Voice Technology in Ecommerce is not new innovation. However, adoption of voice commerce is quite new.
Are you wondering What is Voice Commerce?
Voice commerce is all about the use of technology to mitigate end-user’s dependence on keyboard, touch-screen, or mouse and helping theming in using voice commands to search and buy products online.
To benefit from voice commerce, you need is a voice-powered device and voice-enabled online store.
When did Voice Commerce emerge?
Voice technology started off in 1961 with a creation of first voice recognition system named as ‘Shoebox’ by an IBM engineer William C, Dersch. At first, it was able to recognize 16 spoken words and was capable of calculating Maths problems.
In 2011, with the emergence of voice assistant on iPhones known as ‘Siri’ took voice technology to new heights.
But, one thing you should keep in mind:- “ Voice technology and voice assistants are not the latest innovations. However, adoption of voice commerce is still relatively new.
Majority of online shoppers leverage the power of voice-enabled commands to search and shop online.
In the past 5 years, there’s been a big surge in voice-powered devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home which led consumers to try voice technology in Ecommerce business.
As more and more online stores will become voice-powered, it’s more likely that this trend will get momentum.
How does Voice Commerce work?
Voice technology is meant to be simple-to-execute. From a point-of-view of a consumer, all it takes is a ‘Voice.’ But, this story doesn’t end here.
There are four most important requirements for a success of voice technology in Ecommerce:
1- Your website should contain ‘Voice Assistant’.
2- Your web store should be programmed to fully understand a voice search command.
3- Make your online store well-optimized to comprehend long-tail queries (mostly action verbs). For example, if someone comes to your Ecommerce website and says:- ‘I want to order a Product XYZ, then the word ‘Order’ would be used as a trigger. So, your website should be optimized around important keywords and search queries to help clients successfully.
4- You must be mindful of tones of users’, so that your voice assistant could capture and recognize unique voices and could prevent order misplacement
What are the benefits of Voice Commerce?
Voice technology has taken Ecommerce to the next-level. It can help consumers in multiple ways. They can order foods and shop online. Undoubtedly, digital commerce is a big opportunity for voice technology. Companies which benefited from voice commerce have improved their online customer and online experience altogether.
Here, I’m going to share benefits of voice commerce below:
a- Convenience
The big advantage of voice commerce is that ‘It’s easy-to-use.’ — All it needs is ‘Voice assistants and human voice.
It helps consumers in online shopping when they’re cooking, driving and multitasking. Undeniably, purchasing products is highly easier now than ever before.
b- 24/7 Availability
Consumers can buy anything from general items to luxury goods from a web store using voice technology. It makes the entire process easy and quick where online shoppers don’t have to put up with energy-draining browsing and purchasing process.
c- Speed of Purchase
Voice commerce improves speed of purchase.
A customer doesn’t have to log-in and fill-in all personal details on a company’s web store to purchase a product.
With voice technology, each step gets highly streamlined. Just search product with exact descriptions and order right away.
d- Personalized Buying Experiences
Since voice commerce is easy-to-use, streamlined and more interactive. It helps in generating personalized buying experience as you can get collect more data from their owners and this data can be used later to personalize customer experience.
All companies that collect information on consumer behavior, historical data and preferences tend to develop better products and come up with better marketing strategies to beat competitors. Likewise, it helps in fulfilling customers’ purchasing expectations successfully.
How to make Voice Technology Work for your Ecommerce Business?
Precision of voice searches are beyond the doubts. It’s the reason that Ecommerce retailers will benefit from its exactness to boost sales of their online stores.
If you want to make your Ecommerce successful using voice technology, there are a few things which you must consider for best customer experience (CX) to double your conversion rates etc.
As an eStore, you should incorporate voice technology and you’ll see your results going through the roof:
1- Voice Technology is Highly Compatible with AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a technology that redefines applications of technology in businesses. As voice technology is highly compatible with AI, this combination will incalculably improve your Ecommerce business.
Rest assured — Voice technologies and AI will improve your digital commerce business greatly.
Let’s imagine a voice assistant which handles your customer interactions, guide and serve them better.
2- Create Voice-Compatible Products and Increase your Storefront Revenue
Now, people expect products to be compatible with voice assistants. If you’re still unclear about use of voice-enabled Ecommerce sites, check Amazon and you’ll find many ‘Alexa-compatible.’ They range from home appliances, general items to Robot vacuums.
Most importantly, if you’re selling digital and electronic products, customers expect voice commands by default.
All-in-all, the sooner you’ll adopt this technology, the more future-proof your Ecommerce store will become.
3- Better Site Navigation for Incredible UX (User Experience)
Abandoned shopping carts are the reason that Ecommerce websites suffer. Therefore, incorporating voice searches commands will help in lessening of abandoned shopping carts because it will shape perfect user journey.
Better site navigation for flawless UX with voice technology will take results to the next-level.
5 Reasons to Use Voice Technology for Ecommerce Website
It won’t be incorrect to say — Voice technology has revolutionized the whole world of Ecommerce. A client doesn’t need to put away with a plethora of content on any Ecommerce website.
