Many trends are emerging thanks to the evolution of technology, and e-commerce is no exception. With the advent of voice assistants, the daily life of millions of people is helped by remarkable “skills” and other tools to make their daily tasks more fluid.
What if shopping became instantaneous thanks to the power of the voice? Shopping online may soon no longer require a visual aid and will only rely on the voice of artificial intelligence.
The world of tomorrow is on the way: let’s discover together the voice commerce trend and the future prospects of this new way of understanding e-commerce.
What is voice commerce and what are its challenges?
Definition of Voice Commerce
Voice commerce or voice-commerce are the English terms defining voice commerce. This practice was born with the new technologies that have allowed the development of voice commands, notably through dedicated applications.
Voice commerce implies using your voice for a commercial transaction, in order to buy or sell a good or a service with the help of a connected device using this technology, a smartphone or a voice assistant for example.
Voice commerce is therefore an additional sales lever in the e-commerce environment: conversational commerce is now part of the consumer’s buying journey, a practice that is starting to become part of the marketing strategy of the major players in commerce. Inspiring marketing ideas for your e-commerce!
Voice Commerce: some figures for 2021
Did you know that more than 20% of search engine searches are already done by voice? This future trend was already talked about in 2012, when Siri and other voice assistants were installed on the first smartphone technologies. These services were already seen as the possible future of a form of online commerce.
According to the OC&C study, voice commerce is expected to be worth more than $40 million in 2022 in the U.S. and U.K. For now, the sectors affected by voice-commerce are fairly specific and are mostly related to consumers’ shopping lists: 20% of purchases are related to food, 19% to entertainment, 17% to electronics and 8% to apparel. But the numbers should evolve as quickly as the evolution of voice services, which are currently booming.
Voice ordering technology in France
In 2017, according to the Havas Paris and Paris Retail Week study, 57% of French internet users relied on voice assistants to help them in their online ordering tunnel. In 2018, 61% of French people would have liked to receive a voice assistant for Christmas.
Today, more than 77% of French consumers own voice assistants, either on speakers or smartphones. According to figures from the Steerfox website, 72% of mobile users use the voice experience on a daily basis and 52% of them use it to search for a product. This market is gradually arriving in France and is attracting more and more Internet users: voice commerce is now the 4th most popular sales channel in France. This market is also booming in France.
The different formats of voice commerce
Voice commerce is the technology that allows users to make purchases using only their voice. However, the practice of conversational commerce is just as nuanced as in traditional e-commerce: on a sales site, there are many tabs, categories, and types of content to lead the Internet user to a purchase. In voice commerce, the challenge is to be able to answer all the questions of the Internet user in order to lead him to the purchase of a product or a service.
Knowing that the majority of consumers use voice assistants to search for quick information, directions, products or services, or even data and comparisons, how can we transform these habits into purchasing tunnels?
Voice services are now a part of everyday life through voice assistants in the home, smartphones or even cars. Moreover, with the updates planned by the search engines and other technologies, the search will be more and more precise and personalized. A future that has already invested the biggest in the field.
Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. the voice assistant race
For the moment, it is the global giants that are leading the way in voice search and therefore voice commerce. Pioneers in this field, it is notably with Apple that we started using Siri, or with Amazon that we met Alexa.
Amazon, Apple, Samsung, Google: all the big names got into the voice assistant race around 2016. Depending on the brand chosen, the linked shopping partner will guide the customer’s search.
For example, with Amazon’s Alexa, studies show that when a user searches for a particular product through conversational commerce, the first recommendation given by the assistant will be from Amazon best sellers. Also, when searching for information about a product, Alexa suggests adding that product to your cart.
Depending on the companies’ partnerships, the products offered will be influenced: if you decide to create your shopping list on the Google assistant, it will be linked to Monoprix, for example.
More progress is to be expected in the coming months to diversify the responses of voice commerce players. Or, conversely, imagine even more precise and exclusive results?
E-commerce becomes voice: The challenges of tomorrow
Voice marketing: the creative potential of voice marketing
Voice commerce also means voice marketing: voice has become a transactional weapon, a new technological tool. Audio marketing was of course established, with its various channels such as listening platforms, announcements in public places or on the radio, etc.
Today, with the evolution of uses and devices (connected speakers, smartphones, smart TVs, voice-activated remote controls, smart watches, etc.), voice is evolving: it is no longer a one-way street (from the advertiser to the buyer, as in traditional advertising for example) but an exchange, between the merchant and the buyer.
The good news of this evolution is that studies show that consumers appreciate advertising on an audible medium with a voice experience, rather than on social networks, TV or web display, which is too intrusive.
What voice marketing implies, as well as voice commerce, is to succeed in entering the daily life of consumers by responding to the uses they make of their voice assistants.
