Are you searching for a new way to help your business grow? Implementing voice commerce is the perfect way to help your brand reach new audiences by making your site more accessible to more customers.

The $40B Voice Shopping Opportunity for Ecommerce Sites

Voice shopping is becoming more and more popular every day. By 2022, the voice commerce industry is projected to be worth more than $40 billion. This is the perfect time to take advantage of a new and untapped retail sales channel. Your customers are already using voice-enabled technology, and adopting it will help you reach new ones.

The global pandemic has dramatically accelerated ecommerce sales growth and changed the way customers worldwide connect with their favorite brands. With online sales predicted to top $908 billion this year and break $1 trillion for the first time next year—there has never been a better time to sell products and services online.

Whether your online business is already successful or you are desperately hoping to become profitable, voice-enabled retail is transforming the way people connect with their favorite online companies. Adding a conversational element to your site is the perfect way to grow business and secure success.

Adding voice technology to your ecommerce store makes it more accessible and inclusive for all the interested buyers who will become aware of your brand. By providing the emerging technologies that your customers are already using, your brand will be better positioned to grow and take advantage of breakout sales growth this year. 

Conversational retail technology offers a fantastic opportunity to help your online business grow while protecting your company against costly accessibility litigation.

Enhancing Digital Accessibility Increases Profitability and Reduces Legal Risks

The term digital accessibility, also known as web accessibility, refers to the degree to which a website, mobile application, or electronic document can be easily navigated, understood, and used by a wide range of users, including those users who have visual, auditory, motor or cognitive disabilities.

Voice-enabled retail technologies enhance digital accessibility by creating more opportunities for those with visual and other types of disabilities to access, understand, and use the information contained on your ecommerce site. By creating a more accessible website, you can sell more products and services faster and your brand can grow faster. 

According to the World Health Organization, 20% of the global population or an estimated 2 billion people living in the world have been diagnosed with a disability that impacts their daily life. Specifically, there are 253 million people or 3.2% of the global population living with visual disabilities.

 It would be wise not to disregard the immense business opportunities that implementing voice technology offers to your ecommerce site. To put the purchasing power of the disabled demographic in perspective, consider that the total disposable income for U.S. adults with disabilities is roughly $490 billion, which is comparable to other demographic groups, such as African Americans ($501 billion) and Hispanics ($582 billion).

Adopting voice technologies allows your company to serve customers of all ability levels better and deliver the same service to all customers. Not only is this the inclusive and socially responsible choice to make, but it also prepares your site to be even more profitable.

Furthermore, implementing voice tech helps reduce the legal risks your company could face due to failure to comply with the digital accessibility best practices as outlined by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Web Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Since the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed by the 101st U.S. Congress on July 26th, 1990, it has become the nation's premier legal framework for protecting the rights of disabled Americans.

As originally written, the ADA did not contain any specific language or mandates regarding how disabled individuals interact online. However, in 2010 the law was modified to respond to the massive digital transformation that had taken place in the twenty years since it was first passed. Every year since, there have been more legal cases brought against ecommerce site owners.

Recently, a California Federal Court upheld a Supreme Court decision that found that Domino's Pizza violated Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act by not providing a digitally accessible website that blind and visually impaired Americans could access. According to research conducted by WebAIM, 98% of the top 1,000,000 websites in the world were found to have similar digital accessibility compliance issues to the ones identified on Domino's Pizza’s website.

ADA digital accessibility claims cost online businesses roughly $25,000 on average, and in 2020, American websites spent more than $6.5 billion resolving these matters. The absolute best way to protect your online business from costly accessibility litigation is to ensure you take every opportunity to increase the accessibility of your online sites, apps, and platforms.

Ready to learn more about the voice commerce opportunity in retail? Read our latest Guide: The Rise of Voice Apps Within The Retail Industry. Or download the ebook now. 

Blutag: Your Voice Technology Partner

Since 2015, Blutag has offered a codeless voice technology solution that allows your online shop to develop its own conversational retail interface. To learn more about our turnkey solution that will enable your business to deliver voice apps to your customers, just contact us to setup a quick demo.