Conversational Shopping: The Latest Revelation in eCommerce

It’s no secret that there is an art to capturing people online and on their mobile devices to make a purchase. In a world of organic search, Google Adwords and product listing ads, search engines offer these methods for increasing your online sales, and winning business over your competitors. The latest (and most exciting) revelation in online shopping comes with the Google’s announcement of the development of “conversational shopping.”

Google Says: Conversational Shopping Searches are Coming

In Search Engine Land’s recent article,“Google Would Like You To Buy Products Using Voice Search”, Barry Schwartz discusses the inner workings of how this “conversational search” element could benefit real-life users, referencing Google Zurich engineer Behshad Behzadi’s description of the new feature at SMX West:

With this new update, users will be able to make “purchases for products directly from voice search, such as “Okay Google, find me a 1TB solid state external hard drive?” Google then shows you the results, and you say, “Purchase the one from BestBuy.” Then, the next thing you know, you have a receipt from BestBuy with your delivery information.”

A mobile shopping experience could become something like:

• “Find Nike Free 5.0 shoes for women”
• “Check Lady Foot Locker”
• “I like Nike Free 5.0 TR Fit 5 in black”
• “Buy those in a size 7”

From there, users would receive an email confirming their purchase. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

Voice search has thus far done a great job of inferring the underlying meaning of your searches, even when the subject is not directly stated in each search. In other words, it is able to understand that “those”, “it”, “them” in fact refer to the item you referenced in the last search.

So, in the future, the shopping process could become extremely simplified—not to mention so much faster. A simple chat with your phone means locating the best prices, at the stores you want, all without any manual data entry of payment or contact information. It’s a world of convenience…and Google is no stranger.

It should be noted that this feature is only in development stages and is not yet live.