Google Checkout Blog

Google Checkout for Non-Profits in 2010

Monday, December 21, 2009

Over the past couple of years, Google Checkout for Non-Profits has made donation processing simpler and more convenient for thousands of non-profits, processing tens of millions of dollars in donations per year.

Now we’ll be extending free donation processing for another year, until January 1, 2011, for those non-profits who are also members of our
Google Grants program. All other non-profits will continue to process donations according to Checkout's standard fee structure.

If your organization is already a Google Grants recipient using Checkout to process donations, please make sure you have
linked your Grants account with Checkout. If you’re not a Google Grants recipient and you meet the guidelines for the program, we strongly encourage you to apply.

In addition, we thought we’d share some data we collected about the default donation amount on one of our disaster relief donation drives on Google.com. We discussed internally whether the default donation amount should be left blank, made as high as $100 to increase the total amount collected, kept at $20 because people in the U.S. are accustomed to getting $20 bills from ATMs, or increased to $50 because it's close to the national giving average. In typical Google style we ran a few A/B experiments, randomly showing users different suggested donation amounts, in order to determine which amount would result in the greatest number of donations (or transactions) and total amount of donations collected.

First we compared leaving the donation amount blank, suggesting a $20 donation, and suggesting $100. We quickly saw that $20 was sub-optimal, resulting in fewer transactions and a lower total amount collected.

Suggested DonationTransactions (normalized)Total Collected (normalized)
Blank100$100
$2089.8$59
$10078.2$83


Next we tried testing a $
50 suggestion instead of $20. Again, having a suggested donation amount less than $100 was sub-optimal.

Suggested DonationTransactions (normalized)Total Collected (normalized)
Blank100$100
$5085.3$95
$10084.3$105


At this point, we decided to compare leaving the donation amount blank with a suggested amount of $100, which had been giving mixed results.

Suggested DonationTransactions (normalized)Total Collected (normalized)
Blank100$100
$10083.9$97


Our conclusion from this data was that leaving the suggested donation amount blank seemed to result in the greatest number of donations and the total amount of donations collected. Of course, every organization will have its own unique results, but we’d encourage you to run these experiments for your organization as well!

Posted by Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager and Patrick Moor, Software Engineer

Shop smarter with the new Chrome Extension for Checkout promotions

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Want to make the most out of your dollar? The new Google Checkout promotion notifier alerts you when sites you are browsing are offering discounts for purchases made through Google Checkout. With hundreds of stores offering savings of $5, $10, or $20 through December 17, you don't want to miss another Google Checkout deal.



















To install this Chrome Extension, visit the gallery page using your Google Chrome browser. And to find more places to shop, you can also browse participating stores on the Checkout deals page or search for products to buy on Google.com and look for the Google Checkout promotion badge.

Now even easier: Use Google Docs & Checkout to sell online

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

As you may have seen, the Google Docs blog announced a preview of the Google Checkout store gadget back in July. The Google Checkout store gadget, available in Google Labs, allows you to create an online store with inventory managed from a Google spreadsheet and payments accepted through Google Checkout.

Since then, our engineers have been exploring ways to simplify store creation. Today, we're excited to introduce a new feature for the store gadget: a wizard that streamlines the store creation process. By automating the manual steps in the original instruction guide, the new store gadget wizard should leave you with even more time to focus on your business.

As with the original release, no complicated coding or technical tasks are required, and you can get your first online store up-and-running in under five minutes. The new wizard helps you embed the store on Blogger, Google Sites, iGoogle, and other websites. We hope you'll find the new version more intuitive and enjoyable to use. To illustrate the difference:

We've heard from small businesses who believe the store gadget offers an easy e-commerce solution without the complicated coding. For example, a husband and wife are using the store gadget to start a stationery store. Read more feedback at Google Labs.

Remember that the store gadget is just one tool in your commerce toolbox. We invite you to learn more about Google commerce solutions:

Apps: Host your website.
AdWords: Advertise your business.
Product Search: Upload product offers to increase sales.
Commerce Search: Help shoppers find the right product on your site.
Checkout: Accept payments and protect against fraud.

For even more detailed information about the store gadget, please visit the Google Checkout Developer Guide.