How to publish your Skill into the Alexa Skills Store

Once you have completed CREATING and TESTING in Vuix a new skill for Alexa, you can submit it for certification.

How to submit your skill for certification

1. Log on to the Developer Portal.
2. Navigate to the Alexa section by clicking App & Services and then clicking Alexa in the top navigation. This displays a list of your existing Alexa skills.
3. Find the skill to submit in the list and choose Edit. Note that there should be a green check mark next to each section. If any sections are missing the check mark, this means that at least one required field is not filled in. Review the section and complete all required fields.
4. Click the Submit for Certification button. When prompted to confirm, click Yes.

Tips and tricks on filling in required fields

• Category and Subcategory
• Testing Instructions
• Countries & Region
• Full Skill Description
• Keywords and Images
  
  

How to track skill status during the certification process

While your skill is in the certification process, do not make any further edits to the skill.

• If the skill has been certified, the email will provide an estimate of when it will become available to end users.
• If the skill could not be certified, the email provides information about the issues you need to correct. You can make any necessary changes and then re-submit.

When the skill passes certification and becomes published, users can see the skill in the Amazon Alexa App and the Alexa skills store and enable it for use with their devices.

The Submit for Certification button becomes available once you complete all required fields.

Choosing the right category helps users to discover your skill in the Alexa skills store.

I'd recommend to do a little research first and then choose the category. If your skill applies to two categories, you might want to choose one with less competition.

If your skill has some specific content, or you're under NDA, filling in testing instructions might be a way to go for you.

However, for most skills, you can just write: "Just as a standard skill." and it will be fine.

Select all countries here, that's how you can reach more users.

Short Skill Description

This description (160 character max) displays in the skill list in the Alexa App. Try not be super creative, just describe what your skill does.

Full skill description describes everything: skill's purpose, features, and how it works.

It's the best way to get users at the moment.

If you don't want to use the hack, just try to describe what the skill does in detail and what's the benefit of using it.

Example Phrases

Amazon will display these phrases in the Alexa App, so if you have some exciting features in your skill, this is the best place to describe them.

Keywords are not that important for promoting your skill in the Alexa skills store, so don't spend too much time optimizing for them. Just come up with some that represent your skill.

Images section is much more interesting. You need to provide two images, 108 x 108 px and 512 x 512 px correspondingly. 

Try to find/design the image that is bright and has only a few words (5 max). I use canva.com to come up with design ideas and https://www.sketchapp.com/ to create icons.

How to track skill status during the certification process

Once you have submitted the skill, it shows “Certification” in the Status column on the list of skills. 

In Storyline, you will also see orange Certification status on the skill you submitted, along with blue Dev badge for "in development" status and green Live for skills that are live.