By Ryan MacInnis, Voysis
Black Friday has been one of the biggest days for retailers in the U.S. for the past decade. Shoppers have increased their spending on Black Friday by 138% since 2005, and are still spending hours waiting in lines to claim that great deal only available on that day. But as shopping has evolved with the introduction of voice commerce, people are spending less time waiting in lines and showing up for Black Friday.
In 2016, Amazon promoted an additional 25% off select items and deals when ordering from an Alexa, and this year we expect to see even more incentives, especially since Amazon’s sales surpassed $3 billion for the first time ever. There are twice as many voice-enabled devices in the market compared to last year, and according to Walker Sands, 19% of consumers have made a purchase using a voice-controlled device in the past 12 months.
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Will voice shopping bring an end to the Black Friday tradition that has helped retailers skyrocket revenues for the last 12 years? Let’s take a closer look.
Retailers Continue To Target Consumers Via Mobile
Not as many people showed up to physical stores in 2016, about 3 million fewer than 2015. And each customer is spending $10 less per visit compared to previous years, opting to buy more items on sale, or waiting to do their shopping online on Cyber Monday (which does billions of sales in one day). And for the first time ever, 53% of all orders last year came from mobile devices.
As retailers prepare for 2017 holiday shopping, there’s no question that mobile will continue to be a focus. According to Shopify, 56% of retailers sent notifications surrounding deals in 2016, and we saw the largest ever spike of mobile app downloads ever (1.2 billion). There’s no question that consumers are looking for all options to be laid out on the table: in-store, online and mobile.
Online Sales Will Beat In-Store
Roughly 50% of people said that they’ll show up in-person during Black Friday sales, and this makes sense. Why wait in line for a deal you can get online? That’s the big challenge brick-and-mortar stores face: to make it enticing enough to both visit the store and shop online. They took the first step last year, offering more deals on customers’ favorite items, which ended up driving more in-store purchases. And interestingly enough, many are using in-store to drive purchases of voice devices.
No matter the technique or deal, retailers realize that the 220% increase in site traffic on Black Friday calls for better digital experiences.
Voice Shopping Will Be Table Stakes
Last year Amazon teased new deals each day thanks to Alexa. Shoppers could ask the speaker about the latest Black Friday deals, which heavily favored Amazon’s home automation products and devices (Kindle, Fire, Nest, etc.). But this year we’ll see companies not only offer speakers at a discount (Kohl’s, Best Buy, etc.) but we’ll see more perks for those that shop with their voice.
Maybe you get free shipping. Maybe it’s bundled with another product. Maybe it involves exclusive deals.
In a world of using something like the Echo Show, consumers will be able to use Alexa to ask for deals and then buy them on the spot. Long gone are the days of waiting in line, freezing in tents and chairs like we’re waiting for the new iPhone. Today, and forever forward, we’ll see voice become more prominent in online shopping, controlling how we shop on Black Friday. And if retailers don’t take advantage of it, they might see in-store traffic drop enough to ruin the tradition for them, and drive everyone to a better online experience, today owned by Amazon.
Ryan MacInnis is a marketer and startup advisor. Currently, he is the Director of Marketing at Voysis, the complete voice AI platform that enables any online retailer or brand to instantly stand up their own brand-specific, intelligent voice experiences. Prior to Voysis, he worked at Twitter on their developer platform Fabric which recently sold to Google, and ran marketing at Robin, a scheduling platform for your office. He’s advised and mentored startups that have raised millions, including those at incubators like MassChallenge and Northeastern’s IDEA program.
