Although voice apps are still not as widely available as other channels, we are currently at the tipping point where more and more voice apps will be launched, and even more will come later.
Eventually, every business will ask how to launch and promote a voice app of their own.
Even if they aren’t widespread yet, launching a voice app will just get easier from here. Both Google and Amazon are promoting skills to create voice apps. This is because there’s a growing demand for voice apps as more businesses find value in them. So, how does one launch a voice app exactly?
Today, we’ll take you through the all the steps to launch and promote a voice app of your own from planning, to launch and maintenance.
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Planning
This is the first critical part of your voice app strategy. To go through this, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions.
Think ahead. Do you foresee your customers accessing your services, buying them or enabling them via voice app? If so, how will you incorporate voice into this? You’ll be hard pressed to find a business that converted its entire service offering into voice, simply because not all aspects of your products or services can be offered via this new channel. The interface is different, the interactions are on a whole new level, and the expectations are different.
For publications, for example, and for media companies in general, we can see two ways that magazines implement voice. One, they completely adapt their publication or content delivery for voice. This can mean digested versions of the articles and flash briefings.
The other way is they create a new but complementary service through their voice app. For example, food magazines can offer a voice app service that guides readers through recipes. Health and fitness magazines could launch personal trainer voice apps. As you can observe, it depends on the specific subject or topic that the magazine is known for and it makes you go outside of what a magazine would normally do.
A guide to follow here is that you need to ensure that the voice app adds value and brings you closer to your readers. Once you have your voice app conceptualised, you then need to decide where to offer it – Amazon, Google, etc.
Development
In developing a voice app, you have three choices – develop it in-house, commission an app developer to make one from scratch or to enlist the help of a digital publishing platform that will allow you to create a voice app through customised templates.
The first two are expensive but offer the greatest customisation. The last option may not be as customised as the first two, but is certainly cheaper and provides an easy starting point for venturing into voice apps.
Launch
Launching the app soon will guarantee better chances of getting indexed earlier and gaining you the top spot in voice search results especially in implicit invocations. Remember that only a single result is presented during search so securing the top spot will determine your success in getting discovered by new users.
When launching a voice app, it’s important to promote it at least lightly prior to its launch. A news post on your website, announcement in your email newsletter and a couple of social post teasers should be a good start to inform your current customers that a voice app is coming.
Monitoring and optimising
After a voice app is launched, you have to watch your voice app analytics like a hawk. Remember that this is a new experience for your customers and it’s also a new channel for you – something you are unfamiliar with. There will be lots of places for improvement.
Voice app analytics can show you conversion paths, error phrases, or dialogues you didn’t plan or even sentiment analysis through pitch. Just like how app retention is dictated by user experience and how much the app becomes a part of a person’s routine, the same goes for voice apps. Data analysis from voice apps and the optimization that follows will ensure your voice app remains relevant for your readers.
