It might surprise you to learn that Siri is 15 years old, having been released in 2011! Siri was closely followed by Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Voice search isn’t a new concept. AI has accelerated people’s use of voice to interact with the web and apps.
Having a voice search optimazition plan is more important than ever, and yet few ecommerce stores are truly embracing this concept. AI allows us to move beyond using simple voice commands as it understands context and nuance, or at least can be trained to better understand what you mean than just a simple voice search tool.
With voice search optimazation, you can capture those who prefer to speak into their phone in a conversational way rather than typing. By 2040, it’s predicted that 30% of ecommerce revenue will be driven by voice search.
Let’s explore how to make your store and products optimized for voice commerce maintaining your SEO. If a voice assistant can ’t find you in a fraction of a second, you effectively don’t exist.
Why Voice Search is Winning
As a fan of efficiency, using my voice to search rather than typing speeds up action. I no longer need to stop and type when I can pull out my phone and speak. But there’s more to why voice search is winning than my preference for speech over typing.
Frictionless UX
Comparing the words per minute between speech and typing reveals an interesting piece of data. We speak around 125 to 150 words, but only type about 40 words per minute on a mobile device.
Typing can take up to 3 times the amount of time compared to speaking. Why waste 3 minutes typing on Google when you can speak your request in 5 seconds?! You’ll quickly see that voice is the path of least resistance.
Devices everywhere!
Siri was quickly followed by the smart speaker revolution, which introduced many people to voice-led search. Fast forward, and most devices in our daily lives can accept voice commands, from your watch, lights, and even your car!
As a self-confessed smart home nerd, using voice commands to control the devices in my home is a really interesting development. Plus, as AI can help us move from simple voice commands, such as “turn off living room light”, to a system that understands context, such as “I want to watch a movie”, the future of voice control is very exciting.
We’re not that far away from having a connected home that knows our likes and dislikes and can interface with online shopping, making the weekly food shop even easier!
Accessibility
It’s good for business to serve all people, regardless of their abilities (or disabilities). Most Western countries have an ageing population, most of whom struggle with small fonts and technology in general! Using your voice to access technology isn’t just a cool feature, but is a way to create a more inclusive society!
Product Categories Ideal for Voice Commerce
Not everything will be bought using a voice search. For example, I can’t see people buying cars or homes this way. However, certain categories will be dominated by it.
Consumables & Re-orders
This is the “Set it and forget it” model. Items such as detergent, coffee pods, and pet food are low-risk, high-frequency items. Once a customer trusts a brand, they don’t need to see it to buy it again.
Gift-Giving
“What is the best anniversary gift for a tech-lover under £100?” These intent-driven, high-pressure searches are perfect for voice assistants that can filter through thousands of options to give you the “Top 3.”
Local Intent
I often ask my phone: “Where can I buy a decent brie near me right now?” If your physical shop or local stock isn’t indexed for voice, that customer is going to your competitor.
How to Ensure Your Voice Search Optimization Plan Drives Revenue!
Conversational keywords and long-tail intent
Traditional SEO focuses on short, fragmented phrases (e.g., “blue sapphire ring”). Voice search, however, is naturally inquisitive and full of context. To capture this traffic, you must optimize for natural language patterns.
So you want to move away from “best cocktail mixer” and toward “What is the easiest cocktail mixer for a beginner’s home bar?”
When writing new copy, start from the 5 Ws and an H (Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How). These phrases account for a significant portion of voice queries and help your store appear in “Position Zero” or featured snippets.
Schema markup and structured data
Voice assistants don’t “read” your website like a human. Instead, they parse your code for specific data points. By implementing Product and FAQ Schema, you provide a roadmap for AI to find the details it needs to answer a voice prompt.
You want to ensure your code explicitly defines price, availability, aggregateRating, and brand.
So, when a user asks: “Is that dark blue watch in stock?“, the assistant can pull the answer directly from your structured data without the user ever clicking a link.
Page Speed
In this mobile-first world, having a slow website ensures you’ll lose customers as no one wants to wait for a page to load. Voice commerce is the epitome of “on-the-go” shopping, again reminding us of the importance of having a fast loading time.
Because voice assistants (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant) prioritize the fastest path to an answer, a slow-loading site is effectively invisible.
Pay attention to your Core Web Vitals, specifically Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and page size. A delay of even one second can disqualify your page from being the “spoken” result. Work with your developer to reduce the amount of code on the page, resize your images, and use a CDN to ensure speed.
As most voice searches happen via smartphones or wearable tech, your mobile UI/UX must be lightweight and responsive to ensure the process from voice-search to cart-checkout is frictionless.
Dynamic FAQs
Google has started to take notice of FAQs as more people use its search engine and AI tool to ask full questions and not search by a few seemingly random keywords. FAQs are a great way to improve the SEO performance of a page and help visitors to make better buying decisions.
By structuring the FAQ content to mirror human speech, you create ready-made answers for voice engines. Here are some tips to get you started:
- Rather than using a bulleted list of features, use headers that reflect real-world questions, such as “Will this smart plug work with my existing hub?”
- Keep the answers snippet-sized, roughly 40 to 50 words, as this is the sweet spot for voice assistants to read aloud comfortably without losing the listener’s attention.
Are There Any Challenges to Overcome?
Voice commerce isn’t perfect. Firstly, there’s a lack of visuals, making it harder for a customer to trust you when they can’t see the product. Investing in brand awareness and creating a compelling customer promise is essential to overcoming this challenge.
Some of your customers will still want to type as they’re concerned about devices that are always listening. You can build trust by being transparent about what data you’ll collect, how you’ll use it, and the steps you’ll take to delete the data stored, so you’re not indefinitely storing personal information.
An inherent problem with voice search is that it only highlights one or two solutions rather than the 10 you’d see on a search results page. You’re either #1 or nowhere. Again, creating strong brand awareness is important as you want the customer to name-check your company in their request, e.g. “I’m looking for size 7 Nike ladies trainers” vs “show me a few size 7 ladies trainers”.
How to Future Proof your Ecommerce store
Voice isn’t going to replace the screen, just like the internet didn’t replace physical shops. However, it will augment the journey and speed up purchasing certain items.
In the future, the most successful brands will be those that are heard, not just seen. You need to start auditing your current SEO strategy and include some of the voice search optimization basics we’ve talked about in this article.
Don’t wait until half of your competitors have nailed their voice search optimization and you’re left behind, still running the same old ads!
Ready to move beyond the cycle of tactical experimentation and adopt a more strategic approach to growth?
