Google Checkout Blog

Gift Sales Just Got Easier: Advanced Buyer Messaging Feature out of Beta

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

We're happy to share that the Advanced Buyer Messaging (or gift messaging) feature is now out of beta.

The feature, released in beta in January 2009, provides the functionality for your customers to add gift messages, add additional instructions, or request gift receipts. Over the last year, we've seen a number of Checkout sellers who have used this feature to improve the buying experience of their users.

For example, Always Brilliant and Serenata Flowers have both implemented Advanced Buyer Messaging to allow their buyers to specify gift messages and request a gift receipt. Espresso Royale lets buyers specify any special instructions they may have regarding the order along with a gift message.

We're making a few changes to the feature as we take it out of beta. Based on user feedback, we have streamlined the number of tags making the feature more straightforward to use. We will support only the gift-message, include-gift-receipt and special-instructions tags going forward. If you are currently using any of the old tags, you can continue to do so, but we encourage you to make the switch to one of the supported tags which will give you the same functionality.

If you haven't used the Advanced Buyer Functionality yet, we encourage you to explore how these features may be able to improve your customer experience. Take a moment to learn more about how to allow you buyers to specify special instructions related to delivery or treatment of goods, specify a gift message or ask you to include a gift receipt.

Posted by Boris Mizhen, Software Engineer and Satyajeet Salgar, Product Manager