Which one of these stats is true?

• 59% of shoppers say that being able to shop on mobile is important when deciding which brand or retailer to buy from

• As many as 33.2 million consumers in the US are expected to shop using the voice search feature on their smart speakers in 2022 

• In 2018, over 27% of the global online population was using voice search functionality on their mobile devices

The answer? They’re all true!

If you haven’t considered voice search in your business, maybe these numbers will give you the push you need. 

What is voice search?

Searching by typing on your keyboard? That’s so passé (just kidding). Interestingly enough, some people have more conversations with virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana than with actual human beings!

Powered by Natural Language Processing (NLP), voice search consists of voice-enabled commands to search queries and keywords on the internet, mobile devices or applications. So when you speak into your phone or computer and say, “Hey Google, where’s the nearest sushi restaurant?” or “Show me vintage blazers on sale” on an online clothing shop, and your phone shows you results, that’s voice search hard at work.

It’s not hard to see why users and customers love this hands-free method of search. It removes barriers related to typing queries and it can be more convenient for users to use their voice depending on the situation. While voice search is already popular, it’s still growing in popularity. If you want to enhance your website’s user experience and increase its traffic, exploring voice search is certainly worth the time and effort.

By using a powerful search as a service offering, like our partner Algolia, you can optimize voice search on your website and ensure you get the most out of this technology.

How does voice search work?

There’s a whole process behind voice search–and all of it happens within mere seconds.

1. The user speaks into a microphone–usually, you press a microphone icon to tell the device to record your voice–the browser, website or app collects the audio input 

2. Voice recognition technology processes the audio file and transcribes human speech (phenomes, phrases and words) into text

3. It then analyzes the text to detect questions and commands

4. The software connects to external data sources (e.g. search engines, databases) to find the appropriate answers or results

5. It turns that information into a digestible format and relays it to the user

How to optimize your website for voice search

• Use keywords in question form (e.g. What is the recipe for carbonara pasta?)

• Use traditional SEO methods to appear at the top of search engine results

• Make your content conversational and use natural language

• Use schema markup to provide context for your content

• Structure your FAQ page to help answer natural language questions

• Ensure your website is mobile-friendly

• Create content that’s concise and easy to understand

Want to learn about how voice search could impact your business? Looking to implement voice search on your website? Contact us–we can be the partners you need.