Is Voice Search On The Cusp Of Revitalizing E-Commerce Business?

*Year 2000*

Shopping was the term-limited to street shops with few products left for choice. For anything and everything you want to buy, you had to invest a few hours roaming around, till the time you found something you like. Later, Catalog commerce came into existence, where you have to wait for 4-6 weeks to get the product you like.

*Year 2018*

Today, technology has added the fresh lease of comfort into our life. If we consider the way we buy products today, we realize that we are living in the dawn of a new era known as eCommerce. eCommerce has made it possible to buy clothes, grocery and more from anyone at any time in the world.

The seed sown by technology is quickly adopted by retail with its fruits like chatbots, digital voice assistants Siri, Alexa, Google Now and more. The history continues with the inception of native language recognition in AI which is empowering a new era of voice commerce. The emerging technology “voice commerce” empowers people to order products with voice commands. Voice ordering gives a complete amiable shopping experience, as they don’t have to walk-around through multiple web-pages to click around, no boring forms to fill out, just your word and your products will be ordered.

When asked to our Certified Magento Developers about how voice search will impact retail industry, he conveyed

“Consumers are accustomed to instant gratification, and with the advent of voice search, frictionless shopping experience will take the center stage. Moreover, it’s the time when they have found their voice to be shared through opinions, social posts, or a feedback form of the company. As voicing their minds is in vogue, companies should listen to the trend of voice-search”

The Retailers That Don’t Embrace The Change, Risk Falling Beyond The Competition

• Retail Is Always Driven By Factor ‘Convenience’

The history and future of retail will always be about CONVENIENCE. The story of Voice commerce emergence is even about adding an edge of convenience to customers. Talking is an endeavor which needs no learning/training, every one of us does it every day.

“An average person can type only 37 to 44 words in a minute, while can speak 150 words in a minute”

Voice commands are adopted more by mobile phone users. 43% of users prefer using voice search, while around 21% of mobile users don’t like typing on their smartphone.

Moreover, the mobile commerce us reaching new heights. The mobile commerce was predicted to cross $549 billion and have estimated to rise to $669 in 2018. The rapidly growing mobile commerce industry will be directly supporting the growth of voice commerce.

• Voice Commerce Devices Becoming A Norm

Today, just with the arrival of voice commerce devices, 13% of American homes have already adopted smart speakers for their day-to-day activities. The early prediction says, by 2022, 55% of homes will be having a smart speaker.

Other than this, Amazon recently acclaimed that during the holiday season in 2017, Alexa-enabled voice commerce gadgets were one of the best-selling products.

As the time proceeds and voice recognition software becomes mainstream, more customers, innovators, and early adopters will pave the way. On the other side, few more stats indicate that voice commerce devices are already gaining much traction among different industrialists and early adopters. Which means, that voice commerce has jumped the chasm.

• NLP Makes Voice Commerce Possible

NLP i.e. Natural Language Processing is generally interpreted as the research done for the interaction between computers and natural human languages. The researchers are going an extra mile to understand how computers can interpret, understand and act upon human language. This research helped voice commerce to hold a vital place.

Computers easily understand structured data like math equations, but processing unstructured data is difficult. After investing years, making the computer to recognize speech the researchers were able to invent voice speakers. Artificial intelligence plays a major role in the development of voice commerce. The software solutions need to understand and identify what customers are asking and should be designed accordingly.

• For Now, Voice Commerce Is Only A Talk For Large Companies

Voice Commerce is currently prevailing for companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. You would already know that Amazon is integrated with Alexa to enable customers to order many of its products through voice command, making the shopping experience easy. Along with this, Google has been partnering with retailers like Target to introduce a flexible shopping experience with voice commerce.

As voice commerce is just brought to life, the technology solutions are very limited. While the other side of coin even says market trends and large investments pouring in tech startups, it is assumed that voice commerce solutions will become more prevailing in future.

As of now, they are just limited to top companies in commercial space, but in the future, they would be a required tech edge for retailers.

Wrap Up

It’s said, a step ahead for technology is a big stride for business advantage. Similarly, for retailers who adopt Voice Commerce, it is a definite advantage while for others who fail to adopt internet it is a threat. Amazon is a dominated marketplace for B2B and B2C customers, as it supplements technology a new comfort for shoppers.

We would certainly commend that, “Voice commerce is the new future for eCommerce apps”.

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