Pro Google Address Autocomplete

Merchant Pro integrates seamlessly with Google’s address autocomplete feature (known by Google as Place Autocomplete), enhancing the checkout experience with faster and more accurate address entry.

To activate this feature on your website, you’ll need a Google Places API key, which can be generated from the Google Cloud Platform (you need to sign up for an account).

Note that the Google Maps Platform is a paid service, but you get $200 free credit per month.

Pricing depends on the number of requests your customers make — for example, 1,000 requests will cost $2.83 per month (but, as mentioned above, you get the first $200 for free).

1. Create a Google Places API Key

To enable the API and get your key, you can follow the Place Autocomplete tutorial on Google Developers, but here are the main steps:

In your Google Cloud Console account, create a new project:

Create a New Google Project in the Google Cloud Console

Select your new project from the dropdown in the top-left corner of the screen (note that API keys belong to projects — if you change the project, you’ll need a new API key).

Then, click the Sign Up To Get An API Key button:

Find your Project Page

If you don’t have a Google Cloud billing account yet, you’ll need to create one — you can do so on the next screen.

While you need to verify your card, you won’t be charged until you manually upgrade to a paid account:

Create a Google Cloud billing account

Once your card is verified, you can go to the Credentials page to generate an API key for your project.

Here’s a video tutorial, too, on how to generate and restrict an API key for the Google Maps platform:

2. Activate Merchant Pro’s Google Address Autocomplete Module

Now, navigate to your WordPress admin area, and click on the Merchant menu item to bring up the modules page.

Scroll down the page, find the Google Address Autocomplete module, click on it, and then click on the blue Enable button.

3. Enter Your Google Places API Key

Under Settings, enter the Google Places API key that you have generated in the Google Cloud Platform in Step 1, and click the Save button in the top right:

If you want to add any optional parameters, you can enter them into the Optional API URL Parameters field (this is not a required field, the module works perfectly without it).

That’s it! From now on, the address fields on your checkout page will automatically complete using the Google Places API.

Video Walkthrough

For a live demo of the Google Address Autocomplete module you can watch the video below: