The Amazon Echo and Google Home devices have introduced voice user interfaces to millions of people. The move to voice appears unstoppable. The impact to you, the marketer, is that voice user interfaces are coming to not only your product but also to your sales and marketing efforts.
Here are three things you should know about voice user interfaces.
Voice is becoming VERY popular.
The number of people in the U.S. using a voice assistant devices is forecast to grow 129% to 36 million this year. Amazon sold over 5 million Echo speakers in 2016 and it is estimated they sold over 10 million last year. Google sold over 6.7 million Home speakers since last October. This is a huge target market.
More people are shopping by voice.
Over 20% of owners of voice assistants are now using them to shop. Adobe reports that 22% of voice assistant devices shop using voice commands. And there are predictions that by 2020 there be 200 billion voice searches a month. This will certainly impact marketing and sales plans.
Creating a voice user interface is different than creating a visual interface.
A voice interaction is different than a visual one. There are no menus, bullet lists, graphics or videos. A voice interaction is a conversation. As such, you need to make it clear that the user needs to respond and also when the user needs to respond. Options must be clearly presented. Choices should be limited. These are only a few of the many voice best practices.
You may not have a need for a voice user interface now but the trends indicate that at some point you will. You should start planning for it now if you haven’t already done so.
© 2018 David Biagini
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