The booming tech industry has largely thrived over the past few years and has provided a lot of innovations to the world to make their lives easier and better. The aim of these innovations is to make daily activities easier to perform and even more fun to do.

One of these innovations is the Voice Search feature, which is dominating the internet nowadays. From laptops to smartphones to even voice enables speakers, one can search on these devices with their voice. People start their internet searches using phrases such as “Hey Siri” or “OK Google” using the two of the most used voice search engines. They can be used to turn on lights, check the weather, make a call, and many other purposes.

In this article, we will discuss the effect of voice search in the e-commerce industry and the voice search trends in 2022.

What is Voice Search in eCommerce?

Voice Search is the digital technology that allows using a “speech” or a “voice” to give commands or to perform searches on the internet through digital devices like tablets and smartphones. Using this voice command feature, one can speak/ask the requirements to the device rather than typing, and the compatible devices will act accordingly like to follow their command or respond to the user’s question.

The feature of Voice search is getting one of the favourite modes of communication among people since it is time-saving and reduces exertion as they don’t have to look for keys or type.

Let’s explore how helpful voice search is in your eCommerce store, how it works for eCommerce, and how to optimize your website to take advantage of it.

How Does Voice Search Works for Ecommerce?

Source:- netsolutions

If you use voice search in e-commerce, that means you are enabling your customers to search for products by solely using their voices within your online store, without any manual keyboard input. Mistakes may happen while manual search by typing because someone spells the name of a product or brand incorrectly in their search terms. In such cases, auto-suggestion feature works that identify the mistake and suggest what the customer is looking for.

The voice search feature can also do this, as it recognizes and merges the linguistics and computing fields to allow people to search for products without typing. It also suggests if the customer may have mispronounced because Voice Search AI identifies the words and phrases a customer uses as well as the phonemes that help distinguish one word from another. A customer can easily initiate a voice search feature by simply clicking on the microphone icon on the device they are using.

For decades, scientists have dreamed of Speech recognition technology in machines that allow these devices to chatter like humans. This technology was developed by scientists several years ago, and now it exists in most of the search mobile devices and PCs.

• Users can command the voice search device they use with key phrases such as Hey Siri, Alexa, or OK Google followed by their questions.
• Later, the spoken words will be processed and transcribed into text by the digital voice assistant of these devices.
• The text is then analysed to determine the user’s needs by detecting the commands/questions.
• To provide the relevant information for the user’s command or question, the device can connect to external data sources such as the search engine.
• To fulfil the user’s intent, the program then translates the data into an easily digestible format.

What are the Two Drivers of Voice-based E-commerce?

Undoubtedly, Amazon and Google are the two main drivers of voice-based eCommerce. The use of voice search and voice shopping exploded after the release of Alexa - the first Amazon Echo and the voice of the product. However, Google Voice Search is also a whole new level of experience for people. Today, along with Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s assistant, Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana are also the key voice assistants in the voice shopping industry.

Voice Search Statistics and Trends in 2022

Let’s go through some voice search statistics and a list of voice search trends.

Voice Search Statistics 2022:

• 71% of consumers prefer to conduct queries by voice instead of typing
• According to researchers, three-quarters of all US households will have at least one smart speaker in 2022.
• More than half of all owners of smart speakers were using their devices daily and taking advantage of voice tech.

Source: Findstack

Voice Search Trends 2022:

Voice Push Notifications: Voice notifications are helpful in attracting more customers and allow to engage users more with their smart devices. They are great at keeping the audience updated in real-time about promotions, reminders, and information.

Voice Search for Local Search Will Increase: Voice Search for local results is increasing day by day. Consumers are using more voice technology to search for local locations, restaurants, or establishments.

Smart Speakers: There will be further growth in the near future of using smart speakers as they are helpful in boosting a voice search feature. Currently, the most common use of a smart speaker involves general online search, weather forecast, and playing music. Researchers predict that in the near future predict smart speakers can be used for more activities like booking flights, hotels, and local searches.

Why Voice Search is Important in eCommerce?

Here are some of the benefits listed of using voice search in e-commerce:

• Voice Search feature is Easy to Use and offers a seamless user experience.
• Increased Conversions & Sales Uplifts.
• Easy to navigate as it is voice-based, so customers can easily find what they want.
• Help in offering Personalized Shopping Experience to customers.
• Easy to collect reviews for businesses using voice search.
• This feature is Time-Efficient because one can speak more words compared to typing those long phrases, and consumers will also get their answers quickly.

Challenges to Implementing Voice Search in E-commerce

Here are a few of the challenges faced in implementing voice search in e-commerce:

⦁ Unclear Voice: Lack of context is one of the main issues with voice search. If the customer will not be able to convey his command or question properly while speaking into a device, then it makes it hard for voice search to use its full potential and recognize the correct speech. As a result, it will not get the right product to the right customer, in the right order, at the right time.

