Voice commerce combines two technologies consumers are already familiar with—e-commerce and voice-activated virtual assistants—making it easier than ever for them to purchase items from your online store. Companies that adopt voice commerce early benefit from this ease of purchasing as well as the boost to customer experience (CX) and brand. And because so many consumers already have voice-activated devices in their homes, it’s not hard to get them to make the leap from asking about the weather and news to putting items in their carts.
This video mentions voice commerce as one of the top e-commerce trends for 2023:
In the following sections, we take a closer look at the benefits of voice commerce, review some of the challenges, and offer suggestions for how to get started using it. But first, we explain more about what voice commerce is, how it works, and when to use it.
What Is Voice Commerce?
Voice commerce is the next evolution of e-commerce. When making purchases, shoppers can say goodbye to pointing and clicking and simply use their voice to indicate what they want. To engage in voice commerce, they can use virtual digital assistants (VDAs) they’re already familiar with, such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple’s Siri. Consumers can use voice commands to do things like ask questions, request recommendations, and reorder previously purchased items.
According to The Future of Customer Engagement and Experience, this technology will continue to evolve in the coming years, along with other trends such as omnichannel access, 3D components, sustainability solutions, services and subscriptions, emotional intelligence, personalized digital and physical storefronts, transparent and ethical supply chains, and perfect delivery.
Voice commerce shouldn’t be confused with conversational commerce, allowing retailers to use conversation to sell products and services. The communication may be delivered via chatbot, chat app, messaging platform, or—like voice commerce—VDA. Conversational commerce provides an online stand-in for the personal attention customers might receive at a brick-and-mortar store.
Representatives using conversational commerce can interact with customers in various ways across the customer journey. For example, when a visitor lands on an e-commerce site, a chatbot may pop up offering to answer questions. A customer care contact page might include a chat function to help customers manage returns.
How Voice Commerce Works
Voice commerce consists of several components, including VDAs and the devices that operate them, such as Amazon Echo devices, which use the Alexa VDA. It also requires using retail systems that are activated with voice commerce capabilities and payment options that allow voice commerce purchases.
It operates based on underlying technologies’ automatic speech recognition (ASR), which understands normal human speech, and natural language understanding (NLU), which enables computers to understand user intentions. Consumers can be in the middle of doing chores or relaxing around the house, think of something they need, and simply issue a voice command to make a purchase instead of dropping everything to interact with their computer or phone.
Because VDAs already have a lot of information about their users, they can incorporate it into recommendations, making them useful throughout the shopping experience, not just ordering and checkout. By taking advantage of these improvements over traditional e-commerce, companies that use voice commerce gain a competitive advantage.
Voice Commerce Use Cases
Here are a few specific examples of how companies can and do deploy voice commerce:
- Browsing. Consumers can use voice queries like “Hey Google, what’s the least expensive blender?” or “Siri, what’s the best-reviewed keyboard on Amazon?” The VDA can make product recommendations based on past purchases and browsing history.
- Ordering. The next step is ordering, and customers can do it just as easily as browsing. They can say, “Alexa, place the Microsoft keyboard in my cart,” or “Alexa, reorder cat food.”
- Checkout. Checking out becomes an entirely different experience with voice commerce. The customer’s payment information is already recorded, so after the customer has indicated the products they want to purchase, the VDA might simply confirm the order, and then the products are on their way.
- Tracking. After an order has been placed, the customer can use voice commerce to check on delivery by asking when the order should arrive or where it is now.
- Services. Finally, after products have been delivered, customers can use voice commerce to pursue customer service if needed. A starting command might be, “Siri, I need to return the keyboard I purchased from Microsoft on January 19.” The entire return transaction can be performed with a combination of voice commands and bots.
Some well-known brands have already embraced voice commerce. Given that Amazon is the provider of Echo devices, which use the Alexa VDA, it’s no surprise that the two work in tandem. Customers who own Echo devices can create Amazon shopping lists and purchase products using voice commerce commands. Additionally, Alexa can recommend products based on customers’ past purchases.
