With the day to day advancements in technology, online shopping has become way too convenient. Voice search has come up as the next big thing in the industry.
With the popularity of voice software like Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon Echo and Alexa, and Cortona, voice search has set a trend. People have adapted to voice search and become familiar with it. Brands have also taken up this opportunity to provide an effortless shopping experience to consumers.
Voice Search Stats
Comscore reports that by 2020, nearly 50% of the searches will be voice-based searches.
Google also stated that 2 out of every 10 searches are made through voice, and the number is expected to grow in the coming years.
Reports have also suggested that voice-shopping is estimated to make $40 Billion by 2022.
Impact of Voice Search in eCommerce
Voice search has encouraged quick search functionality, and this is why people are using voice commands very often to search on desktops, mobiles, and tablets. They just speak and the voice assistant helps them with their search query.
Isn’t it amazing? You do not need to open the website or the app, type the product name and then search. You can simply let the assistant know what you are looking for and it will present you with the desired search results.
Many eCommerce websites have enabled voice search option in their search bar as well, hence allowing shoppers to search for products or categories in the website by giving a voice command.
If you also want to add voice search option on your website, you can take a look at our Voice Search module that places a microphone in your search box, giving people the option to perform a voice-based search. The module is currently available for PrestaShop and will soon be available for Magento as well.
How to optimize your eCommerce website for Voice Search?
To make sure that your website’s search engine delivers relevant results on voice searches and consumers’ shopping experience is not hampered, consider the following key points.
1. Long-tail keywords
Voice search should not be optimized just for small keywords; it needs to consider the long-tail keywords as well.
Voice search is different than type search. When people use voice commands, they generally tend to use long-tail keywords to get accurate results. So, do keep this in mind to make it effective. But for that, it is important to understand consumer’s habits towards the way they search.
2. Questions
The most common use of voice search is for asking questions. People start their search query with why, what, where, which when using voice commands, which is not so common when they type it.
For example, if a user wants to search for smartphones under $200, he will simply search by typing “smartphones under $200,” whereas for the same search using voice commands, the user will ask- “Which are the best smartphones under $200?”
You see the difference in approach? It is there suggested to optimize your site for questions. These sorts of voice search queries have skyrocketed in recent times.
3. Natural Language
Your eCommerce website should be optimized to understand and process simple and plain English used by people. Add some common terms, product titles in natural language that people use during voice search so that the search engine can easily understand what the user meant.
4. Local Search
Voice searches are mostly made to find out nearby things, like best heart hospitals near me, best restaurants near me, best AC shops near me, etc. which we can also refer to as local searches.
Make sure that your business is listed on Google and optimized for voice search so that it can be displayed locally in the search results whenever a related search is made.
Final Thoughts
Voice search is the future of eCommerce. People are finding it more comforting to interact with search engines using their voice and not by typing. Artificial Intelligence has been so advanced that in the upcoming years, voice search’s accuracy level will be very high and it will dominate heavily over any other. It is completely going to change the way online shopping is done.
Apart from voice search, you should focus on image search as well. Add an image search option on your website so that if people do not the name of the product and want a similar item, they can find the related results, if any, by uploading the image.
This can be made possible through our Image search module which is available for PrestaShop and OpenCart. So if you are looking to add the image search functionality as well on your website, you can consider taking the help of this module.
For any assistance regarding the module, you can reach out to us at support@knowband.com