Dive Brief:

• As Prime Day plays out, here’s an interesting stat: About 70.6% of Amazon Alexa users said in a recent survey they have made a purchase on Amazon through an Alexa's voice command at least once, but 77% of them admitted to checking Amazon’s website or the app after making the order request to make sure that Alexa ordered correctly, according to LivePerson’s study of 500 Alexa users and their voice ordering habits.

• The survey also found that 63.1% of Alexa device owners planned to shop on Amazon Prime Day. In addition, 70.6% of Alexa owners have an Amazon Prime account and 45.8% of Alexa owners are repeat shoppers (meaning that, of consumers who give Alexa shopping a try once, almost two thirds turn into repeat users.)

• LivePerson also learned that Alexa was most often used to purchase electronics, home goods, and groceries, with 90% of users indicating they believed ordering via voice command would be mainstream within the next 5 years. Of all of Alexa’s use cases, playing music and setting an alarm were the most popular. 

Dive Insight:

Amazon's Prime Day, a showcase for everything Amazon does well and wants to do well, is now in its third year. That is a span of time that also roughly tracks with the evolution of Alexa, which first became available in the Amazon Echo in November 2014.

For the first two Prime Days, Amazon didn't make a particularly obvious effort to incorporate Alexa ordering capabilities into special Prime Day offers. Maybe Alexa didn't need the help. As this survey reminds us, as if we didn't already know, Alexa is popular.

However, it also suggests that Alexa doesn't have the complete trust of the people using the virtual assistant to place their orders correctly. That might be more of a surprise, though the need to follow up doesn't necessarily translate to distrust. The LivePerson survey findings went on to note that just 11% of Alexa users said specifically that they did not trust Alexa to order correctly.

For those not making orders via Alexa, distrust also didn't appear to be a factor, as 41% of those surveyed who don't use Alexa for ordering said they found it easier to make orders online or on the Amazon app, while 33.8% said they just weren’t comfortable making orders via voice. 

Leading up to Prime Day 2017, Amazon made quite an effort to encourage people to make their Prime Day orders through Alexa, promising them additional discounts, while also giving Alexa the ability to sign them up for Prime memberships. The effort is understandable now, given that last year, with little extra dedicated promotion, around 80,000 voice orders were made to Amazon on Prime Day.

That's a drop in the buck compared to the 1 million or so Prime Day 2016 orders that came through the Amazon app, but Amazon appears to believe it's growth worth investing in.