Amazon’s Alexa is an innovative digital personal assistant. This intelligent voice-powered assistant is part of the Echo smart home device, and is also built into Echo Dot and Tap products. Most recently, consumers have gained access to Amazon’s Alexa through a smartphone app. The smart home is the future, and voice search is part of that future. Amazon’s Alexa is just one indication of the company’s strong push into smart technology.
Amazon’s Alexa offers many functions from general information to paying bills. One of these functions is voice search home shopping. Amazon’s Alexa ties in with Amazon Prime to offer an even better experience to loyal shoppers. Third-party merchants can take advantage of Amazon’s Alexa by optimizing their products for voice search through the device.
Amazon’s Alexa is an innovative digital personal assistant. This intelligent voice-powered assistant is part of the Echo smart home device, and is also built into Echo Dot and Tap products. Most recently, consumers have gained access to Amazon’s Alexa through a smartphone app. The smart home is the future, and voice search is part of that future. Amazon’s Alexa is just one indication of the company’s strong push into smart technology.
Amazon’s Alexa offers many functions from general information to paying bills. One of these functions is voice search home shopping. Amazon’s Alexa ties in with Amazon Prime to offer an even better experience to loyal shoppers. Third-party merchants can take advantage of Amazon’s Alexa by optimizing their products for voice search through the device.
How Amazon’s Alexa Works
Company representatives announced that Amazon’s Alexa recommends products based on the new Amazon’s Choice program. Amazon’s Choice metrics used are, of course, an Amazon secret, as is specifically how the program defines Amazon’s Alexa recommendations.
Here’s what we know.
1. Sellers who have the Amazon’s Choice badge have a better chance of appearing in Amazon’s Alexa recommendations.
Amazon’s Choice makes product recommendations based on availability, price, popularity, ratings, reviews, shipping speed, and other factors.
On the technical side, Amazon’s Alexa recommends products based on the keywords that are related to products. Given that a product passes Amazon’s Choice metrics, the selection of that product by Amazon’s Alexa depends on the keywords that shoppers search.
In addition, sellers can’t simply request for a product to be given this important badge. Instead, sellers have to work harder on inventory management, listing optimization, and customer service to meet Amazon’s Choice requirements.
2. Sellers need Prime-authorized products to be chosen by Amazon’s Alexa.
Aside from Amazon’s Choice, Amazon’s Alexa will only entertain products that are available via Prime. These can be FBA products or Seller-Fulfilled Prime program products with the Prime badge. In this case, Amazon’s Alexa will choose the Prime offer that ranks first in the results.
If no Amazon’s Choice and no Prime offers are available, Amazon’s Alexa will send the product to the app so that shoppers can pursue the purchase manually. In this case, Amazon’s Alexa will choose products that the customer has purchased before, and that rank first in the organic search results.
For this, sellers need to work on getting more repeat customers for consumable items or widen their customer base for one-time purchases, and improving their SEO for top rankings.
Competition with Amazon’s Alexa
Like any change, Amazon’s Alexa will take some getting used to. Voice search is relatively new, but it is going to gain traction fast. The prime indicator is that it is very convenient for shoppers. Competition for product listing placement on the search engines is already tough. The competition for brand and product awareness on Amazon’s Alexa is going to be even tougher.
Greater focus on excellence is a must for anyone who wants to get featured by Amazon’s Alexa.
Capturing the Voice Search Market
Here’s what you need to do to prepare for eligibility on Amazon’s Alexa.
If the product that you want to sell through Amazon’s Alexa is not Prime-eligible, go FBA or get that SFP badge. You’ll need this anyway once Amazon shifts over to allowing only Prime offers to be sold on the marketplace.
Manage your shipping times, even with FBA. You can’t control the Amazon warehouse system, but you can control how much stock you send them so that it can be properly distributed around the country. This gives you a better chance of having it where it needs to be for the fastest shipping times possible. Limited stock slows down shipping speeds. Learn the delicate balance of inventory management so you have enough stock without overstocking.
Grow your traffic to your Amazon product page – versus your own eCommerce store – and work on selling more. You need to get visibility and purchases up so that you can be the choice for consumers re-ordering through Amazon’s Alexa. Remember, however, to focus on conversions for consumables and not just traffic so your Amazon organic search rank won’t be negatively affected.
Get the Amazon’s Choice badge and become highly relevant for the right keywords. For the type of products that shoppers purchase only one time, you need to focus on getting the badge and having highly relevant keywords driving traffic to your listing so you can climb up the ranks. Remember that Amazon is not Google, and you need to optimize according to Amazon’s rules.
Manage your product reviews in a timely manner. Use the available tools to keep customers happy and leave positive reviews. Reach out to unhappy customers, solve their problems, and ask them to remove their negative reviews.
