When it comes to customer acquisition, it’s essential to make a good impression. There are many facets to creating a lasting impact, and there isn’t a direct formula for each and every case. There are enough opportunities to lose customers between lousy website design and awful customer support, but if there’s one thing that really annoys people, it’s terrible user experiences.
From incredibly long drop-down menus to inconsistent chat systems, there’s a lot that can go wrong. Sometimes it isn’t feasible to create a robust UX – from development time to user testing, a lot of work goes into pleasing the end-user.
Despite the apparent benefits, some businesses don’t allocate resources to good UX simply because it’s hard to implement. A study from Forrester Research shows that well-designed UX could improve conversion rates by up to 400%. In fact, according to data collected by Skyhook, only around 55% of companies currently conduct any UX testing at all.
A report from Amazon Web Services shows that nearly 88% of online consumers claim they wouldn’t return to a site after a bad user experience. As people have started to spend more time online, now more than ever, it’s crucial to create that good impression.
Customer frustration can be the bane of your business model, and there are a plethora of simple methods to improve site UX, such as the better use of white space and catching 404s before your customers. However, many businesses have started to implement an up and coming method to separate the customer experience from a website altogether.
Just Say the Word
The jump from physical stores to online stores was quite the revolution, but as convenience continues to trump practicality in the minds of consumers, AI-powered shopping assistants were an inevitable byproduct.
Be it cat food or home decor; there’s nothing you can’t find on the Internet. The problem arises when FOMO and buyer’s remorse precede and follow hours of scrolling through listing on a web browser. Online payments are tedious and can quickly lead to customer dissatisfaction for various reasons.
Modern e-commerce has certainly made products and services more accessible than ever before, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be better. A study conducted at the University of Surrey shows that people form 75% of their judgment of a website’s credibility from aesthetics alone. That might seem overly superficial, but numbers don’t lie.
By handing control over to a voice assistant, e-commerce websites let their products take the center-stage. With no unnecessary navigational UI taking space, websites can tailor the experience entirely to the user’s needs — like how stores showcase products on shelves.
With IBM engineer William Dersch having developed the first speech recognition technology back in the mid-20th century, this is not a new concept. Through simple voice commands, users can now sit back and ask computers to perform tasks and answer questions like a real assistant.
Voice commerce brings this technology to shopping, allowing the AI to do all the hard work while the user signs-off on the final decision. Further, customers can set budgets, filter through search results, ask for recommendations based on user reviews, and postpone delivery timings — all without lifting a finger.
A Vocal Future
Voice commerce is projected to grow into a $40 billion industry within the next two years. In 2019, Statistica predicted that over 100 million households worldwide would own a smart display by 2023. As smart speakers and smartphones begin to dominate the average consumer’s life, voice-enabled shopping could bring any product to your doorstep with a flick of a tongue.
As artificial intelligence continues to become more and more advanced, people have started relying on them for increasingly important things. Modern AI companions like Google Assistant can even dial 911 on command.
With Alan AI, integrating a voice assistant is a seamless and straightforward way to improve user experience without much overhead. Research from Adobe shows global consumers, on average, use 2.23 devices simultaneously, and that 9 out of 10 users will abandon a bad content experience. Optimizing for multiple platforms can be time-consuming, and a drain on development resources. Get in touch with us to see how Alan brings great UX to all platforms.
Voice commerce is a culmination of the seemingly infinite options that stem from online businesses combined with an in-store shopping assistant’s personal touch. This industry may be a minor one now, but as consumers continue to demand greater convenience and better products and services, this minority could become incredibly vocal in the years to come.