Embarrassment Factor Limits Voice Search Use

Thursday, May 16, 2019 - 13:46 by Graham Miller

66 per cent of Brits are not taking advantage of voice search functions on their mobile phones because they find the concept too embarrassing to try in public.

This is according to a new survey from Uberall that investigates the impact of solutions like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri in order to see how the voice search market might grow over the coming years.

Just 15 per cent of respondents said that they harnessed voice search services on a weekly basis, while a fifth reported that they had used them at least once.

The fact that the majority of consumers have not even experimented with voice search shows that there is still a long way to go until this becomes a mainstream concern. Furthermore, the influence that it wields over digital marketing and safe shopping online looks set to remain minimal, at least for the time being.

Those that do use voice search pinpointed a number of issues which may need to be addressed before stronger adoption rates can be enjoyed. 19 per cent said that it was simply not an especially efficient way of looking up information, while a similar proportion said that they were often dissatisfied with the precision of the results that were served to them.

A tenth argued that the idea of speaking with an artificially intelligent entity, as represented by most voice search services, was disturbing in its own right.

Today the power of traditional search is still at its height, with text-based inputs allowing for the most accurate and relevant results to appear. Consumers may take some time to get comfortable with using voice search, while the inconsistencies of the experience also need to be ironed out or else the uptake of such solutions will continue to be sluggish.