Voice shopping isn’t just the future—it’s also the present. With at least 60% of online buyers accounting for mobile buying, it’s natural that voice search is going to keep getting bigger and bigger.
This means to stay ahead of your competitors and grow your bottom line—your business must evolve to include voice shopping.
In this article, we’ll be taking a look at 5 ways you can easily prepare your site for voice shopping.
Enlist Your Products on Google Shopping
When an online store uploads its details to Google Shopping, its reach improves.
This is because Google Shopping is designed to help your customers find online stores from all over the internet that has the products they need.
Likewise, when users make a voice query on Google, Google Shopping can point them in the right direction.
That’s why it’s a smart idea to add your products to Google Shopping—if your store is on there, there’s every chance they’ll come across it.
Don’t forget to optimize your Google Shopping account so that it looks smart and presentable to customers. Consider working with a UX designer to help you.
Featured Snippets
A featured snippet is an answer to a specific question that Google has deemed to be the most valuable answer right now. It appears near the top of the search results and is extracted from a larger piece of content.
Securing more featured snippets should be one of your goals because it will make your content more visible, thus improving clicks.
The great thing is that digital assistants are prone to using feature snippets when answering a question. For example, if someone asks “Google Assistant, what are the best men’s leather jackets for under $200?” It will probably answer with a featured snippet.
To secure more featured snippets, you just need to create content that concisely answers a bunch of questions your customers are asking.
To help you do this, you can create a number of FAQ pages.
Create Conversational But Concise Content
When shoppers use voice search to find something on Google, they use natural language.
This means you need to follow their lead and create content that’s conversational, natural, but that is also concise.
If you’re ever unsure, just remember that the way people type a search query is different from the way they talk about a search query. Your aim is to mimic human speech while retaining your unique brand voice.
Local Search
58% of people who use voice search are using it for local searches.
Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to optimize your website and content for local searches and make a keyword research.
For example, if you sell women’s handbags in Pennsylvania, you can use the keyword “women’s handbags in Pennsylvania.”
You can also be more specific and use keywords like “women’s handbags in Philadelphia.”
When you use keywords like this, you will drive more qualified traffic.
To help you drive more local traffic, add your business to Google My Business.
AI-Powered Voice Technology
AI-powered voice technology is able to understand what your customers are saying, as well as respond to them and point them in the right direction.
They improve the user experience and help your customers find what they’re looking for faster. This type of technology can be easily added to your website with the help of voice search APIs.
You can also add voice-powered chatbots to your website that are driven by AI, and which are able to learn more about your customers with each conversation. This allows them to personalize the customer experience going forward.
Because AI-powered voice technology can be expensive in the short-term, it might be a smart idea to explore options for startup loans.
Final Thoughts
Optimizing your site for voice shopping doesn’t require a radical overhaul. Instead, you just need to take care of a few small things such as those listed above.
You can also add more FAQ pages to your website that directly answer your customer’s queries, as well as implement a semantic strategy (instead of a keyword based strategy).
Once your website is all set, you can then tweak and refine your strategies.
Asher Ismail is the co-founder of Uncapped. Uncapped helps entrepreneurs raise capital without giving up control of their business. Connect with Asher on Linkedin, or if you’re looking for growth capital, check out www.weareuncapped.com.
