| Description: | According to statista.com, Google’s email service Gmail is used by more than 1,5 billion active users worldwide. There have been many Gmail innovations since its introduction in 2004 in order to improve user-experience. Many such improvements have inspired other email services such as Outlook.com, Yahoo and mail.ru to adopt those email innovations into their services as well. Gmail’s implementation of Schema.org is as of today the most comprehensive. Here is an overview of how Schema.org is already used to enhance the email user experience in Gmail:
Gmail Actions: Accelerate user actions, such as one-click and go-to actions (two examples below).
Highlights in Inbox: The most important information users need from an email are highlighted such as events and flights. Also RSVP, one-click and go-to actions are highlighted.
Gmail Promotions Tab: Automatical grouping and highlighting of email promotions.
Answers in Search: Using schema markup to allow your recipients to find information faster.
Confirmation Cards: Elevate directions, flight status updates, check-out time in hotels, and more.
Google Calendar: Using schema markup to extract event information from booking confirmation emails, adding them to Calendar automatically.
In the following two examples we will take a look at at a one-click actions, these are scenarios where an expected behavior from a user is to confirm a pre-defined request. For instance, an event website sends out an email asking to confirm the registration and a music store sites send an email offering to add items to a queue for later pre-listening. In this case, the email recipient doesn’t have to leave his Gmail inbox and just has to click the single button ‘Add to Queue‘ in order to perform the one-click action. |
