Here’s something new from Google Checkout. It’s called the Google Checkout store gadget.
It’s still in Beta and is called experimental by Google so there are a few bugs, but the ones they listed seem pretty minor and I can’t believe Google would release something like this unless it was about finished. Judging from their past history with important new applications I believe the bugs will be exterminated quickly.
I haven’t tried the store out yet, but I will soon and report back to you when I do. According to Google here’s all you have to do to have a store on your site.
- Set up your Google Checkout merchant account
- Define your products in a Google spreadsheet
- Set up and embed your gadget
You can embed these gadgets in almost any web page, blog post or the sidebar of your blog.
Before this PayPal seemed to be the only good option for a shopping system that’s easy to embed in a static page, but this could challenge them. At first glance I see some things that even seem easier to use than PayPal’s cart, their sandbox (testing) section for one. PayPal does have quite a big lead in this area, but these gadgets could give Google Checkout quite a boost.
I keep spelling Lily as Lilly. Probably because of my last name, but I think that I got all of those fixed.
I think Old Timer & Lily is a very nice functional site.
Susan had a store on safeshopper.com and they sent a notice that they were closing. She needed a secure shopping cart quickly that she could maintain herself. OS Commerce is a good solution.
She runs a blog called loloschild and she knew about maintaining one, so having another one for her business is a good idea.
I think it’s a very comfortable site that visitors might like to hang around in. They have a good loyal customer base already, as evidenced by the fact that she started getting orders as soon as the site was up. If she keeps adding new content, which is pretty easy when you have a blog, there will be many new customers as well.
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One of the best things that you can do for your site is to have a good site search that can be accessed from every page.
According to the results of a November survey by Zoomerang that I found on the DMNews site, 73% of respondents said they would leave an e-commerce site within one to two minutes if they could not find what they were looking for. One of the quotes that caught my eye was “it was surprising to learn how intolerant people were of poor search”.
I don’t think it matters if you offer e-commerce or not. Many new visitors to your site are looking for some specific information and if they find it quickly and easily they will stay and if not it’s much too simple to just click and go somewhere else.
I use Google site search for my site. It’s free and easy to install, besides who’s recognized or trusted more for search?
One of the things that I like best about the site search is that I’m adding new content almost every day. When you are constantly adding and changing content on your site the Google bot comes more often to visit and catalog your pages. That means that you don’t have to worry about people clicking on old pages or not finding the newest ones. You don’t have to do the work of keeping your search results current. You also can make money from these searches if you have a Google AdSense account which will pay you when people click on the ads on your search results.
The only bad thing that I can think of is that you can lose visitors if they click on an ad and leave your site, even possibly finding something that they like better. You do have the option of having the results open in a new window which helps them get back to your site by keeping your window open, but I feel that it’s probably well worth the risk for all of the other benefits that you get.
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There really is no better or more effective form of promotion than word of mouth. You can talk all you want about search engines, direct mail or e-mail, word of mouth trumps them all. What better way to look good to a potential new customer than to have someone that they know who is not vested in your business tell them good things about you.
I have written about how you can let other people promote your site and lately I keep seeing more and more on the subject. “Word of mouth marketing is the future of e-commerce” By Dianna Dilworth is the latest that I have seen. It’s a very good article where she talks about many ways to get your fans to participate in helping you succeed.
I was speaking to someone the other day who was looking to contract out work for a website because he had no experience with e-commerce.
While it’s ture that some shopping carts can be quite a job to install and debug I recommended “If your customer willing to use PayPal to process credit cards you can get their shopping cart (free) and install it yourself. It’s pretty easy.”
He replied a couple of days later “Thanks. After getting a 1200 dollar quote, I checked into other options and found the same thing. Your advice was much appreciated though, and confirmed what I thought I discovered.”
The customer should also do much better with the search engines as well because they will have static pages. Most shopping carts generate dynamic pages from databases and you usually have to overlay static pages to rank as well. They claim to be “search engine friendly”, but I have found that they don’t do as well.
It used to be PayPal meant you were working from your basement, but now it’s viewed just as “professional” as almost any other form of payment.
What is it?
When you use PayPal’s free Shopping Cart on your website, your customers can purchase multiple items with a single payment, browse your entire selection, and view a consolidated list of all their items before purchasing. The PayPal Shopping Cart is a low-cost way for you to accept credit card and bank account payments, and can be fully integrated with your website in a few easy steps.
What are the benefits?
Save time and money with PayPal’s hassle-free Shopping Cart:
- Easy to implement – no CGI scripting necessary
- No up-front costs – you’ll have the same low fee schedule used when you receive other PayPal payments
- Sell with ease – PayPal maintains detailed transaction records on our website
- Improve buyer experience – with customizable buttons and secure payments, happy customers become repeat customers
