Google Checkout Dives Without Consumer Coupons
Monday, April 30th, 2007;
-- Andy Beal |
What happens to a PayPal rival’s market share, when the owner stops providing $10 and $30 coupons? This…
It goes to show, PayPal built its market share by powering e-commerce sites (and eBay sellers) that didn’t have access to a shopping cart and merchant account. Google, on the other hand, tapped big merchants (such as Buy.com) and used coupons to convince consumers to use Google Checkout. When the coupons stopped, the consumers simply went back to using the merchants existing shopping cart - myself included.
Via.
Similar posts you may like...
Save & Share: 
Category: Google
Forward: Email This Post
April 30th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
I suspect that Google could show a significant improvement in the performance of Google Checkout if it found a way to integrate it into its various other services - particularly AdSense. For example, they could offer AdSense publishers the opportunity to roll their
April 30th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
I think google checkout still has a lot of potential, and overall, I don’t see any reason for their growth to stop. They are better than Paypal in many areas, and as soon as we started using them, GCO transactions have remained higher than paypal transactions.
Paypal became huge solely from eBay use, and without something as strong as ebay to push GCO, I don’t think that it will ever compare. Maybe they can make a deal with craigslist or something…
April 30th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
I must admit that I, also, quit using Checkout once the coupons were gone. I think it will be very interesting to see where Google goes with Checkout in order to get the growth that they are hoping for but I think it is going to be much harder than they anticipated.
April 30th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
This is probably exaggerated: the peak is in November and December (i.e. gift buying season), where use of online shopping services are expected to spike. It will be interesting to see what happens this holiday season.
April 30th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
@Chartreader:
You need to refer to the other chart in the original article to see that it isn’t necessarily an exagerated peak.
In this post it states “On average, Google’s share of transactions across these sites had fallen to roughly 8% in March, down from 19% during the holidays.”
So, this shows that people were using Checkout probably due to the incentives and then went back to using the other payment options. If the coupons were not a factor, then it would be expected that Google’s share of the sales transactions, regardless of traffic levels, would stay at or near the same level.
April 30th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
[...] (via Marketing Pilgrim) [...]
April 30th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
I just cannot wait for adSense payments to come in through Checkout.
I have been using G Checkout a lot more recently and it is seamless so come on guys
May 1st, 2007 at 4:48 pm
[...] No coupons, no customers. Andy Beal talks about Google checkout tanking after one company stops handing out coupons. [...]
May 4th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
While many larger merchants stopped offering coupons, there were still merchants using coupons elsewhere. Our company is still offering a $10 off coupon and we are still receiving a large number of Google Checkout orders. One reason why we have not gone to accept PayPal and Express Checkout, is that the benefits being offered are no where the same as GCheckout. The best I can get from PayPal is 6 months of free transaction processing. Their “free” isn’t really, merchants have to pay the processing fee 1.9% or higher, then they will be refunded at the end of the month.
At least when GCheckout stops offering free processing, I will still get a certain amount processed for free by advertising with Google AdWords. PayPal and Yahoo need to make a better benefit program than a copycat blue shopping cart icon and their “free transaction processing” for 6 months.
May 12th, 2007 at 1:57 am
I guess I understand the incentives — but aren’t merchants just selling their customer base cheaply? I would never give Google or PayPal my customers for $10 each. Every single on of these customers can already pay me via my merchant gateway — they all have Visa or Mastercards — or they wouldn’t be able to get Google checkout or PayPal anyway.
I’m interested in the payment options that add customers — so far I like PaidByCash — it gives me customers I couldn’t get to otherwise. E-Check is pretty good as well.
May 26th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
[...] Â I expect a title Google Checkout, but what i noticed was hibidder.com in the title of the Google Checkout listing. Andy Beal recently blogged about Google Checkout taking a dive after their $10 and $30 coupons went away. paypal is large because of the large user database of ebay and that is what is google plans that they are trying to get users away from ebay and onto sites that support their own payment system. Leave a comment Comment RSS Previous: Hello world! [...]
June 15th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
[...] Andy Beal recently blogged about Google Checkout taking a dive after their $10 and $30 coupons went away. Coincidentally I had commented about how Paypal was able to get very large only because of the wide use of eBay, and that without a site like eBay, Google Checkout would have a hard time catching on. It looks to me that Google may be thinking the same thing, and that they are trying to get users away from ebay and onto sites that support their own payment system. [...]
July 15th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
I love google checkout, it is the only merchant I use to accept payments and have NEVER had a problem with them at all!
October 16th, 2007 at 6:24 am
The real acid test will be what happens in January when GCO is no longer free to merchants. Will they want the headache of multiple payment gateways when they have to pay full price, or will they revert to just using PayPal? We’ll see.