Tag Archives: guide

Introducing the Google Wallet API

Posted by Petra Cross, Engineer, Google Wallet and Jose Ugia, Google Developer Relations Engineer

Google Pay API for Passes is now called Google Wallet API

Formerly known as Google Pay API for Passes, the Google Wallet API lets you digitize everything from boarding passes to loyalty programs, and engage your customers with notifications and real-time updates.

New features in Google Wallet API

Support for Generic Pass Type

The Google Pay API for Passes supported 7 types of passes: offers, loyalty cards, gift cards, event tickets, boarding passes, transit tickets and vaccine cards. But what if you want to issue passes or cards that do not fit into any of these categories, such as membership cards, or insurance cards?

We are thrilled to announce support for generic passes to the Google Wallet API so you can customize your pass objects to adapt to your program characteristics. The options are endless. If it is a card and has some text, a barcode or a QR code, it can be saved as a generic card.

You now have the flexibility to control the look and design of the card itself, by providing a card template that can contain up to 3 rows with 1-3 fields per row. You can also configure a number of attributes such as the barcode, QR code, or a hero image. Check out our documentation to learn more about how to create generic passes.

While generic passes can be used to mimic the appearance of any existing supported pass type (such as a loyalty card), we recommend you to continue to use specialized pass types when available. For example, when you use the boarding pass type for boarding passes your users receive flight delay notifications.

Grouping passes and mixing pass types

With the new Google Wallet API, you can also group passes to offer a better experience to your users when multiple passes are needed. For example, you can group the entry ticket, a parking pass, and food vouchers for a concert.

In your user’s list of passes, your users see a pass tile with a badge showing the number of items in the group. When they tap on this tile, a carousel with all passes appears, allowing them to easily swipe between all passes in the group.


Here is an example JSON Web Token payload showing one offer and one event ticket, mixed together and sharing the same groupingId. Later, if you need to add or remove passes to/from the group, you can use the REST API to update the grouping information.

{

  "iss": "OWNER_EMAIL_ADDRESS",

  "aud": "google",

  "typ": "savetowallet",

  "iat": "UNIX_TIME",

  "origins": [],

  "payload": {

    "offerObjects": [

      {

        "classId": "YOUR_ISSUER_ID.OFFER_CLASS_ID",

        "id": "YOUR_ISSUER_ID.OFFER_ID",

        "groupingInfo": {

          "groupingId": "groupId1",

          "sortIndex": 2

        }

      }

    ],

    "eventTicketObjects": [

      {

        "classId": "YOUR_ISSUER_ID.EVENT_CLASS_ID",

        "id": "YOUR_ISSUER_ID.EVENT_ID",

        "groupingInfo": {

          "groupingId": "groupId1",

          "sortIndex": 1

        }

      }

    ] 

  }

}


A note about Google Pay API for Passes:

Although we are introducing the Google Wallet API, all existing developer integrations with the previous Google Pay Passes API will continue to work. When the Google Wallet app is launched in just a few weeks, make sure to use the new “Add to Google Wallet” button in the updated button guidelines.

We’re really excited to build a great digital wallet experience with you, and can’t wait to see how you use the Google Wallet API to enhance your user experience.

Learn more

A new guide for integrating Google Shopping ads using Google APIs

Good news for developers planning to integrate Google Shopping ads! We have just released a brand new guide explaining how to automate the delivery of Google Shopping on behalf of merchants using Google APIs.

The Shopping Automation Guide covers the steps required to set up new merchants using a combination of the Content API for Shopping and AdWords API. It describes how you can fully automate certain tasks that would otherwise be performed manually using the Merchant Center and AdWords websites.

The guide is for developers interested in feed management, campaign management, or full automation workflow that includes both. The workflows provide detailed explanations of how the different APIs can be used for each stage of the user journey. You can follow the workflow step by step or navigate straight to the article you require using the side panel.

Head over to the developer pages to get started! If you have any questions or need help, please contact us on the relevant forums: If you have any feedback on the guide, please use the “Send Feedback” link at the top right of each page.

We also appreciate any feedback on your experience using the guide. If you would like to share it, please complete this survey.
 - , AdWords API Team

Update on Kotlin for Android

Posted by James Lau, Product Manager (twitter.com/jmslau)

Today is the beginning of KotlinConf. It's been almost 6 months since we announced Kotlin as a first-class language for Android at Google I/O. During this period, the number of apps on Google Play using Kotlin has more than doubled. More than 17% of the projects in Android Studio 3.0 are now using Kotlin. We are really excited about the strong momentum, and we are thrilled that Android developers all over the world are discovering the joy of Kotlin programming.

Kotlin for Android is production-ready. From startups to Fortune 500 companies, developers are already using Kotlin to build their apps. Developers from Pinterest, to Expedia, to Basecamp -- and many others -- are finding their use of Kotlin is increasing productivity and their overall developer happiness levels. Take a look at some of their experiences with Kotlin below.

