With Alexa Buying Products Is As Easy As Saying “Yes”

Posted on by solomozone Posted in Consumer, Digital, Retail, User Experience DesignTagged , , , ,

Alexa-swear-930x477Amazon’s Alexa, a virtual assistant that allows users to add voice commands by speaking into the Echo speakers, can now order over a Million products on Amazon. According to The Verge, ” if you say, “Alexa, enable NBC News,” or “Alexa, enable Fitbit” or “Alexa, enable Dad-Bot”  to an Echo speaker, the smart software will add those third-party skill sets to your set up, so you can issue more voice commands for those apps”.

With Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Amazon Tap, or Amazon Fire TV, you can order over a Million products available on Amazon. The Voice Command has been activated for Amazon Prime subscribers. The Virtual Assistant cannot order apparel, shoes, jewelry, watches, Amazon Fresh, Prime Pantry, Prime Now, or Add-On items.

Virtual assistant Ordering brings a new challenge to the Virtual assistant space where brands were vying for conversational commands and adding skills such as making a shopping list or checking the flight status. Amazon Alexa’s Skills Kit was recently upgraded with 1400 Skills that allow users to enable Skills from Third Party Apps by simply speaking into the speakers with the command “Alexa Enable”.  “Now people who own devices like the $180 Echo and the $130 Amazon Tap can enable new skills, or capabilities, simply by saying, “Alexa, enable” and then saying the name of the desired skill. Until now, you had to retrieve your phone or tablet, find the skill, and turn it on.”. according to Venture Beat. Some of the updates on Amazon’s Alexa are:

  • There are now over 1,400 Alexa skills and the catalog has grown by 50 percent in just over one month
  • Customers have made over 3 million requests using the top 10 most popular Alexa skills
  • Since January 2016, selection of Alexa smart home API skills has grown by more than 5x

A comparison of Google Home scheduled for launch later in the year and Amazon’s Alexa shows Amazon is far ahead in the game, though Google Home has unique features such as the synced audio playback to multiple devices.

Googlehome

With a  Virtual Assistant Interface, the buyer journey is now redefined as users can now buy products with voice commands. The Path To Purchase is redefined to  “No Click Ordering” with the Virtual Assistants.