How Does Voice Commerce Help Brands Grow?
AI has changed how we shop online. From chatbots to product recommendations, brands have many AI-based tools to grow their business. Voice-enabled technology is one such tool. Voice recognition is not new. However, with the rise of smartphones and IoT devices, it gained practical use for commerce.
Today, voice commerce involves most of the components of traditional e-commerce. This includes performing product research, comparing prices, selecting items to purchase, and placing an order. Instead of text inputs and clicks, customers give a voice command. The device then processes the command. With voice commerce, you don’t need a graphical interface or the ability to scroll. The most commonly used voice-powered devices are Google Home or Amazon Echo.
Voice experiences can be more engaging and less time-consuming. This is leading to more consumers trying voice-enabled technology for commerce. People between the ages of 25 and 49 are the most active voice searchers. 65% of this age group uses a voice-enabled device at least once a day.
Brands see the potential of voice and are planning accordingly. A study from Adobe reveals that 91% of brands are making large investments in voice. Of these brands, 66% strongly agree that voice can increase revenue. In this post, we’ll examine how brands can use voice technology to grow their e-commerce sales.
Voice Commerce Speeds Up Shopping
Voice commerce allows brands to remove friction from the buying experience. Instead of scrolling and typing, customers can say what they are looking for. Plus, smart devices store payment details. You can checkout without entering your information.
Re-ordering is a great example of how voice improves the buying experience. When re-ordering something, customers are already familiar with the product. They don’t need the visual aspect to verify it fits their needs. Ordering through voice commands reduces the time it takes to place the order. Repeat orders are most common with consumable products. With some voice-enabled devices, customers can set up reminders to re-order products.
Voice Commerce Improves Product Discovery
Voice commerce opens your brand to a wider audience. Many shoppers use it for product discovery. Research from Narvar shows that 51% of people who shop with voice use it to research products. If customers find your products via voice, you reach them early in the buying process.
Google voice search is the most popular. This benefits e-commerce merchants as it is integrated with Google Shopping. Any listings you have in Google Shopping will be accessible to voice searchers. To reach these shoppers, you’ll need a strong integration between Google Merchant Center and your e-commerce catalog. The best way to do this is through APIs.
Google Shopping APIs ensure that your product feed is in sync with your e-commerce catalog. They map price and other product data and push this information to Google Merchant Center. With Google Shopping APIs, you can create product details unique to your Merchant Center feed. This is important because voice searches aren’t like text searches. To optimize your listings for voice, you may adjust the product details you use for visual experiences.
Getting Started with Voice Commerce
Voice commerce will continue to gain popularity as the technology evolves. AI is making voice more conversational while improving the shopping experience. To take advantage of this, brands can optimize their products for voice search by starting with the product data in their product information manager (PIM).
New opportunities are also opening up to connect smart devices like Amazon Echo to other channels like mobile apps. These opportunities are interesting for brands not selling on Amazon but want to allow buyers to purchase directly from a smart device like Amazon Echo. Having your product data centralized in a PIM will help you take advantage of these opportunities while ensuring all sales channels are connected.
Tech advocate and writer @ fabric.
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