With the recent release of Android Studio 3.0, there is now a stable version of our IDE that has Kotlin support built-in. With Support Library 27, we have started adding nullability annotations to make the APIs friendlier to use in Kotlin. We recently published the Android Kotlin Guides on GitHub to provide some guidance for Android Kotlin style and interop. We have also been porting some of our Android samples to Kotlin, and we are adding Kotlin to our official documentation.

Android Studio 3.0

Last week, we released Android Studio 3.0 on the stable channel. This is the first stable release of Android Studio that has Kotlin support built-in. Building on the strength of IntelliJ's Kotlin support, many critical IDE features like code completion and syntax highlighting work well for Kotlin. You can choose to convert Java code to Kotlin by using Code → Convert Java File to Kotlin File, or you can convert snippets of code just by pasting Java code into a Kotlin file.

Project and code templates have also been updated with Kotlin support. When you create a new project or add a new code file, you can choose Kotlin as one of the language options.

The tooling experience with Kotlin is by no means perfect yet. We are aware of several known issues, and we will continue to improve the IDE support for Kotlin in future releases.

Android Kotlin Guides

There are two separate Android Kotlin Guides:

  1. Style guide - details a set of rules and coding standards that Google recommends when writing Kotlin for Android. The guide addresses naming conventions, formatting, structure of the source contents, and much more.
  2. Interop guide - provides a set of rules for creating APIs in the Java and Kotlin programming languages, so that the consuming code in the other language will feel idiomatic.

We intend these guides to be living documents and will evolve them over time. They are hosted on GitHub and we welcome your contributions.

Nullability Annotations

Null-safety is an important feature of the Kotlin language. It helps developers avoid NullPointerExceptions and improves the quality of their apps. Null-safety is a bit more complicated when using Java code from Kotlin. Since any reference in Java may be null, Kotlin's requirement for strict null-safety becomes impractical for Java objects. Types declared in Java that do not contain nullability annotations are called platform types - this means the Kotlin compiler does not know whether it is nullable or not. When calling methods with variables of platform types, the Kotlin compiler relaxes null-safety checks. That means the overall null-safety of your app is weakened.

To let developers take more advantage of Kotlin's strict null-safety, we have started adding nullability annotations in Support Library 27. The Support Library contains a huge API surface area, and we will continue to expand the nullability annotation coverage in the next several releases. In addition, we will also be adding nullability annotations to other Android APIs over time.

While the Kotlin adoption growth is fantastic, our commitment to the Java and C++ programming languages remains unchanged. We've added Java 8 language features support in Android Studio 3.0, and we've added more Java 8 language APIs in Android Oreo. We are also continuing to improve our support for C++17 in the NDK. So even if you are not using Kotlin, your language support will continue to improve.

It's an exciting time to be an Android developer. If you haven't had a chance to try Kotlin, you can get started by learning the basic syntax and by playing with the excellent Kotlin Koans. When you are ready to use Kotlin in your Android app, you can jump to the Android Kotlin page for more resources. With Kotlin's Java interoperability and Android Studio's Java to Kotlin converter, it's easy to start using Kotlin in your project.

Happy Kotlin-ing!

Increase the speed of your mobile site with this toolkit

Cross-Posted from the DoubleClick for Publishers blog

Last month we released a new study, "The need for mobile speed", highlighting the impact of mobile latency on publisher revenue. Simply having your site load on a mobile device is no longer enough: Mobile sites have to be fast and relevant. The study analyzed 10,000+ mobile web domains, and from the results we gained several insights about the impact of mobile latency on user experience.



Critically, the study also revealed strong correlations between page speed and the following key performance indicators:
  1. Revenue
  2. Bounce rate
  3. Session duration
  4. Viewability


It’s clear mobile speed matters to the success of publisher sites, but making mobile load times a priority doesn’t always make achieving speed easy. To help you build a faster mobile web experience, we’ve created a mobile web speed toolkit. It outlines a 4-step process to diagnose and fix mobile speed issues:
  1. Measure your site’s performance.
  2. Assess the different components impacting speed.
  3. Prioritize the order your site loads.
  4. Test, remeasure and repeat to improve your site speed.
The mobile web speed toolkit offers tactical recommendations to begin achieving mobile speed. 


The relationship between page speed and publisher revenue is clearer than ever before. Small improvements to your mobile site may yield big gains for your mobile revenue, so get your copy of the mobile web speed toolkit and start making changes today. 

#SpeedMatters

Posted by: Jay Castro
AdSense team

Source: Inside AdSense


3 tips to make your content easy to consume

Over the last month we’ve taken a look at what makes strong content including topics, length, and shareability. But telling a good story is only half of the process. You also have to present it in an easy-to-digest format for today’s distracted audience.

