ASOS launches voice-activated shopping

2018-10-11

2 min read

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ASOS has claimed to be one of the first fashion retailers in the UK to launch on Google Assistant, meaning customers can discover products across popular categories using their voice.

Customers in the UK and US can initiate conversation with Enki, the ASOS shopping guide, by saying: “Hey Google, talk to ASOS” to their Google Home smart speaker or Google Assistant app on Android or iOS. Using their voice or text, Enki will help them discover and shop the latest products across six of ASOS’ top womenswear and menswear categories, viewable on their smartphone.

ASOS will be using customer feedback from the initial launch to explore ways to refine and enhance the experience over the coming months.

Voice technology appears to be increasing in prevalence with one in two US consumers using the technology and voice shopping expected to be worth $40bn (£30bn) by 2022. Google Assistant is now available on more than 500 million devices globally.

ASOS launched its ‘fashionbot’ Enki on Facebook Messenger in the UK earlier this year to help customers discover relevant products. Features such as Your Edit (a weekly drop of curated items), recommended brands, Style Match – which enables customers to search using images from the web or captured on their smartphone – and ‘You Might Also Like’ are all built on machine learning to make it easier for customers to navigate the wide range of products on ASOS’ site.

Jason Gregory, senior product manager, ASOS said: “With 85,000 products on site at any one time, and on average 5,000 new items added each week, it’s more important than ever to make it easy for our customers to stay on top of what’s new on ASOS. With the launch of Enki on Facebook Messenger and now Google Assistant, we’re exploring ways that conversational commerce can help us make the ASOS shopping experience as easy and intuitive as possible.”