There are several obstacles to building a successful e-commerce store in today’s industry. While there is a large choice of apps and tools accessible, they aren’t sufficient in and of themselves because they are available to every e-commerce company owner, just as everyone has a blog, runs advertisements, and offers discounts. In light of this, how can you ensure that your e-commerce store stands out among the crowd?
One approach to stand out is to improve your customer service experience, and voice commerce is a wonderful method to do that. Here’s a complete guide to this new sales tool that can help you and your company stand out from the crowd.
What is voice commerce, and how does it function?
Voice commerce is also known as “voice shopping,” “voice-assisted commerce,” “voice-assisted shopping,” “conversational commerce,” and “v-commerce.” “A sort of conversational commerce in which a customer interacts with a company and sales are made through voice recognition technology. Although voice assistants have been around for over a decade, Amazon was the first to deploy this technology in 2014.
Customers may place orders using virtual assistants like Google Assistant and Siri, as well as smart speakers like Google Home and Amazon Echo. The latter, which resembles a Bluetooth speaker, is a personal assistant, smart home device, in-house shopping clerk, and speaker all in one. Alexa is the brains behind Amazon Echo. She is a voice-activated virtual assistant with artificial intelligence. “Alexa” will also “wake up” or activate Echo if you say it. “Computer,” “Echo,” and “Amazon” are other trigger words.
The shopping option in Echo is only available to Amazon Prime members. Customers can use Echo to create shopping lists and save them to the Alexa app or Amazon.com. Before processing any order, Alexa will ask the buyer to confirm or cancel it. It places the order using the shipping address and payment method saved in the customer’s Amazon account. Consumers can set up a four-digit voice code that Alexa will ask before completing any purchase for security reasons.
Is it, however, worth the effort and money to engage in Amazon voice shopping?
How to make your products ready for voice shopping ?
One of the difficulties you can experience is persuading Alexa to mention your product because the buyer cannot see it. There is no way for a buyer to evaluate and review a product through an interface. It’s like the old days, when you’re on the phone with a trusted buddy, wondering which shampoo brand is best for dry, frizzy hair. Here are some things you can do to get Alexa to rave about your product:
Become a member of Amazon’s Choice program
Alexa uses Amazon’s Choice program to determine which things to promote to customers, according to the Search Engine Journal. Unfortunately, Amazon hasn’t revealed how they selected Amazon’s Choice products, although they have hinted at their unclear selection process on the Amazon Seller Forums.
“Amazon’s Choice feature makes product recommendations for searches where we believe customers would like assistance in quickly finding a high-quality product. Please keep in mind that we don’t offer Amazon’s Choice for all searches. Amazon’s Choice recommendations are selected by taking a variety of factors into account, including popularity, rating and reviews, availability, and shipping speed, amongst other factors.
There is not currently a means of requesting that your product be selected as Amazon’s Choice for a given search (keyword). Selections are constantly updated, so continuing to offer high quality, well-priced products to your buyers will give you the best chance to be selected as Amazon’s Choice.”
The Amazon Choice programme is not the same as PPC campaigns, where you must be the highest bidder to get your products at the top of the search results. It is preferable to engage an Amazon SEO consultant because they are familiar with and have experience with improving SEO for Amazon products that you want Alexa to promote.
To become Prime-eligible, join Amazon FBA
It works like this: once you join FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon), your products become available through Prime automatically. When you have Prime-eligible products, you’ll be eligible for Amazon’s Choice, which means Alexa will recommend your product to people looking for similar items. Your goods will receive two badges from Amazon: one for Prime and the other for Amazon’s Choice.
Start creating Alexa or Amazon Skills
If you want to use Alexa for voice commerce, you’ll need to create an Alexa skill for your eCommerce site. Alexa is the most popular voice-activated buying experience. A skill is Amazon’s moniker for the apps on its voice assistant Alexa: it’s the services Alexa can use to do things like play audiobooks or switch on lights.
You may give dedicated voice commerce features for your eCommerce business without needing to sell your products through larger retailers by building an Alexa skill.
- Create an Amazon developer account. This gives you access to all of the tools you’ll need to create Alexa skills, just like developer accounts with Google Play and iOS give you access to all of the tools you’ll need to create apps for respective mobile devices.
- Make an account with Amazon Pay. At the moment, Amazon Pay is the only option to get paid for purchases made through your skill. All you’ll need is your business and financial information, as well as some evidence of your identification, to achieve this swiftly and efficiently.
- Choose how you wish to improve your abilities. You can either write and develop your own script or buy off-the-shelf products to assist you in developing a talent. The former is more time-consuming and can take up to six months, but it allows you to have a more hands-on approach to the procedure. The latter is far faster, launching in a matter of minutes, but it is reliant on pre-built frameworks and third-party companies.
