Google Checkout has seen more traffic this December than PayPal has, according to a director of web traffic measuring firm Hitwise. PayPal’s traffic was way ahead of Checkout’s for October and November, but it has fallen back to just slightly lower from 6th December. Also interesting are the sources of traffic for each site: almost 60% of PayPal’s visitors still come from eBay, and just 2.2% from non-auction shopping and classified sites. Compare that with Google Checkout’s 45.3%, and it would seem that Google’s promotions – free processing for merchants, and money off for buyers – have proved attractive this year, just as they did last year.
However, what might be more significant is what visitors do *after* visiting the payment site. Robin Goad says “visits do not always mean purchases. … While I can’t provide abandonment data, it is likely that people visiting another retail site after either Paypal or Google Checkout may have not completed their purchase. In other words, a lot of downstream traffic to our Shopping and Classifieds category could be used as a proxy for abandonment rates.” On that basis, GC’s 43% downstream to shopping and classifieds sites seems unfavourable in comparison to PP’s 28%: are buyers just checking out Checkout, rather than actually using it?
If you’re a merchant offering both PayPal and Google Checkout, how are sales working out for you? Which system do your buyers prefer? – leave us a comment below.
Via WebProNews.
5 Responses
Also google is dropping a lot of money (lost leaders) getting people to use checkout. Long term this could pay off but short term it does skew the numbers.
Although if PP is not careful they could find themselves losing out to this.
At the end of the day they should follow Apples lead. Build a better product and keep customers satisfied.
I’d say that the only metric that matters would be payment volume. Traffic seems a bit spurious.
well I would rather be microsoft than apple
and paypal =microsoft in the online payment league
We have used Google Checkout and have a high number of repeat customers using it. It’s much safer for buyers and sellers since Google has better fraud detection software compared to PayPal. We no longer get PayPal warnings *after* shipping an item that says *not to ship* 🙂
Google checkout was ok while the promotion was on earlier this year. After the £10 off promo dispeared the customers using it dried up to a dribble.
Then I was hit with a chargaback that cost me the goods, the money and a £7 fee. Sure I have had similar from paypal, but in total all the paypal claims in almost 4 years did not even come close to the amount lost in just ONE Google checkout chargeback.
Due to the “large amount” of chargebacks on my account (i.e. 1) Google suspended my checkout account and I haven’t heard from them since. Literally, as they wouldn’t reply to my emails trying to sort it out. When I finally got someone to answer me, they were extremely rude and condescending.
So I won’t be using the account again and after another powerseller outlined some serious security flaws it’s a definate no-no.