Just over a month ago I added GoogleCheckout as a payment processor on my site. This resulted in the much vaunted GoogleCheckout badge being displayed next to my Adwords Ads. I expected an increase in clickthough ratio (% of people who see the ad who click on it) due to greater visibility and a consequent decrease in conversion ratio (% of clickers who go on to buy) due to the greater visibility attracting more ‘tyre kickers’.
I have now looked through 2 months of data (a month before and a month after) and the exact opposite has happened. My Adwords clickthrough ratio has dropped by 10%, but the conversion ratio has increased by 20%. Perhaps the badge is actually putting off the tyre kickers by making it clear that the product isn’t free? It is hard to know how much of this is due to the badge and how much is due to other factors and I will be checking the stats again in another month. I would be interested to know whether other people have had similar results.
The moral of the story is: don’t assume, measure.
Successful Software 
So revenue up or down?
Revenue (and profit) per impression are up.
I’ve been wondering whether it’s worth signing up for Google Checkout just to get the icon by my adverts. Seems like it might.
Tony,
Note that Google will check up that you are offering GoogleCheckout. If not they will remove the badge.
Interesting, hopefully more people will publish their data on this!
I’d like to implement it, but am held back by the fact that it would be a separate ecommerce system as opposed to the integrate “leave it and forget it” setup I have with RegNow. For instance I would have to be monitering emails constantly and manually sending license keys when I made a sale.
This may or may not be worth it, I sell 3 products a day. But I like being able to go walking in the mountains for days at a time, knowing that my business is running itself!
James,
You can automate GoogleCheckout through their API by writing a script (or you can use a third party such as e-junkie).
But even if you automate that, don’t you check your support emails regularly?
I think it should be possible to use Google Checkout with an open source reg-handling Rails project called Potion Store. http://www.potionfactory.com/potionstore
If I ever get around to completing my little app, I was thinking of doing this.
Also, there is a comparison of payment fees here: http://www.c6software.com/articles/ecommercefees.aspx
It seems like Google Checkout is by far the lowest (58 cents for a sale priced at 19 dollars), with PayPal second (85 cents for a 19 dollar sale).
Hope this helps.
Matt West.
For the rest of this year GoogleCheckout is effectively free if you are paying for Google Adwords (they are offsetting processing fees against adwords fees).
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