Amazon Updates Skills Marketplace For Alexa Devices

Shopping for Alexa skills, or capabilities that enable customers to interact with devices in a more intuitive fashion, has been made easier to do now that Amazon has given the skills marketplace an overhaul. Examples of skills for those who aren’t familiar include getting your Alexa-enabled device to play music, answer questions or set an alarm.

Now, Alexa-enabled device owners can search, locate, enable and disable skills in the new marketplace dubbed Alexa Skills Marketplace. Users can also search via URLS that are dedicated to the skills. The move on the part of Amazon to make it easier to search for skills is part of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ vision that Alexa is an important part of the company’s business model.

“Now, every Alexa skill will have an Amazon.com detail page. On-Amazon detail pages improves discovery so that a customer can quickly find skills on Amazon and enables developers to link customers directly to their skill with a single click,” said David Isbitski at Amazon in a blog post announcing the new feature. “This is the first time that we are offering a pre-login discovery experience for Alexa skills. Before now, customers would need to log into the Alexa app on their mobile device or browser. Developers can also improve organic discovery by search engines by optimizing skill detail pages.”

According to Isbitski, developers can now link directly to their skills page on Amazon.com, and on the page, customers can take actions, such as adding or removing skills and linking their accounts. He said it’s the first time developers can drive customers directly to their skills page.

Alexa is the voice service that powers Amazon Echo and provides “capabilities, or skills, that enable customers to interact with devices in a more intuitive way using voice,” according to Amazon. Alexa can be used to play music, set an alarm timer, develop a workout playlist or answer a user’s general questions, like “Alexa, what time are the Fourth of July fireworks?”

Amazon said that, since opening Alexa to developers last year, “tens of thousands” are now currently developing Alexa skills and Alexa-enabled products, and its catalog of Alexa skills has now grown to more than 1,400 in just over a month. Alexa skills have also increased five times since Jan. 2016, Amazon noted.