Buy online using his voice.

It may seem insane; and yet, with the development of connected speakers, voice shopping is starting to emerge.

This is the subject of a study by HubSpot that takes stock of the use of smart speakers and provides new insights into the future of voice buying.

Buying online using a connected speaker

To the question “Have you ever used a connected speaker to make a purchase?”, 30% of respondents answer Yes .

49, 4% of respondents indicate no, while the remaining 20.5% do not have a connected speaker.

The survey shows a slight difference between the United States and the United Kingdom, where the number of respondents is higher in the number of “no”.

If these figures seem to show that voice shopping is still not widespread, they could also simply reflect a still weak adoption of connected speakers.

The use of connected speakers

The following graph shows the share of different uses that respondents make of connected speakers:

It shows that more than half (51, 1%) do not use a smart speaker, which is in line with the hypothesis made above: the adoption rate of these devices is still quite low.

But, on the side of people who actually use connected speakers, we find the following uses:

• Check the weather (12, 3%);
• Shopping (10, 4%);
• Ask questions through voice search (8, 9%);
• Listen to podcasts (6, 9%);
• Follow the news (5, 4%).

Once again, the usages are roughly the same in the United States and the United Kingdom, except that 60% of respondents do not use a smart speaker on our British neighbors’ side at all (44% to USA).

What can we conclude?

If the connected speakers are still relatively little used to make purchases, there are two things to note:

• A majority of people do not (yet) use this type of device;
• Shopping is, casually, the second most common use of smart speakers (behind the weather).

A separate study cited by HubSpot also brings a key understanding interesting:

This graphic tells us that adding an article to a shopping list is one of the most common uses of connected speakers – which does not necessarily mean making a purchase , let’s hear.

More interesting: this use is less popular with the “First Adopters” (the first to have acquired smart speakers, as soon as they appear) than by the “Early Mainstream” (that is to say the buyers a little later ).

This suggests that the more connected speakers are adopted by “late buyers”, the more they will be used to buy online (or for purchase-related tasks).

But this is of course only supposition, and we can not say that voice shopping will be the great e-commerce trend of tomorrow.

However, with the growing adoption of these new devices, this phenomenon will need to be closely monitored in the coming years.

In the time of Google Home and Amazon Echo, the voice is it a new channel of serious purchase and then how to integrate it?

The pace of innovation of technology giants has allowed voice-activated virtual assistants, such as Google Home and Amazon Echo, to enter our homes almost overnight.

This technology is rapidly changing our buying habits – in some cases, by completely eliminating the search process associated with the purchase of a product. Amazon Alexa can now recommend its ” choice ” product to consumers and thus greatly simplify the purchase journey.

However, to date, very few brands and brands have developed their own features to take advantage of the growth of voice-controlled purchases.

If they do not consider the voice as a new, serious buying channel, alongside the Web, mobile technology and in-store, catalog and other purchases, they will miss out on huge revenue opportunities.

But what does voice-activated purchasing mean for sellers, who have historically invested huge sums to encourage consumers to pick up their products on the shelves?

What impact will this innovation have on the customer experience? And how can vendors fully integrate the voice with their other systems to ensure that it benefits their customers while boosting the growth of their brand?

The voice, a real challenge for the retailers

A voice query is a direct window to the consumer’s desires right now, as well as their opinions about a topic, service, or product. It also offers the convenience of being able to perform a search without interrupting its activities; users can make a query instead of typing it on a keyboard.

Like research, developments in voice technology are enabling marketers to develop more customer-focused engagement strategies through contextual data in real time.

However, this innovation creates several challenges for sellers.

The imperative need to appear at the top of the list

First, the voice search in e-commerce eliminates brands and almost completely strips marketing: the most frequently searched brands will be at the top of search engine results.

Therefore, marketing teams must ensure that when a user asks Alexa to add butter to their cart, their product will appear at the top of the list and will be purchased by the customer.

This involves making sure that customers know exactly which product to ask for, and that is an essential task for marketing.

And to integrate the voice with the other central systems

Secondly, voice requests will only provide useful personalized results, in the context and at the right time, if they are integrated with other data and knowledge from their entire profile.

This data must include location, browsing history, shopping habits, recent purchases, and brand affiliations.

It is therefore essential that sellers make sure to integrate voice with their existing systems, such as CRM and ERP platforms and logistics systems.

And above all to use the voice correctly

Last but not least, sellers need to think of a way to engage the customer in a two-way dialogue, to ensure that they can use voice search to get the most out of cross-selling or upscale opportunities.

This does not mean using the connected speaker to physically talk to customers. Instead, sellers need to think of ways to interest them in products different from those they normally buy, to ensure that they offer added value.

