Voice search in e-commerce:  A view of the current situation and future of this new revolution (episode 2 of 3)

While voice search continues to grow in popularity, its adoption in e-commerce remains cautious. Promising forecasts from analysts like Gartner and ComScore point to a future where voice could become a key channel, but the reality is more complex.

From limited use of voice assistants for end-to-end purchases to a focus on everyday products, voice shopping is still in its infancy. Concerns about the lack of visual support, perceived unreliability, and the still-developing accuracy of voice recognition are slowing the adoption of this technology.

In this article, we explore why voice search has yet to become a natural part of the shopping journey and what this means for brands and online retailers. The challenge? Striking the right balance between voice and text to create a truly enriched and relevant customer experience.

Why use voice search in e-commerce?

The first steps are still hesitant

The ways of using voice are multiplying, but the mobile remains in first place.

Gartner predicts that 30% of sites visited in 2020 will be arrived at by voice and ComScore predicts that in the same year, 50% of searches will be via voice.

The introduction of voice features dates back to the arrival of Siri at Apple in 2011, which is relatively recent. The integration of voice into the sales cycle is even more recent, having commenced only a little over two years ago. By 2017, however, $1.8 billion had already been generated by voice in the United States according to OC&C Strategy Consultants.

According to the same source, only 15% of voice assistant users in the United States and the United Kingdom would have used these devices to make an end-to-end purchase.

While connected speakers are much talked about, the majority of voice usage is still through the smartphone. While nearly 2/3 of smartphone users have already used their phone’s voice assistant, it is still far from daily use, as only 20% would use it more than once a month.

Moreover, only 13% of French people who do not yet have connected speakers say that they will eventually want to acquire one.

These figures clearly show that the integration of voice assistants into all equipment is not enough and that an effort must be made to educate people in order to highlight the full range of possibilities and gains that voice can bring to the user experience.

Why is voice shopping struggling to gain adoption for everyday use?

Concern about a technology that is still unknown and that provides no visual support is still holding back the adoption of voice as a tool for finding products that are not already explicitly known. Consumer products, on the other hand, are becoming the first items to be searched for voice command on marketplaces like Amazon, because they are known to consumers who buy them frequently.

It is therefore the familiarity with the product being ordered that matters. Purchased items are typically everyday goods or entertainment products whose key features are already well-known. The average basket value is lower when buying within the same product category, whether through voice or traditional methods.

 

 

More than 85% of voice purchases have average basket values of less than $100 in the United States. The consumer does not yet have total confidence in the voice tool. Voice shopping is still in its infancy and still arouses concerns. Many consumers are not used to it and are worried about not being able to process the information provided by voice assistants. Others are afraid that they will have fewer choices of proposed results than with text queries on a computer.

 

Only 18-35 year olds have really embraced voice, and a large majority of us still need to be convinced about the relevance – and indeed the effectiveness - of the experience. It is a fact that despite considerable progress, voice recognition still needs to increase its reliability before it can seriously increase its usage (the error rate is currently slightly less than 5%). There is also too much disparity between the functions available on each GAFAM assistant. The terms recognised vary from one solution to another, which confuses the user.

 

Do we need to invent a customer journey that is 100% voice?

In an omnichannel and omni device setting, there are now two search options: text and voice. These two means of communication are not in competition. On the contrary, they do not meet the same needs and are wholly complementary.

 

Voice allows consumers more freedom of expression and allows them to use a richer form of questioning. An answer may be delivered either visually on a screen or via a concise and specific voice response if the situation lends itself to this. On a merchant site, internal search can benefit from the best of both worlds, with a visual display of products to help the customer make a choice, and voice taking over when it’s simply a question of confirming a purchase, for example.

 

At the heart of these customer journeys, it will be essential to take into account those things that aren’t explicitly stated, and to understand the profile of the consumer behind every search, if we are to deliver truly relevant, personalised and ever more accurate answers.

Voice search represents a new challenge for the SEO strategies of brands and labels. The goal will be to be sufficiently well-referenced to feature in the first results announced by the connected speakers of Amazon or Google. Appearing in pole position will be a necessity for channeling traffic. Only sites with a «voice friendly» SEO strategy will be able to exist on these new 100% voice interfaces.

 

Content will have to be written to respond to natural language search. Only relevant content, when provided with a voice search that is far more specific than a text search, will be presented to consumers.

 

The structure of the product data will become even more important. Many additional attributes will have to be added to those that already exist in order to provide a more detailed description of products to meet the new requirements of consumers.

 

The modes of advertising offered to merchants will also change. Search Engine Advertising will have to take this new syntax into account and move from working with truncated words to handling whole, meaningful sentences.

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