Alexa Blogs
When you build delightful skills with compelling content, customers win. Now with the announcement of in-skill purchasing (ISP), you can sell premium content to enrich your Alexa skill experience. When designing your premium experience, it’s important to follow a set of certification tests and customer experience best practices to build your customers’ trust and confidence. This will ensure your customers have a consistent and positive experience when using skills that offer in-skill purchases. Here we share eight best practices to keep in mind as you design a premium experience for your customers.
1. Provide a Compelling Free Experience
Before you add a premium experience to your skill, you first need to build an engaging skill that resonates with customers and keeps them coming back. This free experience needs to feel worthwhile without the need to pay for content. Demonstrate enough value to drive interest in your premium experience and give customers the context they need to clearly understand what they get with your premium content. The premium experience is meant to enhance the skill with more useful features or tools and to provide additional content.
2. Remember: One-Time Purchases Are Enduring Entitlements
Entitlements are things like a new level in a game or access to a more advanced tool, where that acquired capability doesn’t expire. This means that once the customer purchases them, they have access forever. At this time, consumables are not supported and premium items can’t be used up and re-purchased. In other words, these aren’t things like a 100 pack of gems that can be spent in game and then rebought. Subscriptions provide access to premium content or features for a period of time. Customers are charged on a recurring basis until they cancel their subscription.
3. Lean on Amazon for the Purchasing Process
Parts of the customer experience are handled by you and parts are handled by Amazon. Namely, Amazon provides the purchase experience flow and also keeps track of which products are available and which have already been purchased. Your skill makes calls to check inventory, to determine if purchases have been made, and to pass purchase requests to Amazon.
Let’s look at how this works in two scenarios: 1. offering an upsell in context and 2. supporting proactive buying. Let’s say your skill is an interactive fiction where customers can buy the “castle pack” or the “ocean pack.” In the upgrade experience, customers using your skill reach a point where they cannot proceed unless they have the “castle pack.” You make a call to determine whether they are already entitled. If they are not, you make a call to offer the product as an upsell. From there, Amazon provides the description and price, and completes the purchase flow. Then control is handed back to you to proceed as appropriate in the skill. Alternatively, at any time, customers can say, “What can I buy?” to hear a list of available products and “I want to buy {ProductName}.” In these scenarios, your skill handles the intent, and then once the customer chooses a product, makes a call to start the purchase flow for that product.
You set the list price for your in-skill product and will be paid 70% of list price, before any discount offered by Amazon. For example, if the list price is $2.00, you’ll receive $1.40 (70%) even if the customer receives a discount from Amazon. Because of this, avoid including prices in your skill. Instead, include the price in your ISP product definition along with the description and name. Amazon’s purchase flow will communicate these items to customers.
4. Deliver on Expectations
If a customer has purchased something, they are immediately able to use it. Entitlements purchased by customers must be supported for the life of the skill. Subscriptions must be supported through the final subscription term purchased by customers. If a customer has declined a purchase, don’t offer it again before a reasonable amount of time has passed. When a customer starts a purchase, handle the result, regardless of the outcome, and continue the customer’s experience. Support the ability to cancel purchases by voice.
5. Help Customers Find Your Offer
If your skill already provides options when launched or in help, include an option like “buy quests” to hear a list of your products. This gives customers a reliable way to find a product when they're ready to buy. Remind customers in your contextual help messages that they can always ask about which products are available for purchase. At the appropriate times in your skill experience, make a suggestion. For example, “Congrats on completing Level 3. Unlock Level 4 for twice the bad guys and triple the loot. Want to learn more?” This kind of prompt includes context, a summary of the product, and a yes/no question to start the purchase flow.
6. Don't Make a Hard Sell
Offer your product as a solution, not a sales pitch. Explain why your product is relevant at this moment, and what it does for the customer. Only make one suggestion. If a customer isn't interested, continue where they left off. Don't suggest another product instead. If there's nothing left for the customer to do, close the session. You risk losing customers when your suggestions start to feel like interruptions. Start conservatively, then change the frequency over time to find the best approach.
7. Help Customers Get Their Money's Worth
Encourage repeat usage of your skill. Give customers a reason to come back daily or weekly to unlock new content or rewards for continued use. And make sure your price is right. Run experiments with your suggestions and your pricing to see which model is most attractive to your customers. You can view metrics on your in-skill products on the Measure Skill Usage page of the Alexa Developer Portal.
8. Prepare for Certification
When you’re submitting for certification, make sure that you provide testing instructions so that the testing team understands how to access, buy, and use your available products. You’ll need to review your JSON files to make sure that your product names and descriptions are readable and free of typos. It’s also important to remember that none of your content in your product description (or in your skill) should reference the price of an in-skill product.
Start Making Money with Alexa Skills
Check out these resources to start building in-skill purchases in your Alexa skills. You can also watch our introductory webinar or download our guide to learn about the different ways you can make money with Alexa, best practices for creating engaging, premium experiences, and how to select the right in-skill product to meet your needs. We are excited to see what you build next!
