It’s an ongoing question for small business owners selling online: Should we use Google Checkout? PayPal? Both?
Before I go any further: I don’t have the answer to that question, and you may have noticed I made no mention of Google Checkout in my recent SEL articles about which Google products a small business should use. (Missed those? Here’s part one and part two.)
If a client asked for advice, I’d suggest research and testing to find out which is best for your situation. If I were an online retailer, I wouldn’t like the fact that using Google Checkout means I have no control over the end of the sale. The end of the transaction happens on Google, not on my web site. I can’t upsell related products, and I don’t get to add the customer to my e-mail database for follow-up communications (marketing or otherwise).
But there are other benefits to offering Google Checkout, including the low processing fees and the benefit of having a Google Checkout icon appear with an AdWords ad.
Fortunately, all of these issues and many more are covered in a terrific article by Don Davis in this month’s Internet Retailer. And the article is available on the magazine’s web site, too. Nice.
The online article is missing one important graphic from the print magazine:
After reading the article, my overriding impression is this: PayPal aims to be more business-friendly, while Google Checkout aims to be more shopper-friendly. That doesn’t answer the question of which one to use, but it suggests to me that the debate is going to continue for some time to come.
