Holiday shopping is a make-it-or-break-it season for retailers, and consumer behavior is evolving fast. Increasingly, consumers are ditching swiping and tapping. Rather, they’re conversing with Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant.
Voice commerce is no longer in beta. It’s a growing channel for discovery, transactions, and reorders. To e-commerce, marketing, and customer experience leaders who are digital first, the question isn’t whether voice will be important this season, but how ready your organization is to empower it.
Keep reading to see why voice-first shopping is on the rise, the foundation to support it, and how your company can be ready for the holidays with systems that hear, answer, and convert.
Why Voice Commerce Should Be on Your Holiday Roadmap
Voice commerce already shows signs of real traction. As estimated, voice shopping will reach over $80 billion by 2025. Nearly half of the shoppers in the United States are already using voice search when they purchase. And, major retailers have developed hands-free functionality, where customers can order through smart assistants like Alexa or Google Assistant.
Speed and convenience are king during the holiday season. Shoppers are in a hurry, and friction at checkout can impact conversion in a direct manner. Voice allows users to bypass menus, search fields, and form fills by ordering in seconds using natural language.
While voice usage is highest for mundane tasks like setting an alarm or playing music, shopping is quickly on its way up. More and more families employ voice-enabled devices, and customer expectations mature along with them.
For B2B brands, including retail, CPG, and digital commerce brands, this change is an opportunity to stay ahead of the curve, remove friction, and establish loyalty by reaching customers where they’re already at.
Four Strategic Steps to Prepare for Voice-First Buyers
You don’t need to overhaul your entire e-commerce experience in one night. These four priorities will get your teams moving quickly and intentionally toward voice-readiness.
1. Optimize Your Product Catalog for Voice Search
Consumers do not pose the same questions they type. Voice queries are in natural language and are often more specific.
In order to enable these interactions, your product descriptions need to include natural language descriptions, alternative terms, and long-tail terms. Structured data (e.g., schema markup) can also help voice assistants better understand and rank your content higher.
Use frequently asked questions and how-to articles in the Q&A style to generate more visibility for voice search queries.
2. Enable Frictionless Reorders and Voice-Checkout
The best early voice commerce applications center around repetitive, routine purchase, things consumers already know and trust.
- Make one-tap reordering of frequently purchased items
- Develop streamlined voice-enabled checkout flows
- Implement logic to recognize requests like “my usual size” or “same as last time”
Reducing steps is the answer. The aim is to make reordering or purchasing through voice as fast and accurate as possible.
3. Map the Voice-Enabled Customer Journey
Voice is not a separate channel. It’s only one other entry point within your customer journey. It’s vital to understand where voice sits and how it ties into other channels.
Voice can be leveraged on every step of the journey:
- Discovery: “What’s a good holiday gift under $100 from Brand X?”
- Comparison: “What are the differences between Model A and Model B?”
- Purchase: “Add this item to my cart and use my saved payment method.”
- Post-purchase: “Where is my order?” or “When will it arrive?”
Support it with backend APIs, conversational AI integrations, and accurate intent mapping so that the experience is intuitive and on-brand start-to-finish.
4. Test Early. Simulate Real Holiday Load
Don’t test in Q4. Get a head start:
- Prototype your voice flows internally or with a test group
- Simulate peak load to verify your systems are prepared for spikes in voice activity
- Monitor key metrics: voice conversion rates, drop-offs, voice recognition accuracy, and voice-to-screen handoffs
The earlier you begin, the better your chances to optimize performance before the season hits high demand.
Solve Typical Voice Commerce Pain Points Ahead of Time
No technology transformation is hassle-free. Here’s how to solve typical friction points for voice commerce before they get in the way of customers:
- Accuracy of identification: Integrate error-recovery and verification processes for sensitive data like payment details or delivery addresses.
- Trust and confidentiality: Make transparent use of voice data. Provide clean opt-in and verification flows.
- Premium product configurations: Consider hybrid experiences for high-consideration or configurable products. Use voice to fill out the front-end steps, and route customers to mobile or web to make final decisions.
- Channel consistency: Allow users to start a transaction by voice and finish it without interruption via web or app. Session continuity is key.
Optimize Your Content for Voice and SEO (Without Sounding Robotically)
Because voice searches are more conversational in nature, your content should be conversational too. Keep it natural, but structured:
- Use question-based headings: i.e., “How do I reorder using voice?”
- Include obvious, concise answers near each heading
- Optimize for featured snippets—voice assistants read these out loud
- Add schema markup to allow search engines and voice platforms to understand your content
- Monitor which voice queries drive traffic or sales, then optimize content based on those findings
- Use real customer language—derived from site search, reviews, and support requests
These habits not only increase your voice-readiness, but they also complement your overall SEO and content strategy.
Voice Commerce Holiday Readiness Checklist
Here is a snap-shot checklist for your in-house teams to cross-check against progress:
- Catalog has conversational words and long-tail variations
- Reorder feature is voice-supported for top-priority SKUs
- Voice shopping journey is mapped out across touchpoints
- Internal voice ordering prototypes deployed
- Voice load testing and error-recovery simulations finished
- Fallback logic and recovery flows created
- Security and verification procedures established
- Cross-channel continuity among voice, web, and app guaranteed
- Featured snippet and question-based query SEO content optimized
- Small customer base pilot testing concluded
Start with root changes and rank by impact. Giving your teams runway today will put you in position to succeed when seasonal demand soars.
Final Thoughts on Voice Commerce
Voice commerce is already more than a future state, it’s a present-day opportunity. As people become more at ease conversing with machines, brands willing to meet them there will find an edge.
If your company is interested in enhancing voice-first experiences before the holidays, Big Drop can help. We partner with businesses to create, launch, and scale digital experiences that react to the way people shop now and tomorrow.
Let’s get voice working for your business. Contact Big Drop