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Amazon seeks to boost user retention for Alexa skills (AMZN)
BI Intelligence
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Amazon released a major overhaul to its Alexa Skills Kit Developer Console that aims to streamline the development process of Alexa skills and boost user engagement, the company announced last Thursday.
The new version of the developer console, which is where voice app developers create Alexa skills, splits the Alexa skill development process into four segments: build, test, launch, and measure.
The new format enables developers to build a skill in a visual interface, test the skill's performance via voice and text, preview the skill in the skill store to prepare for launch, and view how consumers respond to the skill.
The redesign will be key in bolstering user engagement and retention for Alexa skills, which are two sore spots for Alexa skill developers. One of the main issues with Alexa is discoverability of skills — 65% of users haven't yet enabled a third-party skill, according to Activate. And once they find a skill, there’s only a 6% chance that the user will continue using that voice app within two weeks, according to a September 2017 report from VoiceLabs.
Amazon’s redesign helps to address this issue by giving developers access to analytics data. Without actionable data, developers can't gauge the efficacy of retention-oriented product updates. For instance, the measure section of the revamped developer console provides developers with metrics on sessions, unique customers, utterances, as well as a cohort analysis they can use to visualize customer retention and engagement over time.
Offering developers skill engagement and retention tools will help to give Amazon a leg up in the voice assistant space. Amazon’s competitors, such as Google, currently don’t supply a lot of usage data to developers, and because the format is so new, most developer tools haven’t been established to support iterative development processes. The tools will also help Amazon to attract more skills developers to its platform, which will ultimately make Alexa a stronger competitor in the voice assistant landscape.
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