For example, if a voice-activated virtual assistant is connected to a coffee machine, the coffee brand supplying the coffee pods will know, thanks to the customer’s previous order history, which coffee flavors he likes; she may then send her a notification concerning a special offer when the machine begins to run out of coffee.

However, you can also use these notifications to inform customers about promotions and new products.

Signs and brands need to think about the best channel on which to post these notifications, to make sure they do not infringe on the privacy of their customers. The ability to record voice commands, but also to promote the same commitment later, by e-mail or through an application, is vital.

A “confidential” technology?

With the growth of connected speakers and voice search, brands and brands can not afford to ignore this channel of marketing and sales.

However, this technology will only succeed if it is integrated with existing data and systems, as well as promoting voice features, to ensure that customers order ” the right items ” and, in return, that the corresponding products are presented to them.

Although this technology may seem ” confidential ” at the moment, so was the Internet in its first steps; look at the turn of events for sellers who have chosen to ignore changing times …

In order to start this article on a good basis, and to be able to give credibility to the subject from the outset, will we find some statistics on the use of voice search over the last 2 years?

Ready? Let’s go!

40% of adults completed a minimum voice search on the internet in 2016, 25% of 16-24 year olds frequently use voice search on their mobiles, and 41% of people using voice search started less than 6 months ago. Comscore predicts that 50% of Internet searches in 2020 will be done by voice, and there are an estimated 21.4 million speakers connected to the US in 2020, with a global market that will exceed $ 17 billion. in less than 4 years.

And for good reason ! 2 simple factors that you have probably already identified, are responsible for this new trend: internet browsing is happening more and more on mobile, and voice assistants / connected speakers are booming! In France, since July 2017 mobile internet traffic has exceeded the internet desktop traffic. At the same time the arrival of the connected speakers (which we will shorten by the Anglo-Saxon term smartspeaker for the rest of the article) upset the way to consume; first in the United States, and recently in Europe. No longer does a race list dictate to her smartspeaker. We do not read the news anymore in the morning, we ask them for their smartspeaker. No longer in his diary, we give his appointments to his smartspeaker. We do not … well, you understand the concept no need to give more. Even if the trend is still shy in France, the use of smartspeaker in the Anglo-Saxon countries (and particularly in the United States) has already been unanimous.

The voice search is not new, absolutely anyone can use it thanks to the great little gadget stuck in the back of your pocket, or placed on your desktop, which is called smartphone. Since the democratization of smartphones, voice SEO has become a real issue, with Cortana, Siri, Google Voice Search: thanks to the fact that internet traffic has become increasingly mobile, this way of browsing has grown rapidly. Added to this is the smartspeakers (Google Home, Alexa, Hompod & Co) and you get any way to browse the internet with the simple sound of your voice.

Soon we will converse with his search engine

Well, let’s not waste time and go straight to the heart of the matter: natural referencing (for the rest of the article we will address only the SEO, not the SEA, so in this context, if I use the term SEO, think only SEO). A brief booster that cannot hurt you: SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, aims to optimize the positioning of your content on different search engines.

The vocal is, therefore, an interesting feature of SEO. SEO experts must consider the voice as a positioning criterion in its own right and not perceive it as a danger that will upset the SEO. Now it’s not just about being visible, it’s about being audible!

A primary utility for local SEO

The first use of vocal SEO is … the local. The uses of voice search remain varied according to the person. But we still note that voice searches are 3 times more likely to be local than any other search, simply because we are looking for fast information with generally enabled geolocation (proximity to a trade, need for information). ‘a route, change of music while walking, call/message).

Reply to sentences

In itself the approach and the reflection remain almost the same: one simply changes the format by passing from a query of keywords to a question.

Voice requests from users will be much more informal but more accurate than written queries. We will use more queries with complete sentences than keywords: “Who is the inventor of the internet? Instead of having “inventor internet”. We must, therefore, try to create informal content and with a conversational tone. Hence the usefulness of accentuating its SEO strategy around 3 major points:

• Use the Long Tail
• Have rich content
• Use of semantic markup

But there is also a new point not to neglect! Since mid-2016, the PAA has arrived in France. The People Also Ask now complete the Featured Snippets on Google for French queries. The PAA principle for voice search is more than useful, it gives the user the sensation of conversing with someone else and reinforces the principle of voice searches.

What can we think?

There is no doubt that, given current trends, voice search is one of the standards in SEO and ignoring it would be a mistake. However, it is still too early to start proclaiming loudly that voice research is the future and will surpass other research formats. Imagine the usefulness it could represent for people with reduced mobility / elderly or just the future for connected objects. One thing is certain: its development is at its beginnings and has great potential.