SC Review | Alexa Live 2022 Feature Roundup
Amazon publicly announced a goodie bag of features yesterday at Alexa Live. On the heels of Google announcing their voice application program going away, Amazon demonstrated their commitment to a 3rd party app ecosystem with some of their announcements.
Although the features spanned developer tools, enterprise programs, smart home integrations, and intelligent consumer features, for us, some of the announcements around Commerce and Skill Promotion were the most exciting. Here are my 3 of our favorite announcements:
Alexa Shopping Kit: This program allows voice apps to integrate direct shopping from items on Amazon.com. We've been testing this program with clients for the last year, and we've seen some serious performance. A lot comes down to use case, and conversational design, but when a user is promoted to purchase in a skill at the right moment, we see a significant conversion rate. We're very excited about voice commerce
Promoted Skill: Take 23......There have been many "promotional" tools released in the Alexa ecosystem. Some have proven to move the needle, some have not. We're looking forward to testing this promotional tool. Key here will be if the cost per mile exceeds performance of other channels that a brand can choose. It’s only worthwhile for a brand to divert media dollars if it will outperform or be at parity with other working capital deployed.
Voice Forward Account Linking: One of the largest friction points in voice has been the need to divert users to mobile apps for login, and data collection. Several voice forward approval features have come out, and the ability to simply approve verbally is a significant hurdle jumped in a path to voice as a true UI.
Honorable Mention: We're big Routine fans, so we have been excited about the in skill routine features.
There's a lot more to unpack, that Bret Kinsella has done a nice job of, but we'll drop some more commentary in later this and next week on how we plan to use features announced at Alexa Live.
