Author Archives: alankent
My Google I/O 2018: G-Pay and Identity
Using Google Pay on your web site can improve your e-commerce conversion rates. Shoppers are not required to re-enter credit card or shipping details on new sites, greatly streamlining the checkout flow (especially on mobile devices). In this blog I continue with my Google I/O 2018 summary. Part 1 in this series focused on Google […]
Google Indexing and JavaScript Rendering
This blog post is a summary of the “Deliver search-friendly JavaScript-powered websites” session at Google I/O 2018, with an e-commerce lens applied plus few personal opinions thrown in. This talk is so important, I thought it was worth its own blog post. This presentation describes about how Google crawls and indexes sites, including how it […]
My First Google Assistant App (Part 2)
Branded experiences create interesting marketing opportunities with Google Assistant applications. Part 1 discussed some of the design considerations. This post dives into the code to create a simple (but working) experience without database access, developed completely from the built-in console (no local laptop development environment required). The source code can be found in my GitHub […]
My First Google Assistant App (Part 1)
In this article I talk about my personal experience putting together my first Google Assistant app. There was something strangely satisfying in the process, I suspect because in a few hours (with no previous experience) I got a simple working application going, which I then iteratively improved upon. The project I selected was for a […]
My Google I/O 2018: VR/AR and Web
Google I/O is a three day developer event held near the main Mountain View offices of Google. Part 1 focused on Google Assistant. Here is part 2 of my notes, on VR and AR (because they are fun) then web. More to come in later posts. VR/AR Tour Creator I previously posted a blog on […]
Managing Large Catalogs (with Machine Learning)
Interested in the challenges of managing large catalogs? Then this Elasticon talk “Surfacing the Products You love on Spring” by Julie Qiu from Spring (@jqiu25) might interest you. Spring is a marketplace (lots of diverse data sources) focussing on fashion. The following is my quick summary of the presentation – for details, please watch the […]
My Google I/O 2018: Google Assistant
Google I/O is a three day developer event held near the main Mountain View offices of Google. Most of the talks are available online for viewing – and there are a lot of them! Some provide an overview with others going into greater depth. One video that I particularly recommend is the keynote 10 minute […]
