Page 12 - AeM_September_2021

BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES

How voice commands will influence

user behavior

tional search modes yet. With this in mind, we can ex-
pect that voice search is unlikely to become an all-
encompassing game changer, rather continue to drive
technological trends in the future.

Reason enough to start thinking about the strategies
that voice assistants will play in their own business en-
vironment and to consider the following aspects:
• Customer benefits: Ask yourself where your user
can benefit from voice search.

• Scenarios: Find out in which environment your
user looks for your brand or product and ask your-
self what added value a combination of different
search modes can offer.
According to a forecast once given by the market re-
search company comScore, 50% of search queries • Decision: Ask yourself if featured snippets are
should have been voice-based latest by 2020. read out or if a dialogue via chatbot fits better with
your brand image. Featured snippets can depict
So, how did and will voice influence user behavior simple question-and-answer scenarios and are
when searching and how do companies have to react particularly suitable for W-questions, FAQs, or How
to this?
-to. They can be easily integrated into a website
The German agency for digital marketing, blueSummit, and can be read out. Chatbots, on the other hand,
summarized the most important points in a guide, em- can conduct detailed dialogues and offer multimod-
phasizing that executing a search query via voice and al interlinking with text or display, too.
getting the result spoken does not make sense in every
context. Despite all the enthusiasm for new technolo- • Intensity: Determine how deep a user should get
gies, one thing should always be kept in mind, the com- into the dialogue and to what extent the traditional
pany highlights, namely usability, the fundamental pre- website user experience may reach its limits?
requisite for widespread acceptance of any technology
by users. • Language: Determine how you want to address
your customers and with what tonality, since lan-
Voice is unbeatable when it comes to receiving infor- guage offers a lot of space for sympathy but mis-
mation or starting an interaction quickly and, above all, understandings, too.
comfortably without long typing and perhaps even while
doing other activities at the same time. Voice alone is not the future of search, but a user-
centered mixture of traditional text search combines
Voice search certainly makes sense wherever classic with voice and visual. Depending on the complexity of
short head keywords are too imprecise for a good the search query, as well as the context and application
search result or where long-tail optimization would be a scenario, the user should receive the appropriate
bottomless pit. search mode – sometimes purely and sometimes as a
combined version. Hence, voice search should be un-
But there are also less advantageous scenarios, like for derstood as an additional part of the online user experi-
instance using voice search on public transport or in a ence and be included in the SEO strategy. This is the
noisy environment, or when it is mostly about visual only way to stage useful applications for the entire
searches: e.g., in the fashion industry a single voice search area that really raise the interaction between
search most probably can’t bring satisfying results. user and interface to a new level.◊
Hence, voice won’t replace the advantages of conven-
By MediaBUZZ

12 August 2021: Omnichannel Marketing