Last month, we shared the Alexa skills and their developers who were nominated for the 23rd Annual Webby Awards. The Webby Awards, which honors excellence on the internet, added ten new categories just for voice, recognizing voice as a prominent technology. Today, we congratulate those Alexa developers whose skills won them a coveted Webby award and recognition from their peers and the industry.

Being recognized by the Webby Academy is an energizing milestone for voice, and having so many Alexa skills nominated makes it an exciting time for Alexa developers. As these developers discovered, these awards further underscore the enormous opportunities available for creating engaging voice-first experiences.

Join us in congratulating all the award winners and honorees. The winning skills are prime examples of highly engaging Alexa skills. Try them and see what customers and the Webby Academy agree are some of the best voice experiences of 2019.

And the Webby Goes To …

Out of all the entries nominated in the Webby voice categories, here are the Alexa skills and developers chosen as winners by the Webby Academy and those who voted in the Webby Awards People’s Choice.

Mr. Robot: Daily Five/Nine by NBCUniversal Media, LLC

Winning Categories (3): Games & Entertainment, Best Writing, and People’s Voice

A mind-bending, interactive story game inspired by the appearance of Amazon Echo in USA Network’s Golden Globe® and Emmy®-winning series MR. ROBOT.

Headspace: Guided Meditation for Everybody by Headspace

Winning Categories (2): Health, Fitness & Lifestyle and People’s Voice

Headspace is meditation and mindfulness made simple. Get a new guided meditation every day, plus a sleep exercise to help you wind down.

True or False? by labworks.io ltd

Winning Categories (2): Education & Reference and People’s Voice

This is a fun game to test your trivia knowledge about the world by answering either "true" or "false." The rules are simple, but the questions aren’t.

Alexa Lifeline by VML, Sydney, Australia

Winning Category: Productivity

Alexa Lifeline allows women in abusive relationships to secretly text a friend for help without the abuser knowing or even suspecting the communication.

BBC Good Food by Immediate Media Co.

Winning Category: Food & Drink

Simple step-by-step recipes for 11,000 triple-tested recipes searchable by ingredients, dishes, diet types, time required, difficulty, cuisine, and more.

BBC Kids by BBC Media Applications Technologies Limited

Winning Category: Best User Experience

Kids can listen to stories read by special guests, play games, and sing along to some of their favorite songs, with characters from the popular CBeebies show.

Harvard Business Review: Management Tip by Harvard Business Review

Winning Category: Business & Finance

Quick, practical management advice to help you do your job better, delivered weekdays via a flash briefing. This is the audio version of Harvard Business Review’s email newsletter.

Honorable Mentions

In addition to the winners, many Alexa skills were named as honorees in one or more of the Webby voice categories:

• Agent Marketer Flash by The Agent Marketer (Education & Reference)
• ALIEN: Offworld Colony Simulator by 20th Century Fox, Vice (Best User Experience)
• Al Jazeera by Al Jazeera, Your World / Spoken Layer (News)
• Assassin’s Creed® Odyssey Spartan by Ubisoft (Games & Entertainment)
• The Bar by Diageo (Food & Drink)
• Bedtime Explorers by Kinderling Kids Radio
• BIC Office Assistant by Magic & Co. (Productivity)
• Big Sky by Philosophical Creations (Productivity)
• Budweiser (Whassup) by Anheuser-Busch (Food & Drink)
• Chompers by Gimlet Media (Health, Fitness & Lifestyle)
• CNBC by NBCUniversal Media, LLC (Business & Finance)
• Elixirr by Elixirr (Business & Finance)
• Esme & Roy by Sesame Workshop / HBO (Education & Reference)
• Finding Dolores by Gimlet Media / Magic + Co (Best Writing, Games & Entertainment)
• Goodnight Kiddo – Sleep Meditations for Kids by Meditation Studio LLC (Best Writing + Health, Fitness & Lifestyle)
• Jeopardy! by Sony Pictures Television (Best Writing + Games & Entertainment)
• Jurassic World Revealed by Universal Studios Interactive/Earplay (Best Writing, Games & Entertainment)
• Make Me Smart by Marketplace (Business & Finance + Education & Reference)
• Men’s Health Minute by Hearst / SpokenLayer (Health, Fitness & Lifestyle)
• Morton Brine Time by Morton Salt, Inc. (Food & Drink)
• Please Apologize by McGarrah Jessee (Best Writing)
• Sleep Sounds by Invoked Apps LLC (Health, Fitness & Lifestyle)
• Song Quiz by Volley, Inc (Games & Entertainment)
• Suggest a Beer by Dabble Lab (Food & Drink)
• syfy Wire News by NBCUniversal Media, LLC (News)
• TuneIn Live by TuneIn (Best User Experience)
• Westworld: The Maze by HBO / 360i (Best User Experience)

Best Practices for Building Webby-Worthy Alexa Skills

Congratulations to all the developers nominated for the 23rd Annual Webby Awards, and a special shout out to those who won or were recognized in any of the new categories for voice. These skills demonstrate some most important aspects of high-quality voice experiences, earning high customer engagement, high ratings in the Alexa Skills Store, and positive customer reviews.  

To create highly engaging skills of your own, here are just a few tips from top Alexa developers:

• Design with the customer in mind – Start by creating a customer persona, not by writing code, so you can truly understand what a customer will want from you skill.
• Understand that developing for voice is different – Don’t just try to recreate a screen-based experience for your Alexa skill.
• Keep the voice user interface simple – Too many features or too many options at any point in the conversation can confuse and overwhelm your customers.
• Stress quality over quantity – Design quality into the interactions, the content, your skill’s responses, sound effects—everywhere—to delight your customers.
• Keep your content—and user experience—fresh – Add new content regularly to ensure customers don’t hear the same lines, questions, or facts repeatedly.

For more details on these and other best practices, download our Alexa Skill Builder’s Guide: Tried-and-Tested Skill-Building Tips from Top Alexa Developers.