Amazon has made it easier for owners of its Echo to do online shopping, in what is an expected expansion of the capabilities of the retailer’s portable speaker. Prime subscribers are now being given the option of placing orders for items they shopped for previously by voice commands alone, via the Alexa digital assistant, half a year after the Echo initially launched.
Users can place orders for items they previously bought by using the verbal command prefix “Alexa, reorder” before the name of the item to be purchased, according to Slashgear. Alexa will then advise on the current price for the product and ask for a re-ordering confirmation. The system will only be available for Prime subscribers, and will only work for items that are Prime-eligible and that have been ordered before. If the order is placed accidentally, it can be stopped with the command “Alexa, cancel order,” or via the Your Orders page in the Amazon store.
Echo-based re-ordering is the latest scheme Amazon has cooked up to make it as easy as possible to shop through its store. In March, it launched the Dash Button, a small unit with a single button that, when pressed, will automatically order one specific product.