According to a Think With Google study, “67% of users will switch [to another site or app] if it takes too many steps to purchase or get desired information.” Different forms of media can greatly improve your content’s appeal, if it’s used strategically. With people giving less and less time to the things they read online, it’s up to you to keep visitors engaged and entertained. The following tips will help give your content a stronger impact.

1. Share your content visually
Whether it’s lists, infographics, images, gifs, or video, adding in dynamic elements to your story telling will keep things fresh and memorable. Visuals highlight your key points, and leave a greater impact on both loyal and new visitors alike. In fact, sites with video have been proven to encourage an extra 2 minutes of time on page compared to sites that don’t.

2. Break things up

Images can be a great way to break up long text. Unbroken, continuous text is time-consuming to read and can make visitors “check out” prematurely; no matter how interesting the topic is. By breaking up a longer content piece with related imagery, you can increase the chances of you audience staying to read more, and hopefully, fulfill a desired action on your site.

3. Make it Social


Seeing how “liked” or “shared” an article is naturally prompts visitors to share their opinion on it, too. Social proof is a powerful influencer when it comes to users engaging with your content. Ways to gain social proof include providing like actions, sharing actions, and even custom actions such as testimonials and reviews.

  

To learn more about familiarizing your audience with your brand, check out the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement.


Posted by Jay Castro
Audience Development Specialist
@jayciro

Source: Inside AdSense


3 easy tips to build a relationship with your audience

Drawing new visitors to your site is only half of the battle. Having a plan for them to follow once they get there is the key to encouraging repeat visits and building a meaningful relationship with your readers.

To engage user-focused design for your site, it’s important to consider the following:


1. Keep It Simple

Gating desirable content can be a great way to learn more about visitors by prompting them to fill out a form or sign up for your newsletter to access it. However, roughly 67% of users will abandon an effort to obtain information or purchase something online if there are too many steps to take. Make sure your users get what they need in as few steps as possible. Matched content is another way to keep visitors from checking out too soon by increasing your odds of presenting them with content they are directly interested in.

2. Identify User Moments

People often look for inspiration and ideas while they complete a task online. Anticipating your visitors’ needs can help you set up your site to better serve them so you can capture and capitalize on these important moments. Whether they are purchasing something or just browsing, presenting this information in the right format can greatly increase the amount of time they spend on your site. 



For example, if you’re an eCommerce site selling chocolates, having recommendations alongside each product such as gift boxes, complementing candy, and drink pairings can get your site visitor thinking about the holidays or gifts for their loved ones.

3. Create engaging Calls to Action 

Bold “sign up” buttons and friendly prompts or reminders move visitors to take action. From bold colors and text to exaggerated size and other visual clues, there are a number of ways to make these important actions stand out on your site and even fun for users to engage with. In fact, our own AdSense team tested different campaign graphics on our marketing campaigns and saw higher implementation and engagement rates.
 

To learn more about familiarizing your audience with your brand, check out the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement.


Posted by Jay Castro
From the AdSense Team

Source: Inside AdSense


[eBook] Learn how to increase audience engagement

Did you know that roughly 61% of users abandon a site if they don't find what they’re looking for right away?1 As hard as you work to get visitors to your site, you have to work even harder to keep them there.


Unfortunately, there isn’t a clever hack to keeping your users engaged. However, if you understand the intent of your users and provide unique content that’s relevant to their interests, you’ll be on your way to increasing engagement on your site.


Download our guide to audience engagement to learn more about best practices and tips to drive better results for both your users and business. Get your free copy today.



We’d love to hear your feedback on how this guide, connect with us on  Google+ and Twitter using #AdSenseGuide.




Posted by Jay Castro
from the AdSense team




1) Think with Google, What users want from mobile sites

Source: Inside AdSense


[New Resource] Download the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement


Research shows that “29% of smartphone users will immediately switch to another site or app if it doesn’t satisfy their needs.”

In a world where people are making split decisions about what to consume, it’s increasingly challenging but critical for publishers to figure out how to effectively engage their audiences on their sites. To help lay the foundation to a winning engagement strategy, we’ve created the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement.

This guide help you drive toward your goals for growing your site – from defining your brand voice to tips to make your site’s content easy to consume. Don’t waste another moment developing web pages that leave you with little opportunity to engage with your audience. Download the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement here.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

  • How to help your audience become familiar with your brand
  • Best practices to design delightful user journeys
  • How to develop content that resonates with your audience
  • Ways to make your content easy to consume
  • Why you should share the love with other sites by referring to good sources



Check out the guide and share your feedback with us on Google+ and Twitter using #AdSenseGuide. We’d love to hear what you think. 




Posted by Jay Castro
Content Marketing

Source: Inside AdSense