Hands-on Building Alexa Skills

Alexa is the most popular and widely used virtual assistant. Using simple voice commands, you can ask Alexa to find and read the news, play music, order a pizza, or control other smart home devices. The most valuable use of these voice-based apps on top of Alexa, called Alexa Skills, is for business use. There is a risk that many businesses are not taking advantage of Alexa Skills benefits, and are also wondering how and why they can—and should—use Alexa Skills to help drive their business growth. This course introduces the core concepts of voice design and how to program your backend using the Alexa Skills Kit.

You will learn Voice User Interface Design principles, and how to build custom voice commands for Alexa devices using the Alexa Skills Kit, Voiceflow, and Node.js. You will explore the Alexa ecosystem and the components that make up custom Alexa skills; learn how to configure the Amazon Developer Portal, and create, code, and deploy it using Voiceflow, Node.js, Lambda functions, and Amazon Web Services. You will discover how to test your skills in the browser and on an actual Alexa device and share them with other Alexa users. You will learn to develop, test, validate, and troubleshooting skills, manage the publishing process, and work with the Alexa developer console.

By the end of this course, you will be able to create voice UIs, configure Alexa skill functionality, and test/expand your skills.

This course is suitable for developers who want to learn how to master Alexa Skills and use Alexa to build amazing voice UI applications, with real-world commercial benefit. Basic JavaScript and Node.js experience would be beneficial but not necessary.

About the Author

Paul Hickey (CEO, Data Driven Design) has created and grown businesses via digital strategy and internet marketing for more than 10 years. His sweet spot is using analytics to design and build websites and grow the audience and revenue of businesses via SEO/Blogging, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook and Instagram ads, social media content marketing and email marketing. The part that he’s most passionate about is quantifying next marketing actions based on real data.

Most recently, Paul has pioneered building voice-based applications like Alexa Skills and Google Actions to help businesses become more efficient and effective. He recently founded the Nashville Voice Conference, which focuses on introducing opportunities for all businesses to increase efficiency, effectiveness and relevancy via integrating voice-based applications like Alexa Skills and Google Actions into their digital presence. He started Data Driven Design, LLC in 2016 with the sole intent to bring his customers’ results driven by data and not theories or just opinions. He works to ensure that every customer gets their business and marketing goals met or exceeded by using the most effective marketing tools. He spends his spare time studying technology and consumer behavior trends and is a master at delivering customer service and results.

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