Update on Google Checkout and Froogle

The introduction of Google Checkout certainly helped the bottom lines for many retailers including our own retail websites with their zero fee merchant processing. The latest news is that Google is extending their no fee policy throughout 2007 and they have started giving a $10 instant rebate on all first purchases for new Google Checkout users.

You can see how we are promoting this by going to JLRyan.com. We have the promotion posted at the top of every page. How it works is a customer selects the product(s) they want, goes to checkout and then the Google Checkout button/option appears along side the regular shopping cart buttons. If the user is new to Google Checkout, they simply signup and then get the $10 off that order. This promotion, I believe has driven a lot of orders to be paid through Google Checkout. It’s been a win-win situation for us and customers as the customer gets $10 and we save the merchant processing fees of 2.49 percent plus .20 transaction fees on each order.

Regarding Froogle, Google has decided that they will discontinue accepting the Froogle feeds. They will now only accept Google Base feeds which are a little different in format, but still feed product listings to Froogle I believe. Listings will also be listed on Google Base as well. We are currently reworking our feeds to work with the new system. Google is allowing until the end of February before they will now longer accept old Froogle feeds. I imagine that there will be a lot of merchants that will let the feeds expire and so this should give a boost in traffic to merchants who react quickly to the change.