Literally, just speak up, name your product with descriptions and your most desired product will be in front of you.
Voice technology is a boon for those web stores with products high in demand. On the other hand, buyers want to purchase them right away with no difficulties.
Here, I’m breaking down use of voice technology for Ecommerce website into valid 5 reasons for better understanding of the subject matter:-
1) You can gather valuable information about customers
In voice-enabled Ecommerce store, visitors prefer to speak more to search instead of typing a keyword for reaching to any specific product. An online store which is widely optimized for voice searches has a leverage to gather valuable information related to visitors’ demographics, preferences, online attributes.
Later on, this information comes handy in flawless forecasting for eStore owners. They have in-depth knowledge of their visitors’ likeness and dislikeness. They know the exact timing — when their visitors come and when they don’t.
If you want to create an Ecommerce website on any CMS, you should not forget to integrate voice search. It helps in gathering and analyzing worthwhile information alongside other analytics i.e. On-site engagement analytics, Funnel analytics, and Customer analytics etc.
2) It improves overall shopping experience
Ecommerce business must involve enthusiasm for its audience. And, what could be other best way to keep visitors engaged than voice-enabled search mechanism. This way, your can keep visitors on online store for longer.
Voice Commerce is time-saving, effective, and efficient. It can and should help in transitioning of prospects into potential customers with simplified buyer’s journey involving three most important stages:1) Awareness, 2) Consideration, 3) Decision — Starts from your website’s homepage and ends at check-out page.
There is no doubt about the advantages of voice technology — They do help in taking overall shopping experience to the next level.
3) Engage visitors with well-optimized voice commands
Eye-catching yet minimalist customer experience (CX) coupled with voice search capabilities promotes engagement for an Ecommerce website.
For voice searching, visitors tend to use long-term queries and more conversational tone in contrast to typing. In other words, voice commands are more colloquial and search-intended. They should be quick and result-oriented for all search terms and keywords.
In order to benefit greatly from voice command technology, every eStore owner should strategize voice search optimization for a long-run —- understand the key differences between text search and voice search, evaluate your online store, fix your content accordingly, and cater your audience with optimized voice commands.
4) Voice technology innovates Ecommerce business
Voice technology isn’t a fad anymore. It has already crossed the threshold of early adopters. It is a new normal now.
Nevertheless, it has ins-and-outs, but it does innovate Ecommerce business. Text searches are exhausting. Voice searches are time-saving.
Mobile is a growth engine for online retailing. Smartphones and voice search create an organic union.
Beyond any doubt —- Voice technology is a bedrock of innovation for Ecommerce business. It elevates ease-of-use, transparency and engagement.
A webstore with voice recognition capabilities becomes highly interactive and user-favorite. Surely, such an ecommerce website stands out in the competition and leads the industry.
5) It skyrockets sales in a timely manner
Voice-enabled digital commerce sites are sweet spots on big online event i.e. Black Friday and Cyber-Monday when clients are hunting for best discount offers. At the same time, online stores look for opportunities for upselling. In this situation, this is the magic of voice technology which can skyrocket sales of an Ecommerce website in a timely manner.
How 5 Leading Brands are Adopting Voice Technology
This new era of voice technology is driving more brands to adopt voice technology which has helped some brands to reap more success than to competitors.
Here, we’re going to take a look at 5 leading brands which adopted voice technology to boost engagement and take customer experience to the next-level.
1- Starbucks
Starbucks is one of the early adopters of voice technology. It has an app which lets people order and pay in advance. It has expanded its voice-enabled services that now people can order drinks just by using Amazon Alexa.
This strategy works so phenomenally that it has completely simplified the entire process of buying drinks for customers.
Now, people can order and pay for the drinks using voice ordering – saving time and energy.
2- Argos
Argos is one of the most popular in the United Kingdom (UK) where people browse and buy products on its website. This way, people don’t have to touch or see the physical items prior to buying them.
Not long ago, Internal research done by Argos which showed that 55 percent of people like to purchase things through voice-ordering. This store found voice technology incalculably effective. Therefore, it teamed with Google Home and helped people to check the availability of any product via Google Assistant.
3 – Kayak
Kayak is a big name in the travel industry. Since 2004, it’s helped millions of travelers around the globe. Kayak adopted voice technology which took its results to the next-level. Now, if you want to learn about travel options or want to book any place or just a room, you won’t have to bother yourself with text searches.
It’s equipped with voice assistant to help you find any room or suite in a matter of minutes.
4 – Domino’s
In March of 2017, Domino’s introduced a new ‘voice ordering system that works alongside Domino’s virtual assistant ‘The Dru Assist’ and proved to be more accurate and efficient for ordering.
Undeniably, those businesses who incorporate voice technology have competitive advantage. They see the future early and build an atmosphere where customers could get best services.
5 – Paypal
PayPal announced an update in 2016 for iPhones and iPads which will support payment transaction via Siri, letting users to send and request money in more than 25 countries across the globe with their voices.
