What’s new in Google Play

Posted by Paul Feng, Vice President of Product Administration, Google Play

At Google Play, we’re enthusiastic about serving to individuals uncover experiences they’ll love whereas empowering builders such as you to deliver your concepts to life and construct profitable companies.

At this yr’s Google I/O, we shared our newest developments for apps and video games, plus how we’re serving to you reinforce belief with safe, high-quality experiences, purchase and have interaction customers, and optimize your income.

We all know that success appears to be like completely different in each app class, which is why we’re addressing the particular challenges and alternatives of every vertical, from video games and media to leisure and retail.

Have interaction SDK: Increasing your app’s attain on and past the Play Retailer

Over the past yr, the Play Retailer has developed right into a content-focused vacation spot, highlighting your apps’ most enjoyable options and updates. Now we’re introducing a brand-new floor as a developer preview to showcase your content material and allow cross-app continuation journeys.

Builders can use this floor to spotlight a very powerful content material from customers’ put in apps and even launch customers right into a full-screen immersive expertise with personalised suggestions and promotions. For customers who haven’t put in your app but, you too can use this house to suggest your app and showcase its most compelling content material.

To unlock these advantages, you will have to combine with Have interaction SDK, a client-side integration that leverages on-device APIs and takes most builders a few week to finish. Categorical curiosity in becoming a member of our developer preview at this time and be among the many first to function your content material on the brand new on-device floor launching later this yr.

Google Play Video games on PC and Play Factors: Maximizing gamer engagement

For video games, we proceed to reinforce our instruments to empower you all through the sport lifecycle. Google Play Video games on PC lately expanded to greater than 140 markets with a catalog of over 3,000 video games, serving to you attain avid gamers throughout a number of units. We’ve additionally simplified the combination course of with Play Video games Providers, which connects your avid gamers’ progress and achievements on Play. To additional increase gamer engagement, you’ll be able to leverage Play Factors to launch coupons, reductions, or unique in-game gadgets, whereas additionally benefiting from improved efficiency reporting inside Play Console.

To be taught extra about our broad suite of instruments for sport builders, try the full recap from the Google for Video games Developer Summit.

High quality and safety are on the coronary heart of Google Play. This yr, we’ve made a number of updates designed to guard each your customers and your online business, together with SDK administration instruments, smoother launch processes, enhanced consumer safety, and proactive methods to safeguard consumer belief and enterprise integrity.

Google Play SDK Console: Constructing a safer Play Retailer with SDK homeowners

In 2021, we launched Google Play SDK Console and invited a number of the most generally adopted SDKs to hitch. Now, we’re opening SDK Console to all SDKs, so long as they’re distributed from a canonical Maven repository supply that we will confirm. This contains open-source SDKs and smaller SDKs that weren’t beforehand supported.

By the console, SDK homeowners can entry utilization statistics and instruments to assist them information app builders in adopting SDK variations that repair high quality points and adjust to Play insurance policies.

Lately, we added the choice in Play Console for app builders to share crash or ANR knowledge with SDK homeowners, which in flip may give steerage to app builders on find out how to repair crashes or ANR errors in all affected apps in Android Studio and Play Console.

Enhanced app-release instruments: Stopping surprises and streamlining launches

Our new pre-review checks mix a number of current high quality checks into one UI, permitting you to identify widespread coverage and compatibility points earlier than your app goes reside. And if it is advisable make last-minute adjustments, now you can discard undesirable releases within the “Not but despatched for overview” stage, decreasing the chance of constructing unintended updates.

Play Integrity API updates: New protections in opposition to unauthorized entry

The Play Integrity API helps stop assaults, abuse, and unauthorized entry by letting you test that your app is unmodified and put in by Google Play on a real Android machine. At present, we’re launching three new options to assist additional defend in opposition to safety threats:

• App entry danger, now in public beta, lets your app know if one other app may very well be capturing the display screen, displaying overlays, or controlling the machine. Since these options are essential for accessibility customers, we’ve designed it in order that real accessibility apps received’t set off the decision.
• You may as well obtain a Play Defend verdict in your API response. This lets your app know if Play Defend is turned on and if it has discovered any recognized malware on the machine.
• Lastly, latest machine exercise enables you to detect and reply to units that make a excessive quantity of requests, which may very well be an indication of automated site visitors or an assault.

Reaching the correct viewers is essential for the success of your app. That’s why we’re continuously growing instruments that enable you to goal your best customers, personalize your messaging, and create participating experiences that drive downloads and retention.

