But a compromise was eventually reached and I did implement it. I just offer that button next to the “proceed to checkout” button and no extra landing page hassle.

I get about $200k per month in on-line sales and only about $500 in Google, so it looks like all my friends couldn’t handle the arrogance either.

It just shows how a high power team of product developers can do a survey and find that customers don’t want to click more than once, and turn that into a marketing disaster.

I just hope that they launch it again without all the arrogance.

My site sells wine and beer making kits. They are a homebrew supply legal in all 50 states and have sold in malls and homebrew supply stores throughout the USA.

Google said that they suspended my account for selling alcohol. (I have never sold alcohol) And it looks like the payment on some orders that were placed may get reversed even though I have already shipped the product. Don’t know for sure yet from their brief message. There is no way to appeal their decision.

Too bad for google, PayPal has made a fortune on me in transaction fees over the last serveral years. I was going to give google a share of that pie but it appears that they are allergic to money. No wonder their project is failing.

Hopefully your painful lessons can help other merchants decide if Google Checkout is worth it for their online store.

The number one thing I didn’t like was having to have a pre-Checkout page in ShopSite, this totally confused my customers as to why they had to press the button twice just to see shipping charges. Initially I had the BIG Google Checkout button placed before my regular checkout button, sure I got lots of Google Checkout orders and I suspect many customers who gave up and went away as my other payment methods were not being used at all. I quickly added text clarifying the buttons and sales picked up.

Second, I didn’t like having to enter tracking information in Google as well as Order Status, if I didn’t, I could lose a battle of not shipping in a timely manner. One time I forgot, then entered the tracking number after the customer received the goods, took a few emails and phone calls to calm that confused customer down. I learned to be very careful after that one. I wished there was some way to check orders as closed or shipped without notifying the customer, but there wasn’t the last time I checked.

Third, I found out when you do a return, you had better have the right amount typed in before you press the button because there is no verification and chance to take a second look. You guessed it, I had a typo and a lucky customer got a bonus. We live and we learn.

When I looked at my stats, Google Checkout was my least used payment method…well that is after I got the button issue clarified. I also offer Pay Pay and have a merchant account for Visa, Master Card, American Express, and Discover. Considering the amount of extra work it caused, I decided to lighten my workload and don’t miss it one bit.

BTW, my sales have drastically increased since I turned Google Checkout off. I just figured I was getting lucky, but could it be it Google Checkout was turning my customers off with the pre-checkout page and confusion? I’ll never know as I don’t have stats to verify this one.

Janice

Thanks for providing more details on how Google is using gCheckout. I doubt Google will abandon the service, but innovation with regards to checkout has been slow as of late.

Per the conversion boost (and CTR), it’s important to note the statement is “for existing Google Checkout users” which is a small group overall. There is no data available that I know of that analyzes overall CTR and ROI for Google Checkout merchants.

I just wish Google would loosen their policies a bit so merchants can more easily integrate the service seamlessly, and add a simple “Return to Cart” link on the checkout page. 😉

You will see that Google web search drops a tracking pixel with the parameters “action=” and “tran=” I suspect these are linked up to the google checkout cookie.

http://www.google.com/csi
v=3
s=web
action=
tran=undefined
e=21480,21486,21766,21771
ei=Vy2uSvrKG5T6-AarndW0Bg
rt=prt.72,xjs.109,ol.606

Also the advent of the plusbox and finalisation of the DoubleClick / GoogleAffiliate network integration with Adsense mean that Google is moving towards a CPA model (rather than CPC) model.

Thus gCheckout forms am important method of confirming a conversion has taken place and awarding the affiliate commission. It will even handle canceled commission from refunds. There is “0” possibility Google will abandon gCheckout!

Google gain valuable trend information is from checkout sales:
http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2008/01/new-on-hot-list-google-checkout-trends.html

Also gCheckout increases CTR from Search and Google Products (which even has a filter for only show Retailers who uses gCheckout). Also conversion rates are increased for existing Google users, as users only enter billing details once & then they are remembered on google servers:
http://searchengineland.com/google-says-google-checkout-increases-conversion-by-40-clicks-by-10-16012

Thanks

Phil.