Thread: Google Checkout - Worth The Effort?

We've been considering implementing Google Checkout for a while and are wondering whether others have noticed a significant improvement in sales as a result?

Our understanding is that it's necessary to allow anonymous checkout and to allow duplicate e-mails. We imagine this will lead to additional work somewhere down the track when working with data.

There appears to be an investment in not only setup time but ongoing issues as Google changes their interfaces and policies etc. and we're wondering if implementing Google Checkout is really worth the time investment?

Thanks
Matthew

Hi Matthew

My response won't give you anything scientific, but for what it's worth....

We opened for business at the weekend and have made three sales so far: one through our site's credit card payment system, one via the telephone and one via Google Checkout.

On that basis, I think it's worth it (if only I could persuade Google to charge for delivery!)

We did it because we're running an AdWords campaign to drive traffic and felt that the ads with the Checkout banner looked more credible.

Regards

John

Thanks John! 33% google checkout sales seems pretty good so far ;-)

Yes - have heard mixed results with Adwords displaying the google checkout logo and I wonder if this makes a significant difference.

I've noticed there are also google customer reviews that are listed in a product search on google and I suspect there's value there too.

Definitely worth it, especially if you feed your products to Google Base. Roughly 20% of our sales use GC. Google Base products can be sorted by merchants accepting GC and I believe it helps.

We were a bit sceptical about using Google checkout and apart from a couple of niggles that support are helping is iron out we're pleased that we implemented it.

What is also nice is that we don't get charged any fees to use it because Google refund it due to it being linked to our Adword spend and to be honest and I'm sure Google wouldn’t admit it but the more Google products you put in your site the more they are going to like you!

On two of the sites we operate, we offer GC and we are only seeing perhaps 2-3 a month. Not a very high success rate really.

However, since there is no additional cost to offer this option AND it isn't that hard to add if you follow the directions, I would say on the whole that without it, I might not have those 2-3/month additional sales AND more importantly, when you listings (organic and paid) show up in the Google results with the GC badge, it truly makes your listing stand out.

If nothing else, it is worth it just for that alone!

MJG