What is Google Checkout? (Or why will consumers care)

Here’s how my thinking has developed on this. Google Checkout is Five pieces that work in unison to provide a great (safe, streamlined, efficient) and innovative consumer buying experience:

1. Search Badges/Icons - The consumer experience starts on the search engine. Merchants that accept Google Checkout will get a graphical “badge” that shows consumers they can expect the Google Checkout
2. Unified Checkout – For participating merchants, consumers can now know they will have a single checkout experience vs. having to learn each checkout.
3. Web 2.0 Wallet – By storing your credit card information in your Google account, your payment information (credit card digits) never has to leave google’s systems. Your ship-to information is transmitted via server-to-server encryption so that’s safe as well.
4. Credit Card Gateway – Like verisign or cybersource (or authorize.net, etc.) Google Checkout integrates a credit card processing engine that pulls the info from the wallet, runs the consumer’s card and then…
5. Purchase Monitor – Finally, all of your purchases through the Google Checkout are aggregated in one place so you can monitor the status and review the merchant all in one page.

Use case:

Here’s a before and after scenario. Let’s say this holiday between Thanksgiving and Christmas you need to buy 15 things online.

Before Google Checkout:

1. Checkout at X different places. Most likely if you are buying 15 things, you’ll have at least 5 stores to deal with and a max of 15, so call it 5-15. Each checkout is very different.
2. Enter (risky and prone to error) your credit card, bill-to/ship-to, etc 5-15 times over and over and over.
3. Receive and monitor 5-15 different confirmation emails, tracking mechanisms, out of stock emails, etc.
4. Leave feedback/reviews at 5-15 different places.

After Google Checkout:

1. Shop at 5-15 Google Checkout enabled merchants, with the same Google-powered checkout
2. Never have to re-enter your CC/bill-to/ship-to info.
3. Receive and monitor order status in one place
4. Leave feedback/reviews in one easy to use location

The time savings alone on step 2 is huge. Together the Google Checkout experience will easily halve if not quarter the time it takes to buy from multiple merchants.

There are many things Google can do to accelerate consumer adoption. A limited time rebate has been mentioned. Also, think of how many Google Toolbars are out there (according to comscore – google has 48% marketshare). One of the popular features in the Google Toolbar is Autofill what if there was an update to Google Toolbar that automatically asked if you wanted to move that info into your google account so you can more easily use it in Google Checkout? Gotta be at least 20-50m people out there using Google Toolbar.

Another clever way to drive adoption is Google Checkout COUPON CODES. Consumers are CRAZY for coupon codes (just look at the comments section of my blog here). Google Checkout gives Google and partners the ability to spiff consumers easily with coupon codes.

In fact at launch, google has this online mall that has detailed Google Checkout Coupon Codes ready to go.

source : http://ebaystrategies.blogs.com/ebay_strategies/2006/06/what_is_google_.html

***Upcoming Workshops: Market Research to Craft an Unbeatable Auction***

This workshop will be held on Friday, July 7th from 11:00 PT to 12:00 PT. Sara Taheri, Dave Frey, and Morgan Brooks, marketing team from eBay Certified Provider Terapeak, will use this workshop to illustrate how market research can be used to build outstanding auctions.
They will run through the process of building an auction and show how market research can be used to make the right choices.
Be sure to check out the Chatter blog, for video previews and excerpts from select Workshop hosts.
Workshops are hosted in discussion threads on the Workshops Board. To get to the Workshops Board:
Go to www.ebay.com
Click on Community at the top of the page
Click on "Workshops" in the "Events" section
This will bring you to the threaded Workshops Board.
To view archived workshops or to learn more about future workshop events, please check our Workshops Calendar.

source :http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200606.shtml#2006-06-30120629

eBay UK: 5Pence Listing Day, Thursday 29 June 2006

eBay UK is holding a 5Pence listing day on Thursday 29 June. This promotion is for buy it now fixed price, with PayPal immediate payment only. This includes listings created before 29 Jun 2006 but that are scheduled to start on 29 Jun 2006. Items must be listed in British Pounds in ebay.co.uk, but anyone can participate in this promotion as long as you are willing to accept British Pounds and ship to the UK.

Sellers will be charged the full insertion fee at the time of the listing but ebaY will reimburse the insertion fee amount paid over 5 pence for eligible listings by 31 August 2006 by means of a credit on their eBay invoice. The invoice credit memo for qualifying items will read "Immediate Payment Promotion".eBay is excluding shops inventory format listings, auction style listings and auction with buy it now formats, items listed in the vehicles and property categories, multiple item listings in all formats. This includes both auction style (also known as dutch auctions) and fixed price formats, identical listings that do not comply with eBay's duplicate listings policy, any item listed on 29 Jun 2006 but scheduled to start after the promotion has finished, will not qualify for the promotion. All other eBay selling fees will still apply, including but not limited to final value fees, optional reserve price fees and all listing upgrade fees such as "gallery", "subtitle", "bold" or "highlight". Please see the complete announcement here: http://pages.ebay.co.uk/sell/5pBIN06jun

Source : http://blog.sellersourcebook.com/blog/_archives/2006/6/29/2066737.html