The Fastest UI for the Web and Mobile

Voice can be the most efficient UI for Web and Mobile, but the back and forth conversational model needs to be ditched. The conversational model embodied by Voice Assistants does not take full advantage of screens that are native with web and mobile experiences. When you lean into the screen when building a Voice-enabled experience you can build fast and easy to use UIs that blend Voice and Touch/Type.

Leveraging Screens with Voice UIs

Web and mobile User Interfaces (UIs) have a screen and that affordance should be used to maximum effect. Voice input is very efficient, but an audio response like you find with Voice Assistants is not. The screen is more efficient for the output because it can react immediately to inputs and can convey far more information without it being too overbearing for the user. To get a sense about how much faster a Voice UI as a Feature can be compared to the Voice Assistant model, consider the use case of placing an order with Best Buy.

Online Shopping Use Case: Best Buy

The graphic above shows 4 Best Buy purchase scenarios. Starting with using Speechly to enable Voice as a Feature, the Mobile App, the Website, and the Alexa app. With twelve words spoken, Speechly can return a highly specific response in just nine seconds. It only involves a voice command from the user with an immediate visual response from the screen. By contrast, the same request took 2:04 minutes as an Alexa skill, included 19 turns in the conversation, and five errors (See video below). This shows in practice the speed that can be unlocked from Voice UIs as a Feature vs Voice Assistants, the main value prop discussed with Voice-enabled experiences.

But, is a Voice UI as a Feature better than an existing touch or mouse click interface? Even these highly streamlined Graphical User Interface (GUI) experiences can’t compete with a full-duplex Voice UI. Tapping in the Best Buy mobile app takes 33 seconds to complete the same purchase task and a mouse-driven GUI on the web took 37 seconds. That is 3-4 times slower than direct voice input.

Value from Getting Voice UIs Right

When users can consistently get what they want by simply uttering a few words, they are likely to reward the company or brand with higher sales, more loyalty, and higher customer satisfaction. Also, by helping customers quickly get where they want you also see fewer abandoned carts and page bounces, resulting in higher conversion. The Speechly approach with Voice UIs as a Feature helps unlock and deliver those benefits consistently.

And using Voice to Filter through products is only 1 use case of a Voice UI. Other great features that span beyond E-commerce include Voice Search, Voice Form Filling, Voice Input, and Voice Command & Control which can all be demoed at Speechly.com/demos.

If you would like to learn more about the Speechly outlook on Voice UIs as a Feature vs Voice Assistants, download our full white paper on “Voice UIs as a Feature vs Conversational Voice UIs”.

Cover photo by Florian Steciuk on Unsplash