If you’ve stumbled across this article, you probably already know that digital assistants have crossed the line between just being an early adopters’ toy, and became major contributors to lives of nearly 50% of teen and adult population in english-speaking countries (according to Google). Voice search is only getting bigger and it will inevitably shape purchasing behavior of online consumers globally for years to come. Simple voice search is quickly transforming into voice operation, and in the context of e-commerce it is preparing us for the era of voice purchasing.
How do you optimize your Magento store for voice commerce?
Voice commerce simplifies the checkout process for online buyers. Merchants prepared for this trend are able to offer their customers the ability to buy something by simply asking their virtual assistant to make the purchase. The steps you can take to prepare your Magento store for voice commerce today are outlined below:
1. Mobile optimization
The most basic and obvious step is making your store mobile-friendly. Voice searches most often come from mobile devices, despite a growing proportion of users using voice search with their smart home assistants like Alexa, Google Home, or Windows Desktop Cortana.
2. Implement a voice SEO strategy
Magento is one of the most search engine friendly eCommerce platforms out of the box, but there are several steps to be taken care of to optimize your Magento SEO for voice commerce.
You need to ensure that metadata on your site is accurate and comprehensive. Don’t forget to submit your sitemap to Google and claim your Google My Business listing.
Make sure your store structure is logical and enables dynamic generation of metadata for search engines.
The process of generating such data for voice queries will now slightly differ from the type-in queries we’re all used to.
This standard and quick type-in query would primarily pull up results of stores, where:
- Location: Los Angeles
- Specialization: Furniture
- Category: Seats
- Subcategory: Armchairs
- Color filter: Blue
- Material filter: Velvet
Now, this is a perfectly reasonable way to structure your store. The metadata generated dynamically for the results page based on formula would satisfy the majority of searchers. But what if a similar search was conducted using voice?
Now, voice searches are more natural and conversational than text-based searches.
Your content needs to give people direct answers to their questions and answer someone’s query in 30 words or less.
Where “Superfurniture” is the name of your store, “chair” is a subcategory, “velvet” is a color filter, Los Angeles is your location, and the range is based on your filtered price data.
This may seem like an incredible piece of work – generating such content and metadata for an average online store with its variety of products. But if you think about it – there only needs to be a marginal adjustment to your basic SEO keyword research and automation, such as including “filler” words and making queries conversational instead of robotic.
3. Simplification of Checkout
Frustration during the checkout process accounts for nearly 1/3 of abandoned carts today. Contributing to this may be a slow website loading speed, limited payment options, or the requirement to fill in too much personal information.
Streamlining your checkout is a vital component for boosting conversions and even more vital in preparation for voice purchasing. The latest Magento 2.3 provides a two-step checkout as a replacement for their previous six-step process, so be sure to benefit from it and remove anything that might complicate checkout process for your customers.
Make sure you adopt as many payment processing options as possible, to allow your customers pay with their most readily accessible methods of payment. An example of that would be PayPal’s One Touch Checkout, that allows users complete a purchase without re-entering any personal information. Braintree Direct lets U.S. merchants accept payments via Venmo — an incredibly popular app adopted by 68% of millennials who use mobile payment apps. Some of the most popular mobile wallets for smartphones, smartwatches, or tablets include Paypal, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay.
Do not miss out on a growing market of consumers who don’t use traditional banking at all, and is turning to cryptocurrencies for secure and low-cost online transactions.
4. Develop your store’s presence in voice apps
Most digital home assistants enable developers access their APIs and this allows you to create listings specifically for voice commerce. Begin introducing this practice into your store and configure your products that are most likely to be purchased in such a way. For the rest, make sure you provide the most laconic information about your store, products and promotions and leave no chance for your competitors to lead your voice shoppers away to their own stores.
If you need help with any of these steps, reach out to our Magento team that has already helped several Magento store owners in the U.S. and Australia prepare for this leap into Voice Commerce era.
