Google Checkout’s New Shopping Cart

Google Checkout has come up with a new ‘gadget’ that lets you add a small shopping cart to your website or blog. It’s still in the Experimental stage…

First, you have to sign up for a Google Checkout merchant account. Next, list your products in a Google Apps spreadsheet. Third, get the HTML code and embed the online store into your web site.

The advantage – it’s a free and easy way to set up a small shopping cart – there are no monthly charges, just a percentage of the sale (depending on sales per month) and a small transaction fee..

The disadvantage – it only works with Google Checkout. Prospective customers have to sign up for a Google account if they don’t already have one prior to purchasing your product.

This was a big problem with PayPal when it first started – you had to have a PayPal account in order to use your credit card. PayPal’s solution was to come up with Website Payments Standart/Pro, which acts as a merchant account/payment gateway for about $30/month along with the percentage and transaction fees.

Or, you can use your own credit card merchant account and offer PayPal and Google Checkout as alternatives. I recommend using Google Checkout as an alternative if you are running ads on Google because it shows up in Adwords ads.

However, I can’t recommend Google’s new shopping cart because it’s essentially acting as a method of getting more people to sign up for Google Checkout than as a method of selling your product.

At the very least I would set up two pages, one with only Google Checkout and one with PayPal Website Payments and split-test them to see which converts better. If Google turns out better you can always cancel the monthly PayPal service.