The establishment of voice shopping
As the title of this article states, voice shopping accounts for about 2% of all e-commerce transactions today. It’s being heralded as the next great innovation in e-commerce, but many e-commerce operators aren’t making it a priority. They don’t see 2% as a reason to make the upfront investment in the next generation of shopping technology.
The fact is, now is the ideal time to upgrade to voice shopping technology—not only to stay ahead of the curve but to acclimate your customers to the future of shopping trends. Being an early adopter to voice shopping technology will keep your e-commerce ahead of competitors and better prepare you for the next great innovation.
Where’s the urgency?
Your competitors may not be utilizing voice shopping technologies yet, but that only opens the door for you to capitalize where they haven’t. Look instead to the bigger players in the world of e-commerce.
Amazon, Google, Apple, Samsung, and many other big companies are investing in voice search. They’re paving the way for normalization—emulating them means making progress and not having to play catchup later as this tech becomes standard.
Also, important—and frankly, urgent—is to understand how voice search will be better utilized in the future. Most online shops don’t have any presence on the Internet of Things (IoT) devices; however, these devices are on the rise. If you don’t add voice search on your website, you’ll be ill-equipped to handle the influx of opportunities that stem from shoppers utilizing these devices.
Recognize the opportunities
Even beyond just keeping up with evolving tech, there are many other reasons to take voice search seriously. I have to warn you, what I’m going to tell you might sound like science fiction, but it’s all real. Many analysts either missed it or just don’t like to write about it:
Identifying voice sentiments
Imagine being able to know your shopper’s current mood. Are they feeling happy, depressed, confident or any other mood that works well with the kind of products you offer? Being able to identify mood through voice timbre could unlock a whole new dataset for e-commerce retailers to capitalize on.
IBM Watson already offers a beta version of an API that can correctly identify voice sentiments. It’s relatively new and maybe not ready for rollout yet, but you can count on Amazon, Microsoft, Google and definitely Facebook to already have their own versions. As these online behemoths seek to better understand users, listening closely to their voices is the next step.
Analyzing background noise
Somebody is currently visiting your website and searches for a product using voice. In the background, you can hear that she or he are watching a specific TV show or their favorite team’s football game. Maybe they are sitting in a coffee shop, in a train station or at the airport?
Using tools which can analyze this background noise, you’ll be able to offer additional, more relevant, products to increase sales and appease customers’ subconscious shopping habits.
Solicitation and cross sale voice prompt
Research is proving that there’s a dramatic difference in customer response to a personalized voice prompt offering additional products or services than just showing it on the screen. A voice prompt that says, “It’s going to rain in Boston next week, would you like to add an umbrella for only $8?” will register differently to your shopper than simply showing them an $8 umbrella!
These types of seller advantages have yet to be recognized by any other type of e-commerce technologies, which is why store operators may be skeptical of voice shopping’s efficacy in the near-term.
Rest assured, however, like predictive search and dynamic product suggestion technologies before it, voice shopping will power e-commerce forward in the near future. Early adopters will ride the wave up; those lagging behind will face an uphill battle to regain market share.
Soon enough 2% of voice searches could grow to 20%. So, it’s prudent to ask yourself, is this a large enough segment of your sales to entice you into making the investment in voice shopping today?
