Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art and Writing

Google Checkout.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

In an attempt to expand my burgeoning arts and crafts empire here at Lone Prairie, I signed up with Google Checkout, and will soon be integrating it in my current shopping cart as well. It'll take a few days lag time, to be sure, but very shortly, I'll be fully Google Checked Out.

I'm sure my sales will sky rocket.

Frankly, PayPal has started to annoy me. No specific reason I'll go into here.

(Old school! High fees! Freezing of accounts! Monopoly! Not part of web 2.0! My opinions!)

I still have PayPal integrated into my cart, and it'll still be the main way people will likely pay with credit cards for a while, but Google Checkout (from the people who promise to not be evil but have the greatest potential to be) looks cool, and I rather like have one Google account for everything from my RSS reader to online word processing to...buying and selling and tracking orders.

I rather like it a lot. All in one place. The interface of everything looking similar so that as long as I become "Google intuitive" I won't have much of a problem with any of their sites and services. No credit card fees through 2007. Free to sign up.

Even my illustrious blogs are through my Google account.

Please don't be evil, Google people.

Google Checkout offers the option of sending email invoices to bill customers, which is such an improvement on me constantly mailing them out. The electronic invoices contain a link that takes the customer right to where they pay. Easy. And I get a copy of the invoice in my own inbox. I also like the fact that there are nifty logos and buttons that assure people that yes, I can take credit cards and that no, I'm not some shifty business that will abuse their credit card number.

Seriously, I doubt I'll see any difference in sales or customer reaction, but it's still a cool new gimmick that lets me add more stuff to my website and feel all professional. I'm placing bets that people will start getting used to Google Checkout like they did with PayPal. On the other hand, it could go the way of BillPay (or BillPoint or whatever it was called) and some of those others that PayPal murdered. We'll see.

Anyone else out there using Google Checkout?