Customized retailer listings: Extra methods to achieve the correct viewers with the correct message

Your retailer itemizing is usually your first likelihood to make a superb impression and purchase new customers. You may already tailor your retailer itemizing in numerous methods, to optimize your conversions for various audiences.

Now, you too can create listings primarily based on what customers seek for. Tailoring your retailer listings by search key phrases is not going to solely make its content material extra related, it may possibly additionally enable you to goal customers actively searching for the advantages your app offers. Play Console will even provide you with key phrase ideas for probably impactful retailer listings.

Discover ways to construct listings that concentrate on particular search key phrases in our new Play Academy course, and get a head begin on writing by producing advised descriptions with Gemini fashions.

Retailer listings: Enhancements to allow cross-device discovery

We’re additionally making retailer listings extra related to customers who wish to use your apps on a number of units.

• Your listings now show screenshots, scores, and opinions particular to every type issue to assist customers get a way of the app expertise they’ll anticipate.
• Plus, by including particulars particular to every machine kind, your app might be found when customers search and filter for brand spanking new apps by machine kind or discover our new web page devoted to “different units.”

Deep hyperlinks: Growing engagement with seamless web-to-app journeys

Deep hyperlinks are a good way to extend engagement by driving customers on to a related web page inside your app, the place they’ll try content material, e book a visit, or proceed their procuring expertise.

• Now we’re making it even simpler to handle your deep hyperlinks in Play Console with deep hyperlinks patching. Patching permits you to experiment or make fast adjustments to your deep-link setup with out the necessity to launch a brand new app model, and it doesn’t commit you to everlasting adjustments.
• As soon as the adjustments are made, you’ll be able to overview them by previewing or downloading a take a look at model to your machine. If every thing works as anticipated, simply push the patch reside and let Google Play ship the adjustments to your customers.

With over 2.5 billion customers throughout 190+ markets, Google Play provides you entry to an enormous international viewers. This yr, we targeted on enhancing your capacity to entry clients in these markets by making it simpler to make safe and seamless purchases.

Expanded fee choices: Extra methods for purchasers to pay in your content material

Our intensive fee technique library, which incorporates conventional fee strategies like bank cards and over 300 native types of fee in additional than 65 markets, continues to develop.

• We enabled Pix in Brazil and enhanced assist for UPI in India to streamline subscription purchases, permitting you to supply tons of of tens of millions of consumers their most well-liked fee technique in these markets.
• We’ve additionally prolonged the flexibility for purchasers to make purchases for another person. Prospects with a Google household arrange can now approve their little one’s purchases on Android from any OS.
• Beginning in India, clients can ask a good friend or member of the family outdoors their Google household group to buy an app or in-app product for them by sharing a fee hyperlink by their most well-liked textual content messaging service or electronic mail.

Optimized pricing: Pricing your merchandise for native buying energy

Discovering the correct value in your merchandise is crucial to draw clients and maximize income.

• Google Play now routinely updates value ranges to mirror foreign money fluctuations in opposition to the US greenback, and also you’ll see a brand new Inbox notification in Play Console any time we suggest a value adjustment in your in-app merchandise.
• To present you extra pricing flexibility, now you can value your merchandise on Google Play as excessive as 999.99 US {dollars} or native equal.

Improved buy experiences: Boosting your checkout efficiency

We’re making buy experiences extra seamless and handy by giving clients extra steerage and adaptability, and supplying you with the instruments to fine-tune these experiences.

• We added new badges to the Play Retailer corresponding to “greatest promoting,” “trending,” and “widespread” to assist information clients’ purchases.
• With our all-new installment subscriptions function, you’ll be able to provide clients the choice to pay over time for long-term subscriptions, serving to improve your signups and lifelong worth. Our early entry program confirmed a rise of 8% in whole subscription signal ups and 4% in consumer spend.

• We’re additionally introducing the brand new Play Billing Lab app, which makes it simpler to undertake and take a look at options that may enable you to enhance the client expertise for one-time purchases and subscriptions. The Lab permits you to take a look at your integration with Play’s billing system, create take a look at configurations with out affecting actual customers, and experiment with nation overrides and subscription lifecycle adjustments.

To benefit from these options and every thing else that our commerce platform has to supply, be sure you improve to Play Billing Library 7.0 later this month. This yr, we’re aligning the library’s deprecation timelines with Play’s insurance policies, so assist for model 5 will finish in August 2024.

And that’s it for our recap of the newest updates and vertical-specific investments we’re making that can assist you reinforce belief, purchase and have interaction customers, and optimize your income. We’re excited to see the way you leverage these instruments to develop your online business on Google Play.