Gain support for your content

Just wrote a post on your blog and know your readers want to appreciate it with more than a +1? Sharing your new music track on the web rather than on the street with an open guitar case? Get the financial support you deserve with the Google Checkout Support button.

The Support button gives content creators an easy way to gather financial support for their efforts or their service. Bloggers, musicians, authors, developers and more who give away what they create for free may implement the Support button on their websites and enable their users to support their endeavors. If you’re already using Blogger, you can implement the Support button in 5 simple steps:

1. Sign up for a Google Checkout Merchant account at checkout.google.com/sell.
2. Be sure to enable the HTML API by going to the Settings tab, clicking the integration link and unchecking the “My company will only post digitally signed carts” checkbox. Also, copy the Merchant ID for use in step 5. 
3. Back in Blogger, on the Design | Page Elements tab click “add a gadget” where you wish to place the Support gadget. 
4. Add the "Support My Blog" gadget from the gadget gallery. 
5. Customize your support button settings. The Checkout Merchant ID is the one you copied down in step two. Save and you’re done! 

To generate a Support button for use on other sites, please visit the Checkout Developer Guide. For an example of the support button in action, check out http://bloggercheckout.blogspot.com/.

Posted by Peng Ying, Developer Programs Engineer

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Monetizing Games with In-App Payments

(Cross-posted on the Google Code Blog)

Kabam was part of the initial launch of Google+ Games with two game titles, Dragons of Atlantis and Edgeworld, and we recently added Global Warfare. For these games, we integrated Google In-App Payments and we’re pleased with our games’ monetization to date. There are a couple things we learned along the way that we’re happy to share with the community.

Integrating In-App Payments

Integrating In-App Payments in our games was very simple, especially when compared to other payment platforms. There is excellent documentation available, complete with examples for each step of the purchase flow. We also used open source libraries such as ruby-jwt to generate the tokens required for each purchase option.

We designed our games and purchase pages around the expectation of instant feedback, making sure to incorporate page loads or refreshes wherever possible. For example, in Edgeworld, a player attacking an enemy base can load the list of Platinum options instantly, without waiting for the list of payment options to load. After their Platinum purchase, the player is immediately brought back to the game, with their new currency and items waiting for them.

Pro Tip: Strive to Reduce Purchaser Friction

One of the keys to maximizing revenue is to remove as much friction as possible from the purchase flow, making sure as many people as possible get from one step of the flow to the next. Many payment platforms send players to their own website and multi-page checkout flow. The Google In-App Payments approach allows us to keep players on our game page for the entire flow, making sure we can manage more of the process and reduce abandonment.

Additionally, the player's credit card information is stored securely, so once a player has made a purchase anywhere using In-App Payments, their information is available for future purchases without additional data entry. Finally, JavaScript callbacks provided by In-App Payments allow us to show the effects of the purchase immediately, improving customer satisfaction.

General Recommendations

For those experienced in this space, the following may seem rudimentary. At the same time, I’d be remiss not to include these recommendations as they are important to developing a successful game payments system:

• Make sure your payment flow is as seamless as possible, never giving the player the opportunity to get bored waiting for something to load. 
• Record and monitor each step of the payment flow in order to identify potential problems. 
• Run A/B tests on your purchase option page to optimize the number of players who make a purchase, as well as the amount of the average purchase. 

We are proud to be among the first companies on Google’s exciting new monetization platform, and we look forward to the continuing growth in features, functionality and developer tools.

Posted by Beau Harrington, Senior Development Director, Kabam

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Google Offers beta comes to Dallas

It may be fall here in Mountain View, but the “Summer of Love” lives on with the launch of Google Offers in Dallas!

The AT&T Performing Arts Center is running our first Google Offer in Dallas for tickets to what has been everyone’s favorite “rock musical” for nearly half a century: HAIR! Subscribers who sign up for Google Offers in Dallas can grab a seat at this Tony Award winning show for only $15 (a $40-50 value) for performances between 9/27 - 10/2.



If you would like to receive deals of the day in your email inbox for the cities where Google Offers is currently available, please visit google.com/offers to subscribe. If we aren’t yet available in a city near you, please sign up to receive updates.

Enjoy the show!

Posted by Eric Rosenblum, Director of Product Management, Google Offers

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Enhancing the shopping experience on Google Product Search

Shortly after joining Google from Like.com, my team and I developed and launched Boutiques -- a fashion website offering women new ways to browse and shop for apparel. Today, we’re taking the features that shoppers absolutely love from Boutiques and incorporating them into Google Product Search -- so millions of people can use them every day. This is the first in a series of improvements we’re making to Google Product Search leveraging the computer vision and machine learning technology developed by the team we affectionately call our fashion and computer nerds. We hope you’ll enjoy what’s new today, and what’s around the corner for the upcoming holiday season. A Redesigned Homepage The first thing you’ll probably notice is our new homepage. This new look and feel is designed to inspire and facilitate easy, enjoyable browsing and shopping.

Better Ways to Shop, Starting with Dresses

By increasing the size of each image, simplifying much of the text around the images, and lightening the text color, we’ve emphasized the more visual aspects of apparel shopping. We’ve also integrated the most popular search refinements from Boutiques. Using the same innovative machine learning and computer vision technologies we developed for Boutiques, you can now browse dress collections that match the color, silhouette and genre you desire.

Explore visually similar styles
And because we think browsing and discovering new items is what makes shopping fun, we’ve added a feature to Product Search that makes it easy to do just that. Let’s say a particular dress catches your eye. Now, you can explore similar styles and discover new designers by clicking on that dress and viewing dozens of visually similar ones. We think you’ll find this fun --and addictive!-- and we hope it brings that element of surprise and discovery we all love with brick-and-mortar shopping to the online shopping experience.

