Thinking of Creating an Amazon Echo Skill?

Is an Amazon Echo Skill a Fit For Your Business? Four Questions to Ask.

If trends over the past year have anything to say, it’s that voice search is here to stay. From Siri, to Google Home, to Amazon’s Echo, it’s clear that consumers are responding positively to the trend, and that they are more than happy to make it a part of their daily lives.

One of the most popular platforms continues to be the Echo, with consumers being able to interact with Amazon’s Alexa. One of the exciting things about Alexa is that it allows for developers to write “Skills” that any Echo owner can quickly add to their device.

These Skills do everything from functioning as an alarm clock, telling baseball scores, and event playing animal sounds. Great ways of promoting products and services can also be found using these Skills as well.

As your business adapts voice search into your overall strategy, it might be tempting to take a look into whether or not an Amazon Alexa Skill might be right for you. With that in mind, there’s four questions we’d suggest asking yourself.

Is there a function that your Skill can offer that others don’t?

The Amazon Alexa Skill library is growing every day, and there are tons that accomplish basic tasks. If you’re looking to get information about the weather, chances are that someone has already thought of it and has published the skill. However, if you’re looking to give your audience updates on a specific calendar of upcoming events, it might be helpful to publish a skill as an easy way of publicizing those events.

Do you have continual updates to share with your customers or clients?

If the answer to the first question is no, then do you have regular updates to share with your customers? Perhaps they are bits of news, sports scores, financial information, or other bits of information that need to be continually updated. Keeping your audience in touch with that information can be of great use to them, but can also be a great way to keep your brand in their awareness.

Do you have the resources to release a quality product?

While Amazon and their developer community continues to offer streamlines and updates, developing an Alexa Skill is still a task that can be daunting to someone without a lot of programming experience. Integrating with Amazon’s requirements and testing a product to ensure quality can take time and skill. If you do not have a developer on staff, it can be an uphill climb to publish a quality product.

Will you have the time to keep it updated?

Great Alexa Skills have their content continually updated on a daily or weekly basis. Assuming that you have updates to share, will you have time to share them? Recording and publishing the updates can be a time consuming venture as you get into the swing and habit of regularly producing them. Will you not only be able to carve out the time in your day, but also commit to doing it daily or weekly?

Voice search continues to be a growing way that audiences interface with search engines and brands. At WebDetail, we’re working to keep on top of this exciting trend and would love to talk with you about how it can be an integral part of your strategy.