WESLEY CHUN: Hi, everyone.
This is Wesley Chun, engineer and Developer Advocate.
Here at Google, we strongly believe
in giving users impactful and delightful experiences
when using our tools.
Well, we want you to do the same for your customers.
Today's episode is all about good times
and how you, with not much effort,
can enhance the experience you give your users
by marking up the email you're already sending them.
But before we talk shop, let's think about some
of those experiences.
Going out to eat is something that everyone favors.
Enjoying a night out with friends or that special someone
shouldn't be stressful.
Technology should help enhance this experience,
making things easier and more convenient.
If you're a restaurateur, or a dining reservation service,
you want your information available at your customers'
fingertips, meaning what you don't
want is for them to be hopping into a cab,
fumbling for the email app on their phones
and having to search for your message that confirms
a reservation time and your address.
Similarly, let's say you're an online retailer.
When customers buy something from you,
they care where their stuff is.
Their anxiety can only be reconciled with the "order
confirmed" and the "order has shipped" messages
that you send them.
And if you include the tracking number,
you're further building up their anticipation to "the day."
But if your message is drowned out by all the other email
they get, the alternative is, that precious gift
you bought for your mom may get all wet.
Well, how would that happen?
Sadly, the traditional inbox is one-dimensional and
disorganized.
Important and less important messages
are mixed together, causing your notifications
to get lost in the shuffle and users frustrated.
Take a look at the inbox here.
How long does it take you to find the important messages
indicating that your order has shipped
and your dining reservation versus everything else?
Well, the answer is too long.
The real problem is that there's no relationship between email
messages, important or otherwise.
So this led the Gmail team to rethink email and create Inbox,
which has a goal to fix this problem by highlighting
the key elements in your messages,
placing them front and center with beautiful images,
engaging users in an immersive and joyful experience.
Here in Inbox you see both the dining reservation
and my online purchase together.
Beyond Inbox, you'll find that markup also
elevates key information to other Google services.
Look!
That dinner reservation is on my Google Calendar
so I don't forget.
On the day of, a Google Now card can show me the when and where.
Finally, how about being able to ask for all my purchases
while using Google Search?
Well, these are just some ideas of how to take good experiences
and making them great.
But how can you give this experience to your users?
Surprisingly, the answer is easier than you think.
All you have to do is add markup to your email messages
and Google takes care of the rest.
Markup, like what you see here, enables Inbox and other Google
services to highlight the important information
from your messages to your users so they
get exactly what they need at a glance.
I mean, you're already sending email to users, right?
You don't need to redo how you send them.
You're just adding a little bit more to the email body.
Let's put it this way-- your messages are
the dessert that you've already made.
All you need to do is add the markup,
which are like toppings, such as nuts,
or sprinkles if you're allergic to nuts.
In other words, it doesn't take much effort
to add markup to your messages.
By the way, did you know that by enhancing your messages
with markup, users are more likely to engage?
Well, with some of our partners, they
noticed an increase of up to 30%.
Inbox supports two types of markup-- microdata, which
you can see here is XML flavored, and JSON
for Linking Data, JSON-LD for short.
Both formats rely on schema.org for a single standard shared
vocabulary.
Getting started is even easier.
The first link you see here takes you
to the markup documentation while the next one
goes through developer tools to help you create, add,
and validate your markup.
Finally, you can catch more videos in this and other series
with the links down at the bottom.
If you need help, search our Google Schemas tag
on Stack Overflow.
Well, we love great experiences, right?
As a retailer, restaurateur, transportation service,
or any modern business, you can enhance
what you give your customers by adding
just a little bit of markup to the messages you're already
sending to them.
Then tools like Inbox by Gmail, Google Now, Search,
and Calendar will play their roles
at delivering that enhanced experience,
highlighting what matters most to users.
Just think-- the better the experience you provide,
the more they'll come back to you and not your competitors.
Well, I look forward to seeing some awesome email
messages from you soon.
This is Wesley Chun from Google, and thanks for tuning in.