An update on Boutiques.com and related properties
As we continue to integrate technology and lessons learned from Boutiques.com into Google Product Search, we will be redirecting shoppers from Boutiques.com to Google Product Search. The former Like.com team, alongside the Google Product Search team, will drive new ideas for apparel shopping through one unified product. The team is excited to be a part of the shopping experience on Google and have our work displayed to millions of users every day.  
If you’re a user of Boutiques.com and other Like.com websites, you’ll soon receive an email with instructions for saving your data before those websites are transitioned on October 14. If you have any questions please email us at boutiques-feedback@google.com. 
Like other teams that have joined Google, we’re thrilled with the opportunity to showcase our experience and technology to all of Google’s shoppers.
Burak Gokturk, Like.com Co-Founder and member of the Google Commerce team

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Test Driving the Future of Payments

Now that we’ve launched the first version of Google Wallet on Sprint, I thought it might be interesting to share my experiences with Google Wallet as an early tester.

Having worked with a number of our merchant partners on their plans to accept Google Wallet, I was very excited when my Sprint Nexus S 4G phone arrived so I could use Google Wallet in their stores for myself. Over the last few months, I’ve had a lot of fun testing Google Wallet in various locations, and even I’ve been surprised by just how convenient it can be to use your phone as your wallet.

For example, I was running late for work last Friday, so I hailed one of New York’s ubiquitous yellow cabs. Because every one of them accepts Google Wallet, when I reached the office I was able to punch in a tip on the cab’s LCD screen, tap my phone on the terminal to pay, and hop out. I was already checking email on my phone on the way to work, so even with the added security measure of entering my PIN on the phone, this was far easier than using my free hand to fish my wallet out of my pocket to find cash or a card.

Later, at lunchtime, I had a craving for an ice cold Coke. Google may be well-known for free food at our offices, but in the name of science, I decided to use one of the high-tech vending machines we have had on loan from Coca-Cola. Nothing tastes quite so good as the future of commerce. And if you’ve ever tried to feed a crumpled old bill into a vending machine, you can appreciate why this is one of my favorite ways that Google Wallet is more convenient.

Finally, on the way home, I stopped into the CVS across the street from the office to replenish some much-needed household supplies. A bottle of laundry detergent, a tube of toothpaste, and a pack of gum later, I tapped my phone at the checkout counter and completed my third transaction of the day without using my traditional wallet.

                                 

Without even putting my phone away after using it to make a purchase, I called my girlfriend to make a plan to meet for dinner, and headed home. I wished I could have used Google Wallet on the subway as well—Google Wallet isn’t everywhere yet—but we are adding new merchants all the time. For example, OfficeMax just upgraded over one hundred of their stores to fully support Google Wallet, including SingleTap™ technology that lets you redeem coupons and apply the MaxPerks Rewards card at the same time you make a purchase.

If you have a Sprint Nexus S 4G phone (the first phone to support Google Wallet), now you too can experience paying with your phone in thousands of locations nationwide. Or you can buy the phone today on the web or at your nearest Sprint store.

As a final note, I did encounter a couple of instances during testing when my Google Wallet was not recognized, and I had to fall back on a plastic card. The team is hard at work fixing any such problems as we discover them. We are eager to hear your feedback to help us continue to improve the experience, so please get in touch once you’ve had a chance to try it out!

Posted by Philippe Dauman Jr., Commerce Strategic Partnerships

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Launching Google Wallet on Sprint and Working with Visa, American Express and Discover

(cross-posted on Official Google Blog and Google Mobile Blog)

In May we announced Google Wallet—an app that makes your phone your wallet—with Citi, MasterCard, Sprint and First Data. With Google Wallet, you can tap, pay and save using your phone and near field communication (NFC).

We’ve been testing it extensively, and today we’re releasing the first version of the app to Sprint. That means we’re beginning to roll out Google Wallet to all Sprint Nexus S 4G phones through an over-the-air update—just look for the “Wallet” app. Here’s a demo of Google Wallet in action:


Google Wallet enables you to pay with your Citi MasterCard credit card and the Google Prepaid Card, which can be funded with any of your existing plastic credit cards. As a thanks to early adopters, we’re adding a $10 free bonus to the Google Prepaid Card if you set it up in Google Wallet before the end of the year.

When we announced Google Wallet, we pledged a commitment to an open commerce ecosystem. We appreciate Citi and MasterCard for being our launch partners. And today, Visa, Discover and American Express have made available their NFC specifications that could enable their cards to be added to future versions of Google Wallet.

Our goal is to make it possible for you to add all of your payment cards to Google Wallet, so you can say goodbye to even the biggest traditional wallets. In fact, we’ve got a video of our first customer, someone who is ready to replace his famously over-stuffed wallet. We hope Google Wallet gives him “serenity now.”

This is still just the beginning and while we’re excited about this first step, we look forward to bringing Google Wallet to more phones in the future. You can learn more about Google Wallet at google.com/wallet.


Posted by Osama Bedier, Vice President of Payments

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Reminder: Google Product Search Data Feed Changes This Week

On September 22, we'll begin enforcing the new Google Product Search data feed specification and policies, which we announced in July. If you've already made the required changes to your feed, we recommend running a Test Data Feed to make sure that your updated feed complies with our new requirements.

If you've not made the changes, we highly recommend reviewing the materials cited in our announcement and follow-up blog posts, updating your feed, and testing the revised feed using the Test Data Feed.

Starting September 22, we'll gradually begin enforcing the new requirements by removing items from Google Product Search that do not meet the new requirements and, in some cases, suspending accounts that do not comply.

Posted by Mayuresh Saoji, Senior Product Manager, Google Product Search Team

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