Tools for Voice Apps
Exploring existing and upcoming tools for voice app creators
Last week, we attended a Voice meetup in Toronto hosted by VoiceTechGlobal. They host events every month fostering a community around voice teaching concepts such as designing, creating, and launching successful voice apps. At this week’s fantastic meetup, we talked about the tools and strategies around the various parts of a voice app.
We participated in an activity where groups were assigned a part of the product development cycle, and each group was then tasked to explore and identify tools in each category for a voice app.
The tools here would be useful for any creator in voice. Here is what we came up with in each category:
Takeaways
From this exercise, I noticed that there weren’t more than 1–2 tools in any given category that were specific to voice. An exception to this was the most popular part of the development cycle, Voice User Interface Designing and Prototyping, which has the most players with a plethora of options to choose from.
Most of the tools were existing solutions that expanded across different platforms (i.e. web, mobile). In addition, the area with the least tools specific to voice was the promotion and marketing category. Creators on this platform are still using traditional marketing methods to promote voice applications, including social media, email marketing, and word of mouth marketing.
Voice app promotion and marketing is inherently different from traditional marketing. With voice app discovery moving towards more natural and implicit methods, creators must think differently around growing and monetizing their user base. Alexa will now automatically surface relevant voice applications based on the need and context, further emphasizing the importance of marketing and promotion around your creation.
I hope these insights and tools help you with creating and promoting your next voice product. And a special shoutout to VoiceTechGlobal and the community for making all of this possible!