Sephora has partnered with Google to enable users to find beauty-related videos on YouTube (which Google owns). Walmart has also partnered with Google to allow customers to add items to their Walmart shopping cart using voice commands and shopping histories. Customers can use Alexa to interact with Johnnie Walker whiskey to buy a bottle, get a whiskey lesson, or get a guided tasting.
Other companies are coming online with voice commerce functionality all the time. According to a recent Forbes Business Development Council post, “As more businesses adopt the technology, there will be a wider array of online stores to shop with the help of voice assistants.”
Benefits of Voice Commerce
One of the biggest benefits of voice commerce is that it creates a way for consumers to interact with you that is easy for them. That is, speaking—which only involves using their voice—is simpler and more accessible than typing, which involves picking up a device and using the keyboard. Here are some additional benefits of voice commerce.
Speed
Users can talk much faster than they can type, scroll, and search, so shopping with voice commerce takes less time than shopping with traditional e-commerce. Additionally, shoppers can take advantage of voice commerce while doing other things, such as preparing dinner or exercising, making even more effective use of their time.
Convenience
Voice commerce is simpler for everyone, but especially for those who might have trouble accessing a computer monitor or keyboard, including those with vision problems. The ability to simply speak requests provides a whole new level of convenience. That means more customers, orders, and revenue for companies that become early adopters of this technology.
Personalization
Because VDAs rely on information they already have in addition to searching and purchasing patterns, they can personalize recommendations to voice commerce users. They can also bring in additional information found from the search functionality. For example, a user who is grocery shopping can indicate what diet plan they follow, and the interface can help guide purchasing decisions.
Improved CX
The more you provide elements like speed, convenience, and personalization, the more favorably customers think of you. Further, voice searches help companies understand what customers want because they are likely to be highly specific. You can analyze search terms to fine-tune and personalize product offerings, recommendations, and messaging.
All of these factors add up to an improved CX, leading to increased loyalty, more frequent purchases, higher spend per purchase, more referrals, and ultimately increased revenue and profit.
Meeting the Needs of More Customers
Consumers may have trouble using a traditional keyboard and monitor setup for a variety of reasons, including poor eyesight, problems with typing and other physical challenges, or simply not being tech-savvy. Voice search allows potential customers who wouldn’t otherwise engage with you to overcome all those hurdles.
Visibility
By being voice-enabled, your company will be among the first to be found via voice searches. According to Voicebot.ai, 95 million U.S. adults have at least one smart speaker, and 50% of device owners use them daily. Those figures represent significant opportunities for businesses willing to take advantage of them.
More Positive Reviews
Many businesses struggle to get positive reviews. Unfortunately, customers often don’t bother to write them unless they are dissatisfied. This is one area that especially benefits from voice functionality. While it might be cumbersome to take the time to craft a written review, customers may be more amenable to simply speaking their thoughts when prompted by a VDA.
Challenges With Voice Commerce
As with any new technology, voice commerce presents certain challenges for e-commerce retailers. However, these challenges, some of which are described below, have solutions and will become less problematic over time as the technology evolves.
Privacy and Safety Concerns
Some consumers are still concerned that VDAs are “always listening” and that the companies that provide them may be selling their information. For these reasons, users may be reluctant to give up more information through their shopping habits. Others are worried that children might be able to make unauthorized purchases. Retailers must take these concerns seriously and consider them when developing their voice commerce practices.
Security Concerns
With good reason, consumers are skittish about any new technology if they don’t know how secure it is. In addition to the fear of having personal data sold, as mentioned above, there is the worry of having it stolen. And there is good reason for it, considering that, unlike websites that require logins and passwords, smart speakers don’t require any form of proof that it’s you doing the ordering, raising the potential for fraud.
