AiC Episode 90

In this episode, Teri welcomes Sarah Andrew Wilson, the Chief Content Officer at Matchbox.io, a company that is producing some of the most engaging Alexa skills.

Welcome, Sarah!

Sarah was an educator and musician for 23 years before she joined Matchbox 2 years ago to oversee all of the content for their voice applications. Matchbox develops some of the most popular and highest rated voice games on Amazon Alexa, including Question of the Day and Kids Quiz.

The Origin of Matchbox

  • It was founded in January 2017 by the CEO, Joel Wilson. As a curious developer, he bought an Alexa device and was wondering what he could create for it. He created a few skills including Question of the Day, but the content for the skill eventually became too much work for him, so he hired Sarah to help with the content.
  • By 2018 they were expanding rapidly in terms of users.

Their Skills

  • They have Question of the Day which gives users one question a day and when they get it correct they get a bonus question. They also have a subscription series as a way of monetizing this skill.
  • In response to users’ requests, they created Three Questions and Kid’s Quiz.
  • Three Questions gives users three questions at a time while Kid’s Quiz is kid-friendly and gives the young users three questions a day while they also get to choose their topic.
  • They also have the Question of the Day Flash Briefing which talks about the question of the day for every previous day and how everyone did on it.
  • They have many other experimental skills which teach them a lot about developing voice applications.

An Alexa Success Story with Sarah Andrew Wilson of Matchbox.io

Managing the Content

  • They always aim for high quality and interesting content.
  • They have three main goals for learners of all ages (adults and kids). The goals include learn something new every day, enjoy high quality content, and come back tomorrow for more fun.
  • When creating content, Sarah uses Google Maps to come up with interesting information that forms the questions for the skills. They also create questions around all sorts of interesting topics.
  • They used to update the content on the skills every day, but now they pre-schedule it about three or four months in advance.

Matchbox’s User Base and Success

  • They recently hit 5 million unique users from 8 countries.
  • They have been hugely successful with monetization. This is mainly with Question of the Day where users wanted lots of questions so they could learn more, so they created a trivia club. Once Question of the Day gives users the original daily question, they can get three more bonus questions.
  • They also have regional and national leader boards which really motivate the users who love them. The users also get access to game packs where they can choose their own topics. The game packs are also multi-player where a user can play with up to 4 different people. Users find that meaningful and are willing to pay extra to get all of the benefits.
  • Questions range from very easy to very challenging.
  • Trivia club is available in the US and the UK, and will be expanding to other regions as soon as Amazon opens monetization opportunities in other countries.

List of resources mentioned in this episode:

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