Google is rolling out a series of Play Store upgrades to help Android app developers sell their software and services better to consumers. Highlights include new tools for managing subscription apps, topic pages that allow users to explore specific subjects in the Play Store, new capabilities that allow users to sample audio from developer apps, and a more flexible checkout experience that allows developers to easily sell add-ons and more.
Last week, Google shared many Android-related announcements at the pre-show before the start of its annual developer conference. Google I/O. However, he saved the play store improvements in Tuesday’s keynote at Google I/O, highlighting the importance of Google’s revenue.
Today, tech giants like Apple and Google face a market where app developers can choose more about how their mobile software is priced and sold, thanks to anti-competitive regulations, new laws and recent court victory. As a result, Google has been working to make its own Android App Marketplace more persuasive for developers.
First of all, the company said it offers developers the useful ability to stop live releases entirely if they identify issues that need to be addressed promptly.
Another feature, initially available only in the US, will add a new “Topic Reference” page for media and entertainment in the Play Store, allowing users to connect to apps related to over 100,000 different shows and movies.
For example, you can look into your favorite shows, movies, and sporting events to see which apps you can use. (In addition, after its first launch in the US last year, the existing “Where To Wath” feature will be deployed in the UK, Korea, Indonesia and Mexico as the existing “Where To Watch” feature links to apps that users subscribe to apps that users subscribe to.)
These pages can be accessed from multiple locations in the Play Store, including the app’s homepage, store list pages, and searches.
Developers can also add the hero content Carousel and YouTube playlist Carousel to the Play Store app list. For apps with audio content, the Play Store will immediately launch audio samples on the app’s homepage. (This feature is live for Google’s Health & Wellness app developers in the US, and in early testing, audio samples helped to triple improvements to app installation.)
Curate Space, a feature launched last year for Google Play users, will be rolled out to more locations and categories this year to connect with interests such as comics and soccer. Google pointed out that the curation space for comics is quite popular, reaching over 920,000 users per month in Japan.
In the Play Console for managing apps, the new asset library helps developers organize their visual assets, such as uploading, tagging and trimming them for reuse from Google Drive. Other new metrics provide insight into app list performance.
New dedicated overview pages for software testing and releases, and pages focusing on monitoring and improving app releases will arrive. Both of these include additional metrics and practical advice for developers in the new “actions” section.
The subscription management tool has also received an upgrade, with support for multi-product checkout for subscriptions being added. This means that developers will be able to sell subscription add-ons along with base subscriptions on a single payment schedule.
For users, this gives you a simple checkout experience and gives you better control over your subscription when it’s time to upgrade or downgrade add-ons.
The Play Store reminds users of the benefits of subscriptions in more locations, including subscription centers, reminder emails, purchase and cancellation flows. The changes already rolled out are reducing voluntary churn by 3%, Google claims. Developers can also choose to provide a 30-day grace period or up to 60 days if a customer’s payment method drops, giving users time to fix the issue before the account is cancelled.
Launched last year, the Engage SDK provided developers with a way to send personalized content recommendations to the home screen of users on Android devices. Currently, we have added support to more categories such as travel, and are expanding to more markets, including Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico and more.
Additionally, content created with the SDK will be featured on the Play Store later this summer, in addition to existing spaces such as the user’s Android smartphone collection and the entertainment space of some Android tablets.
Google points out that the Play Integrity API, designed to help combat new threats in the Play Store, is enhanced by protecting more sensitive actions in apps, such as transfers and data access, with powerful detection of abuse detection for all developers and device security update checks. It can also detect if the device is being reused for abuse or repeated actions even after it has been reset. This latter feature is offered in beta.