Dislike of “Talking to Robots”
In the early days of interactive voice response (IVR), many systems failed to understand requests and responses, making this customer service method frustrating. Many consumers only used the system to reach a human as quickly as possible. But, as technology has evolved, these systems and others that have followed have gotten better at understanding our responses and are less aggravating. However, some people still dislike “talking to robots” and may resist this technology no matter how advanced it gets.
Payment Limitations
According to a recent Itransition blog post, “Some forward-looking platforms like PayPal already have the functionality for making voice-driven transactions, [but] you should remember that many payment systems and banks do not yet support voice commerce.” As with privacy and safety concerns, this issue is not a deal breaker, but it is something to keep in mind as you strategize how to make voice commerce work well for you and your customers.
Technical Difficulties
Like most new technologies, voice commerce doesn’t always work perfectly. VDAs may misunderstand spoken requests or respond to speech that isn’t a request. Unfortunately, as a vendor, you have no control over how these systems operate. The best advice here is to keep up with the changing technology and align your offerings with known glitches. As VDA voice commerce functionality resolves, its builders will likely resolve these issues.
Steps to Take Now
While it’s never a good idea to adopt a new technology just because it’s the latest thing, if you want to experiment with voice commerce, the sooner you do it, the better. That’s because it will give you a chance to be there first, find out what works well and what doesn’t, and have your process perfected right around the time consumers are ready to adopt en masse.
Perform an Assessment
Before taking any further steps, assess whether voice commerce is right for your company and, if so, is now the right time to integrate it? Gather marketing, technology, sales, executives, and all other stakeholders to explore relevant questions, such as those listed here.
- What problems could voice commerce help us solve?
- Would it improve the customer journey? Would our customers use it?
- Are our competitors already offering voice commerce? If so, how is it working for them?
- What would it take from a technological perspective to implement voice commerce? Is it feasible for us?
- What would be the cost? Can we afford it?
- Are our offerings compatible with the voice commerce feature?
Update Your Website
When consumers perform a voice search, your website must be ready to return results quickly.
- Ensure your site is optimized for speed to enable VDAs to reliably access the information requested by users. Your site should take no more than 3 seconds to load.
- Use schema markups to enable search engines to more easily read your website. Doing so provides a competitive advantage and improved keyword rankings.
- Create an FAQ page that lists questions in the format consumers might use when posing them. Include the answers in a format that sounds natural when read aloud.
- Simplify your checkout process to exclude unnecessary pages, questions, or processes, but include plenty of information about payment options.
- Use product categories and tags that include details about each item, including things like size, color, and style in addition to the high-level description such as “shirt.”
Optimize Content for Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are content boxes used by Google to provide the best answers for queries stated in the form of a question. If you’re answering a user’s question to their satisfaction, it’s likely they will explore your offerings. To increase the likelihood that your content appears as a featured snippet, look for opportunities in your content to pose information as a question and then answer it.
For example, if you’re an outdoor gear retailer, you might write a blog post with a section titled, What Are the Most Important Camping Supplies? Then answer the question as directly, succinctly, and helpfully as possible. Provide links in the section to areas of your site you want to direct shoppers to, such as “sleeping bags,” “propane stoves,” and “camp chairs.”
Revisit Your SEO
If you’re being found in search engines when shoppers perform typed queries, that’s great. But don’t assume this success translates directly to voiced queries. That’s because queries asking for the same information may be expressed differently in writing versus speaking. For example, a user might type, “Breakfast restaurants near me open now,” whereas they might speak, “Where can I get breakfast nearby?” Perform SEO analysis to find the right long-tail keywords to use for your SEO.
The Next Big Step Toward E-commerce Success
E-commerce has come a long way since the early days. There have been many improvements in site speed, product display, checkout and financing options, customer care automation, and much more. You can consider voice commerce the next step in this evolution, providing even more convenience to your customers and prospects.
For that reason, the time to act is now. At the very least, consider what voice commerce could do for your e-commerce site, and make a plan to revisit the technology every few months until you feel ready to act. Or, if you’re ready to make a big move, take your first steps toward making voice commerce part of your e-commerce success.
