How to Make Voice Search Work for Your Online Store

Smart home assistants like Siri and Amazon Echo have become very important and useful for many consumers. The emergence of these digital voice assistants also signifies a growing trend that online entrepreneurs like you should be wise to capitalize on. Voice search is predicted to become essential in ecommerce in the years to come.

In a 2017 study by PR firm Walker Sands regarding the future of retail, it was shown that one in five customers in the US made a voice purchase in the said year. Moreover, 1 in 3 people plan to do so the following year.  This finding underlines the importance of voice search in ecommerce.

If you have an online store and you want to gain an advantage over your competitors, here are some tips to make voice search work for your web store:

Redesign your site for voice search queries

One research by ComScore predicts that by 2020, half of all web-based searches will be through voice searches. Many firms like eBay are now using machine learning and AI to predict and show the most relevant search results every time a user visits their websites.  It would be advantageous on your part if you start to re-work the onsite search of your website and enable it to handle voice searches instead of keyword-focused content.

Add Schema markup

One SEO best practice on local search that you should consider is adding a Schema mark up. This can add structure to the data on your website, providing extra information that can help search engines locate your online store.

Add natural language for voice search

Adding natural language can optimize the content in your ecommerce site. Voice search typically favors long-tail keywords. It is also more voice-friendly and usually includes a query on high local search results. Your focus should be more on natural language instead of text-based. Moreover, the use of a Q&A page using keywords and phrases that people use during everyday conversations will also make your website visible.