A voice domain is what you say to your voice assistant to invoke a particular Voice App.
This is also known as an invocation name.
Cortana and Alexa refer to Voice Apps as Skills and Google calls them Actions. So now that we have the lingo down, let's see how this works:
“Hey Google, ask Zammo how quickly it can create a Voice App?”
Google Assistant: "It takes 30 minutes"
In this conversation, Zammo is the voice domain/invocation name. Like with web domains, your invocation name should be unique to your brand, and getting the right name is important if you’re to be heard!
Users will have to say your invocation name whenever they want to engage with your Voice App, so it needs to be super-easy to remember – ideally no more than 2-3 words.
Voice Apps are automatically made available to users on Google and Cortana when they’re published, no need to enable and launch the Voice App. With Alexa; however, users need to search for and manually enable the Voice App. There’s currently over 56,750 apps for them to choose from!
Make sure you chose a voice domain name that is available on all voice assistant platforms to avoid confusion. You'll risk the high chance of poor customer experience if your users have to remember a different name for each platform.
You can’t change your invocation name once your Voice App has been published, so make sure you get it right the first time!
Find out why voice domains are scarce.