⦁ Customers Search Behaviour: Customers will take time to adapt this voice search feature, but it will be better for them in the long run because they will be able to search the relevant information faster. So the main focus of any business needs to get the maximum exposure for their products and brand by improving strategies they use for content marketing to appeal to users who are using voice search features.

⦁ Adding New Features: Adding Voice search features and other ecommerce website features connected to it is a bit challenging because this feature is different from traditional typing. It may cause problems or confusion with voice search output if they failed to add relevant information when they use their app or website.

⦁ Concerns on Addressing Privacy: People have raised concerns over privacy while using voice search, so it will be a challenge for businesses to address their concerns regarding the use of personal or voice data. If they address these privacy concerns in the right way, then it helps in getting maximum audience attention and awareness.

⦁ Adhering to Top Guidelines: Voice search results are very less compared to text search, so businesses have to work continuously on their content marketing strategies to improve their search engine ranking, and voice search experience.

How do you Optimize your eCommerce Store for Voice Search?

One of the great ways to maximize the benefits is optimizing your eCommerce store for voice search. Below are some tips to create powerful solutions and help you grow your eCommerce business.

1. SEO Strategy to Re-orient Your Business

SEO strategy is a must to become a Google zero hero, which means to be number one on Google. Even if your website doesn’t have a blog or not even going to write any, SEO is still essential for your website. It will help to rank on top on search engines to get customers to land on your doors and ultimately bring you more business.

Voice SEO makes your business more searchable with a higher search ranking which directly helps in increasing brand visibility online and to achieve that, optimizing SEO strategy is amongst the best you can serve your website with.

We don’t speak search the way we type to search. And to compete in a voice-activated eCommerce world, you have to understand the difference between these two. Voice Search queries are longer and more conversational than usual text search queries. And as the user is “talking” to the search engine rather than writing down the requirement, they can use the long-tail keywords here.

SOURCE: AdShark

2. Prioritize Right Keywords

One of the key tips to optimize the voice search is that you should use the right keywords for search, which are specifically designed for voice search. Below, we have listed a few tactics to generate keywords for voice search optimization.

Question Keywords: Most of the Voice searches tend to be in the form of questions rather than phrases. So if you’re looking for any Shoe Store in your area, instead of saying “Shoe Store in this city” you might say “OK Google, where is the nearest shoe store?” You should be paying attention to these question keywords as they are considered trigger keywords. Try to incorporate these keywords in your content while optimizing your website so that they can answer the customer’s question instead of just considering the phrase or keyword.

Long-Tail Keyword: It is easier to rank long-tail keywords because they are less competitive and are more specific keyword phrases compare to commonly used keywords. While using the voice search feature, people will use longer phrases and specific keywords than they would while typing. So, using a long-tail keyword will increase the chances of your website to be showing in the top list in search results. Because main keywords are general terms that are targeted by a lot of websites as they post content around those words. While long-tail keywords are more specific and usually fewer websites post content around those phrases or keywords.

Natural and Conversational: Conversation and Natural content is a kind of everyday language people use to communicate with each other. So if you make sure that you use natural and conversational content on your website, your business will be more visible.

3. Reduce Loading Time to Speed Up Your Page

Optimizing your eCommerce website is all about speed because page loading speed is considered one of the most important ranking factors by every smart SEO. Faster loading website not only improves user experience but also helps in increasing user engagement. Google tends to respond quickly to voice searches. Google may ignore your website if it takes too long to load.

A few tips to speed up your site are to use caching, choose a fast web hosting service, remove all broken links, and reduce the image size on your webpage.

4. Responsive eCommerce Website

The use of mobile phones will continue to rise and because of their convenience, users are more likely to use mobile phones than PCs or laptops. And because of this shift in consumer behaviour, responsive websites are becoming more important than ever. If we talk about statistics, then 72.6% of consumers prefer to use the internet on their mobile devices and only 20% of companies have responsive websites.

Developing a responsive website will improve local search ranking, allow users to have a pleasant experience, increase mobile SEO performance, save money and time.

5. Structure your Content with a Detailed FAQ Page

Although it may sound weird that an FAQ page should be enlisted in optimizing the eCommerce store for voice search, the truth is that the FAQ page is one of those things on which many people rely to clarify any doubts they may have during their online shopping. FAQ pages will save you time if you have all the requirements in them. It is also one of the best ways to eliminate any concerns and reduce potential doubts of customers before purchasing. Moreover, it increases the brand’s online visibility on search engines.

Wrap Up

Voice search will become more popular and will be the next big thing in the near future. It improves the shopping experience of your customers and makes it easier for eCommerce stores to sell products and services.

The voice search feature in eCommerce is a big deal that would change the way of doing business by participants in the SEO specialists and in the e-commerce industry. And looking at the facts and statistics, people are expected to use this feature on their compatible devices means that brands have to plan to adopt these modern approaches for a competitive advantage.

If in case you have any queries regarding Voice Search and its effect on eCommerce, we are here to help you redefine the customer’s shopping experience of your store. You should also not miss opportunities to rank higher by getting voice search optimization help for your eCommerce store.