Voice commerce is the next big thing in eCommerce
The progress with chat bots, digital voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, Google Now and native language recognition in AI is empowering a new shift towards a conversation based ecommerce development. It’s only a matter of time that people discover the immense convenience, speed and ease of voice commerce and rely on it for online shopping.
Consumer of today has found a voice be it his/her opinions about products/quality of service, sharing it on social platforms, or having conversation with the company itself. While voicing their minds has become more fervent, companies must listen to it and fast.
The progress with chat bots, digital voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, Google Now and native language recognition in AI is empowering a new shift towards a conversation based ecommerce development. It’s only a matter of time that people discover the immense convenience, speed and ease of voice commerce and rely on it for online shopping. Given the consumer’s rising comfort level with virtual assistants and chatbots, widespread adoption of voice commerce is inevitable. No wonder then that Amazon Echo Dot smart home assistant was the highest selling item on Amazon Prime Day Sales.
According to ‘Walker Sands 2017 Future of Retail Study’ that surveyed more than 1600 US consumers, one in 5 customers (19%) have made a voice purchase through Amazon Echo or another digital home assistant, and another third (33%) plan to do so in the next year. For online retailers who can get a head start, there is an incredible opportunity to grab.
How To Make Voice Commerce Work for Your Ecommerce
As the accuracy of voice search or voice recognition becomes more precise, consumers and ecommerce retailers will reap benefits and its popularity will continue to rise. Presently while smart-homes devices with voice-controlled personal assistants like Apple’s HomePod powered by Siri, Amazon’s Echo powered by Alexa, Google Home to Ali Baba’s Tmall Genie are waiting to unleash the next disruption in ecommerce, Amazon is clearly leading the disruptive voice-commerce wave. Today the best example of a voice commerce example is to ask Alexa to place an order to be shipped from Amazon. You too can future-proof your ecommerce and make voice commerce your most super-performing asset by following these simple yet powerful tips:
Redesign Your On-site Search for Natural Language Search Queries:
According to research by ComScore, 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. Since consumers tend to be more expressive when using voice search therefore you will need to leverage NLP (Natural Language Processing) include natural language phrasing into textual content. Retailers are thus turning to machine learning to deliver better search results. Unified engagement platforms like Reflektion, Inbenta, Klevu use AI and NLP technologies to help drive richer, more relevant customer engagement by redefining site search and searching conversationally.
Companies like eBay are already harnessing the power of machine learning and AI to predict and display the most relevant search results each time a user shops the site. Similarly, Altitude Sports managed to squeeze 50% more revenue out of its search bar by upgrading its site search bar with AI technology by teaming up with leading search technology provider - SearchSpring. Thus, ecommerce retailers are now required to re-work their on-site search to handle voice-based searches rather than just focusing on keyword- focused content
Follow SEO Best Practices & Focus On Local Searches:
Schema mark-up is a great way to achieve rich and structure data to provide detailed product information and attract potential buyers. Identifying content elements and tags through schema enables search engines to quickly identify the relationship in the required context and deliver a seamless voice commerce experience. You should also consider revising your sitemap to make it easy for searchbots to crawl your site increases your chances of showing up on search results.
The future is indeed voice activated search, driven by machine learning and NLP. According to research voice search is three times more likely to be local in nature, thus it pays to optimize your ecommerce for local SEO to ensure that your online store in voice-commerce ready.
Add Natural Language To Your Site’s Content
Optimize your ecommerce site’s content by adding natural language. Voice searches usually tend to be long-tail keywords and more voice-friendly and often include question with a preference for high local search results. Thus, from product titles to product descriptions, the focus must shift from solely focusing on the text-based google search engine to natural language. Consider adding a Q&A page using phrases and keywords that people actually use during their conversation.
Voice commerce through smart Home assistants like Amazon Echo, Google Home or Apple HomePod is just the beginning of what’s possible for online shopping as AI evolves. Are you ready to ride the new wave of voice commerce and stay ahead of your competitors?
Credit: Cygnet Infotech