- You can submit your skill to the skill shop whenever you’re satisfied with your design and your accounts are in order. The next step is to wait for Amazon to confirm your order. After a few weeks, you should receive feedback with any design modifications you may need to make, after which you can resubmit. You may expedite the process by ensuring that your skill meets Amazon’s certification requirements.
There are a few things to keep in mind while you develop your skill:
Make sure your skill responds as soon as possible after the trigger word, which in this example is “Alexa.”
Make sure the user understands what they can and can’t accomplish with your skill by being specific.
Be unique – Stand out from the rest of Alexa’s design, particularly in terms of sounds, to let customers know they’ve entered your skill.
Use the same user interface at all levels of the client contact.
Be succinct – Don’t drag out interactions; keep them brief and to-the-point. If a gap exists, your expertise can fill it by prompting or recommending activities.
Here’s where an Amazon SEO expert may help:
- Sign up for an Amazon Alexa developer account.
- Create an Amazon Pay account, which is the only method to get paid.
- Either develop Alexa skills yourself or buy them off the shelf.
Make use of SEO services. Voice shopping must be implemented by Amazon sellers.
Here are the metrics you need to improve to make your items voice commerce pleasant, based on the Amazon representative’s statement:
- reviews and ratings of high quality
- popularity
- popularity
- price
- shipping
- speed
- availability
As a result, services including account auditing, product listing optimization, review strategy, keyword research, price optimization, PPC management, and FBA management should be used.
Is voice commerce something you’d be interested in?
The short answer is that it depends on your company’s objectives. Voice-activated shopping has the potential to add value to your consumer offerings while also putting your brand ahead of the competition. As a result, if you can ensure that your clients’ data is secure, voice commerce can help you retain consumers and increase repeat orders.
However, there is little indication that people are actively looking for voice search in their purchasing experience, so if you want to attract new customers, this isn’t the way to go. This is a deal-breaker for most businesses: why spend money on something that won’t bring in new customers?
For some businesses, however, brand building and increasing consumer value are top priorities. If that is you, voice commerce could be an excellent method to demonstrate to your clients that you are committed to eCommerce innovation.
Voice commerce’s Advantages and challenges
Ease and Speed
The most significant benefit of voice commerce is that it reduces the time it takes for customers to decide to buy something and complete their purchase. That’s why depending solely on voice search, as described above, is so counterproductive: traditional methods of purchasing products are still faster. While this is true for many aspects of internet purchase, there are particular instances when voice commerce outperforms traditional eCommerce.
Repeat orders
Repeat ordering is the most popular and efficient approach to deploy voice commerce. Customers don’t require visual confirmation of their purchase in this situation because they already know what they want to buy – it could be something they buy every month or even every week. Allowing clients to order this item using voice commands reduces the amount of time they spend logging into an app, scrolling through your catalogue, and checking out.
Another benefit of repeat ordering is that a consumer may not recall the specific name or type of product they ordered the last time, but they remember having a good experience with it. They don’t have to remember all of the product information when they order again, thus they’re more inclined to do so.
Perishables such as groceries and other food goods, as well as other consumable products such as hygiene, cosmetics, and medical supplies, are the most often ordered commodities. Customers can also set up reorder reminders for frequently used products, which can be voiced through Alexa or similar assistants.
Despite the advantages of speech commerce, there are several issues associated with voice purchasing in terms of interaction and client data protection.
“While voice shopping is a far more efficient way of repeat ordering things, this efficiency is somewhat dependent on the collaboration of financial organizations beyond the store,” says Terri Hatchett, a voice search expert at Marketing Assignment. For security reasons, only a few banks and credit card firms allow purchase confirmation via voice.” One of the few companies that has gotten around this stumbling block is Amazon, which offers an Amazon Pay function that permits speech confirmation for payments.
There have been some data breaches related with voice commerce purchases, so these wary banks and credit card companies may have a point. This is one of the reasons why some customers are hesitant to shop online using voice commands. However, requiring two-factor authentication or PIN cards to validate purchases can help to mitigate security concerns.
Concerns about privacy and security
According to a survey conducted by the Capgemini Institute in September 2019, 52 percent of respondents were concerned that voice assistants will listen in on private conversations.
Barriers to communication
According to a BBC poll, 68 percent of people are annoyed when voice assistants don’t comprehend their commands due to differing accents and dialects. As a result, there is friction between the technology and the customer.
Gap in knowledge
Because voice shopping is still in its early stages, many individuals are unfamiliar with voice assistants and their possibilities. People are still unaccustomed to it and the dangers it entails
Conclusion
Due to the constraints listed above, voice commerce will be a long way from providing a seamless client experience. However, in the next years, it has the potential to be a game-changer. It wouldn’t hurt your business if you used SEO services to at least build the groundwork. Voice commerce-ready products must be developed by Amazon sellers. Amazon is always changing its products and services, and you should do the same. To cater to your clients’ demands and provide the finest customer experience, you need keep ahead of the game.