Just with a simple voice command i.e. ‘Send my sister $50 using Paypal.’ Siri will connect with PayPal and will extract a custom sheet with details of your transaction.
How your Ecommerce Business can Use Voice Technology?
Voice technology is highly useful for an Ecommerce business. Not only, consumers can place their orders with ease but also they have to face zero difficulty in finding their required goods and items.
Below, I’m going to share how can Ecommerce can use voice technology for improvement of overall sales:-
1- Voice Technology Turns Keywords into Queries
Text search is always different than to voice search.
It is really important for you or an Ecommerce website to understand the subtle differences between text and voice searches.
For instance, if anybody is looking for a new TV, they will write a search ‘I want to buy New TV.’ but the same person will speak differently for voice search – ‘I live in N Cicero Ave, Chicago, Illinois and I want to buy Sony Master Series XBR-55A9G.’
Did you notice differences in semantic searches?
Semantic searches are just not just confined to words or long phrases used for searching for a particular product or service. This method improves search accuracy using concepts and logical relationships.
Here, voice technology turns keywords into queries using semantic searches and your chances of ranking higher in competition improves along side visible improvement in overall sales.
2- Voice Commerce is Optimized for Semantic Searches
If you’re aware of Google Hummingbird update, I’m sure you’d be familiar with semantic search. If you’re NOT, don’t worry — Google realized that there should be more to keyword searches than just simple queries.
Instead of only queries, and fragments of keywords, Google analyzes complete meaning behind every question. With this practice, Google can predict hidden intent of the searchers for things online. Consequently, this led marketers to voice search optimization.
It’s time to forget a long list of useless keywords which you want to optimize for search engines. And, they should shift their thinking towards voice search optimization not just search queries as ‘words.’
3- Voice Technology can help in Optimization of FAQs
If you want to optimize your whole website successfully not just landing pages, you should use long-tail keywords in FAQs. Because, most of the search queries done using voice search feature are actually genuine questions by users. They ask queries directly related to their problems.
So, adds exact questions in your FAQ pages and you will see positive effects in a long-run.
It doesn’t take much time, with a little brainstorming and research, you can easily identify which long-tail keywords help your customers most in collecting important data and information.
One important thing – try to make your FAQs as natural as possible, and you will benefit greatly.
4 – Streamlining Customer Ordering
Voice technology is a great way of eliminating friction and makes it easy for customers to order their products online – easily and effectively. In short, a simple voice command can get you all the information you need without typing anything.
Ultimately, this process will streamline customer ordering and would boost engagement as well.
Improve your online store sales with voice search optimization strategy
Voice technology is a revolutionary innovation which has escalated not just direct shopping on digital but also regular voice search on a regular basis.
Here are four important things related to voice search optimization to increase store’s sales:-
a) Optimize your Natural Search Languages
People speak differently than what they type. It means queries via voice search are powerful and subtly different.
For example:
Someone looking for sweatpants may type:
On the other hand, with voice search, they would likely say the full phrase or question:
These little differences but they can make a big change in your online presence and possibly your business can rank well on page one for voice searches.
So, make a list of phrases and questions, and then optimize your site and content accordingly.
b) Improve mobile experience
Mobile is hugely advantageous —- especially when it’s about voice search. As Google has rolled out its mobile-first indexing — the need for your site and content to be well-optimized for mobile devices to rank well in the search engines has increased.
Keep in mind:
An improved mobile experience is indispensable. Having a responsive theme for your mobile site is a must-have. Because, keep a user engaged is critical and a confusing experience will result in high bounce rate —- meaning you’ll get pushed down in the ranking.
So, if you want to make the most of voice technology in Ecommerce, keep all pages highly optimized for mobile and it will result in low bounce rate.
c) Boost your Site Speed
Definitely — slower ecommerce sites annoy users. People are more likely to hit ‘Back’ button when they land on to slow online stores, they give up and never come back.
However, there is another reason why voice search makes site speed so important:
Digital voice assistants have to search the web for data and provide an answer to a user’s question in a matter of seconds.
If your page will load too slowly then it won’t be able to provide enough information on time.
Unfortunately, your page will be passed over, even if it’s providing real-time and perfect solution to the search query.
d) Use Schema Markups
An online retailers can leverage a powerful tool to take advantage of technology in Ecommerce known as Schema Markup.
Voice assistants and searches must go hand-in-hand. They need to work extremely fast to come up with quick response or answer.
A big advantage of Schema markup is that it adds rich snippets —- it highlights important information your content i.e. product, brand, size, rating and pricing etc.
Conclusion – How can you boost your sales with Voice Technology in Ecommerce?
In the end,
We talked about everything from the emergence of voice commerce to the improvement of online presence of your web store with voice search optimization and so much more in this blog.
All information shared here will help you boost your sales with voice technology in Ecommerce. Likewise, we highlighted reasons why should voice technology be used for the quick improvement.
So, if you’re running an ecommerce business, apply tricks and tips mentioned here and you will be able to take your eStore to the next level.
Do you have something to share with you? Feel free to write your message in the comment section below.