Update: Interestingly, we found (thanks to comments here & on twitter/FB) that this is available for Chrome browser only. And Flipkart does not have deep integration with their database as was our impression. They have simply added a specific “x-webkit-speech” attribute on their search and Chrome takes over from there.) Still this is welcome addition by Flipkart.
Earlier…
So, Flipkart added a nifty little feature on their website – Voice Search for Products. It is a google-esque feature and may help many shoppers on their website.
The voice feature allows user to speak a phrase by clicking on a small button placed on the right hand side of the search bar. Once shoppers click on it, they have to just speak out the name of the product or whatever they are searching for. They can choose to search a specific product or just speak out the general category that they want to find.
We did do some quick tests and we were left quite impressed with the voice recognition that the voice search was able to achieve. We tried about 10-12 different phrases and except one, it got everything absolutely bang-on.
Here is a video created for the test we did with 4 phrases. The phrases used were essentially name of products or a specific category. Even some complex phrases like “Sandisk Cruzer Blade 16GB” were identified quite well.
Check out this video
How Is this Helpful, Will Shoppers use it?
Yes, they will and I will tell you why. Many Indians who shop online are not comfortable with writing english language. They know the names of the products, but may write it wrongly. In normal search if there is a spelling mistake, it will show up as product not found.
However, if the user uses this voice feature, he or she does not have to worry about the spelling mistakes as the system itself finds the name for you based on voice recognition.
Also, there is a reason why Flipkart’s voice recognition seem to work well. It is because it matches the voice against specific set of finite products on their catalogue. So the speech used will only have limited number of queries against which it will have to map.
Overall, a really nice feature addition by Flipkart, which also works really well!