Idea, tests and prototype of an Alexa Skill with Google Analytics data for a newsroom. Use case slides for Ringier Analytics Summit 2019: Idea: Offer website performance data to the newsroom via voice How to develop an Alexa Skill Why voice to communicate data to the newsroom Disadvantages of an Alexa Skill to communicate data to the newsroom

1. Data Culture
How to foster a data culture in the business?

2. Use-case:
Amazon
Alexa Skill
2

3. Idea
Offer website performance data to the
newsroom via voice
3

4. (Initial) why voice
● Additional channel
● It’s cool as a lambda / nodejs project
● Make complex queries available
4

5. Probably too complex to be asked by editors
5

6. Demo / Workflow
6

7. Open skill / invocation
Me: “Alexa start Blick Analytics”
Alexa: “Blick Analytics started. What’s your
question?”
7

8. Trigger intent
Me: “Female share in percent”
Alexa: “Our female share
yesterday was (X) percent. More
questions?”
8

9. Tigger intent
Me: “Best article for SEO entries”
Alexa: “(Article title) was the best
article for SEO entries. It generated
(XXX) thousand entries through
Google. More questions?
9

10. Trigger intent
Me: “Start summery of yesterday”
Alexa: We had (X) million pageviews.
Yeah, that’s (X) percent (above/below)
the daily goal to be #1. Say NEXT for
more!
10

11. Pageviews + Goal User + Goal Best articleNext Next
11

12. Best article above 55
years
Best article below 34
years
...Next Next
12

13. How to develop an Alexa Skill
13

14. Build (Frontend) Test Distribution (Store) Analytics
14

15. Invocation
15

16. Setup sample
utterances to
trigger an intent
16

17. Collect user inputs as slots
17

18. 18

19. Female Share Intent
Handler
19

20. Google Analytics query
20

21. Speech Output
21

22. (Final) why voice:
● Additional channel
● Make complex queries available
● It’s cool as a lambda / nodejs project
22

23. (Final) why voice:
● Multiple data-sources
possible
● The voice-“frontend” is
predefined, thus you
don’t spend time with
CSS
23

24. (Final) why voice:
● It’s seems to be easy to guide the user,
because voice can be very explicit (e. g. with
goals)
● You are forced to make information
understandable
24

25. (Final) why voice:
● It’s easy to setup everywhere (compared to
screens)
● You can engage people, because it’s new tech
and kind of fun
25

26. Disadvantages
● Swiss german input won’t work
● It’s still noise. Maybe just usable in closed
meeting rooms
26

27. Disadvantages
● You need to ask proactive / It’s not possible to
let Alexa speak without a trigger
● People need to ask, but don’t knows what to
ask
=> chained outputs like “yesterday”
27

28. Disadvantages
● Connection to visuals / graphs
=> Echo Show or Fire TV stick
28

29. Echo Show
with text or graphs
29
Fire TV
Stick
+ screen

30. 30
Echo Buttons
Trigger voice or sheen
output with button click
I guess it’s time to mention now that I still work for Ringier and don’t get commissions from Amazon for this presentation

31. Disadvantages (technical)
● It’s not easy to make everything in GA
available
● Queries need to be predefined
31

32. Currently disadvantages (technical)
● Permissions / Alexa for Business
Organizations
○ Give access to select businesses by adding organizations specific ARNs.
This feature is only available in the United States.
● Just image + text in visual Alexa skills
available… it’s all beta => maybe wait or test
Google Home / Google Actions
32

33. “Smart Newsroom”
33

34. 34

35. 1) Indicator for
above average SEO
article
2) Ask: “Best
article for SEO
entries”
🔈3) Voice output +
screen output: “Best
article for SEO entries
was ...” 35

36. Visual output of smart assistant
36

37. 37
Questions
tobias.willmann@ringier.ch
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobiaswillmann/
https://twitter.com/WillmannTobias