to address all the commands to your virtual assistant. For example, if you are using iPhones then you ought to give a command starting with “Hey Siri ”.
- You want to use an Action Word: Simply giving a command to the voice assistant device won’t work. You have to use an action word or simply a verb in your command. For example, Hey Siri, order XYZ. This will enable Siri to get your work done.
- Be Mindful of Your Tones: You might not have expected this. But, this is the most necessary aspect of dealing with voice search technology. When you are giving commands to your assistant device, it is recommended that you speak clearly and in the right tone. Because the technology assistant will only be offering output from what it was able to recognize as input from your command.
Why Businesses should Leverage Voice Commerce for their ECommerce Store?
As voice-activated online shopping evolves with time, its adapting rate by online stores also keeps increasing. But if you are undecided on the topic or have second thoughts then allow me to give you just three reasons to prove that voice-enabled search technology can be beneficial for your e-commerce business.
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1. To offer enhanced customer experience
Voice commerce changes the way interaction takes place between your customers and your business. It allows you to offer a seamless experience to your customers without any need to imply important resources for the success of the process.
The transformation in eCommerce is bringing all kinds of innovative solutions into the game. For example, Sephora can analyze the skin and facial features of a customer to recommend products to them using virtual artists. And H&M uses a virtual stylist to recommend outfits to their customers.
This example says a lot about how much AI and Voice commerce are integrated with people’s shopping experience. Strategic use of voice commerce will take e-commerce businesses beyond their imagination.
2. To rouse brand attraction
When consumers are using a product or service of a certain brand, they would be experiencing the product or service as a part of their own life. Hence, they wish to get connected with the brand. And the voice conversation tool is a great head start for that.
The young generation is quite open to adopting new emerging technologies. How to search is not so important topic but the sense of adventure in the younger customers makes them more likely to be the early adopters of voice commerce technology. They would love to try out and rate new technology and extend to how they search.
Voice search runs around the brand preference but it also gives ample opportunity to new e-commerce businesses. The results of voice search are spoken off after matching the user preference and brand or product description. So, it is a good opportunity for e-commerce companies to get noticed on the map.
3. To improve search optimization
Customers’ needs and shopping habits can change constantly depending on the shifting market trends. Amidst this voice, commerce is a great way for online businesses to adapt to their customers’ changing requirements. Keyword research and search optimization play a critical role here.
Google hasn’t yet declared keyword data for voice searches but the general keyword research is used by everyone for it. So that customers can relate to their online shops or at least you can optimize for the same.
Let’s say, for example, someone gives this input for voice search – “Hey Siri, where could I find Thrifted Streetwear for me?”. Now, if you have optimized your e-commerce website and products on it for keyword-based searches and location then there are high chances for you to get a new customer for your online store.
It is also believed that the Google devices’ voice search-related answers correlate with Google’s featured snippets. So, you can measure your content and try to get in the organic search results. Your additional efforts for search optimization may get you amidst the top brands in your industry.
What is the Future of E-commerce?
Users with a preference for voice search are on the rise. Even the grocery store records that approximately more than 20% of their borders are voice-based. And why won’t it be? As per a recent study, the voice-search-based shopping market is predicted to reach $40 billion in the year 2022.
Most of the developed nations are quick to register that their people are already highly accustomed to this new search feature whereas other nations are quite catching up to it as fast as possible.
Believe me when I say that this trend is not limited to any specific market and not a single brand in the world wants to get left behind when it comes to voice commerce. Companies are moving on from traditional marketing strategies. From now on, the brands will not just be seen but heard too.
There are many e-commerce platforms out there that are optimizing themselves to be ready when the transition happens. Online business owners leverage SEO tools to optimize voice search to benefit from this feature on the search engines. Voice search is just the beginning. AI and other smart features are yet to take over internet surfing and online shopping.
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Final thoughts
If you have been one of those online shop owners, you may have already installed this feature for your customers to take advantage of. Adapting to the latest trends and technology is vital for businesses to survive the cut-throat competition.
However, if you still haven’t done it yet, have no worries. Maybe you should start small. Apply this feature to a couple of functions on your e-commerce platform. See whether it works well for you or not. Experiment, learn and evolve. I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog.
If you have any queries or suggestions then please share them with us in the comments section below.
This article is written by Lily Jones. Lily is working as a Technical Business Analyst at Tatvasoft.com which is a software development company. Apart from her daily job lily also likes to write trending and technical aspects. She strongly believes that knowledge is meant to be shared, for there is a lot we can learn from each other.
