Author Archive

Posted by Marianna Mareckova, Administrative Associate, Product Marketing

Are you a merchant trying to figure out the mysteries of Google Checkout? No worries. You've already stumbled onto one great source of information by visiting the Google Checkout blog -- and here are some others:

Merchant Help Center offers answers to the most frequent questions on various topics: About Google Checkout, Getting started, Making sales, Checkout settings

Developer's Center to find all the information and resources you will need to integrate your website with Google Checkout

If you'd like to discuss with or learn from other Google Checkout users, there are two places you can go:

Google Checkout Merchants Forum. The place to discuss Google Checkout with other merchants, ask questions, and contribute your own expertise. Topics include guidelines, payouts and reconciliation, badges, account linking, free transaction processing, new features, system updates, feedback and suggestions, and much more. From time to time a Google rep called 'GoogleCheckoutPro' will post tips and clarifications.

Google Checkout Developers Forum. This Google Group is a place to discuss technical issues and integration with the Google Checkout API, ask questions, and share answers. Topics cover API integration basics, troubleshooting, using classic ASP/Java/.NET/Perl/PHP/Python/other programming languages with the Google Checkout API, system status and updates and more. From time to time a Google rep known as 'GoogleCheckoutDevPro' will post tips and clarifications.

Posted by Gavin Chan, Associate Product Marketing Manager

One of the lesser-known benefits of Google Checkout is its ability to help you prevent and fight fraud. In fact, Checkout's first line of defense works to prevent fraud from even reaching you: we proactively filter out fraudulent transactions using Google Checkout's proprietary fraud detection technology.

To help you fight fraud, we developed the Chargeback Resolution policy, which covers all Google Checkout transactions. This policy helps you efficiently manage any chargeback you receive; we even fight them on your behalf. Our team will work closely with you to ensure that you have the best chance of winning a dispute. If you already have tools and systems in place to handle chargebacks, we won't stand in your way -- you retain all the rights to directly contest chargebacks yourself.

An important aspect of the Chargeback Resolution Policy is the Payment Guarantee, which offers an additional layer of protection by guaranteeing payment for transactions that follow best practices in fraud prevention. Transactions covered by our Payment Guarantee are marked as "Covered by Payment Guarantee" on the Order Details page of the transaction. If you don't see this designation on a given transaction, don't worry—it's still covered by the Chargeback Resolution policy.

Posted by Eva Hung, Strategic Partner Manager

We're thrilled to see Google Checkout helping merchants across the web, and we hope the service has helped your store already. I'd like to share a few best practices we've been seeing that may help you be even more successful. Here it goes:

1. Charge orders within 72 hours
When a buyer confirms a purchase, you'll receive an order, and Google performs the authorization for 100% of the order amount. Then you must charge the order within 72 hours (that's 3 days) to be guaranteed the funds. More details are here.

Posted by Lance Cotton, Online Operations Sr. Training Specialist

We want Google Checkout users to have a great purchase experience, and we know that to achieve this, training you and your team—the people who directly interact with users—is vital. To equip you properly, we've put together a brief recorded how-to presentation on using the Merchant Center and offering great customer support (and it's only 8 minutes!). Watching this will help you do two of the most important things for increasing customer satisfaction and repeat business: quickly 1) process orders and 2) answer your customer's questions.

After you watch the presentation, feel free to give us feedback by going to the Contact Us link in the Help Center.

Posted by Joel Slovacek, Senior Operations Specialist

As Gavin mentioned before, Google Checkout is dedicated to preventing fraud as well as protecting you and your business from financial losses due to fraudulent transactions. We do a lot to protect you before you even charge or ship an order by verifying accounts and reviewing orders to make sure that you have legitimate buyers. You'll even be able to see this information on your orders so that you can be better informed about proceeding with any transaction.

Of course, fighting fraud is a team effort, and we need your help. Following some key best practices can ensure that together we safeguard your business. Specifically:

1. Request signed proof of delivery for high-value orders
Without signed proof validating that a package was indeed delivered, it becomes difficult to counter a buyer’s claim that they "never received the package."

2. Keep shipping records and documentation
Documentation is the name of the game in chargeback cases. Keep shipping and packaging information close at hand. Archive all customer correspondence back and forth about an order. The more information we have, the better able we are to represent your interests.

3. Ship only to the shipping address recorded within your Google Checkout Seller Interface
Fraudulent buyers sometimes try to change the shipping address right before you ship goods. Insist on shipping to only the address on record in your Google Checkout account, as this address is the one our risk systems have analyzed.

4. Respond to Google promptly on chargeback information requests
The card associations' have strict reply windows for contesting chargebacks. Therefore, responding quickly to Google's inquiries for information is critical, as it helps give us the time we need to work with you to build a strong case.

Some merchants have asked, "Am I protected for intangible goods like digital downloads and services?" The short answer is that cases like this are much harder for sellers to win. The card associations have historically made it very difficult for sellers to prove that a digital or intangible good chargeback case is invalid. We will continue to work with you as much as we can including using any methods you have used in the past to win these sorts of cases, but do recognize that it can be difficult to win these cases. As a result of the card associations’ position on digital/intangible goods, these transactions are not covered by the Google Payment Guarantee program. Do note that we are committed to working with the associations to build better ways for all merchants to be protected against invalid claims on digital goods and services.

Doing business always involves some risk, and this especially holds true when serving customers online. However, by keeping these best practices in mind, as well as following Google’s chargeback protection policies, you can significantly minimize your exposure to fraudulent transactions.

Rest assured that maximizing your sales and profits while minimizing your exposure to fraud losses is one of our highest priorities and we're committed to working with you to make online commerce faster, easier, and safe.

Posted by Tim Maly, Head of Checkout Operations

Besides helping drive more leads to your site and increasing your sales, one of our top priorities is fraud protection. We've implemented a system to detect and prevent it, including such industry-standard checks as address and card verification, as well as advanced risk-modeling techniques. We also use cross-industry resources like global fraud blacklists to prevent known fraudsters from using Checkout.

And we supplement our systems with a dedicated team of risk specialists -- people who manually review high-risk transactions to minimize your chances of shipping products to fraudulent buyers. We manually review a very small percentage of transactions, and we take the potential effect of this review time on order processing very seriously.

That's why we are constantly evaluating and streamlining the review process, working to minimize the impact on order processing while still helping protect your business. We acted early on to address the feedback we received from some merchants about the review process, taking steps to streamline it, reduce review times, and communicate with sellers more clearly about our fraud-prevention efforts. We've also been working to fine-tune our systems so they're even more effective at identifying transactions that warrant review. We're committed to constantly improving this area and the entire product, so please let us know how we're doing and what we can do to ensure Google Checkout always serves your business.

Posted by Alison Bjerke, Google Base Operations

Because Google Checkout and Google Base are so well integrated, you can upload information about your items to Base and sell them at the same time. Here's how:

1) Click on the "Sign In" link on the Google Base homepage.

2) Click on "Post an Item," click the "Choose an existing item type" dropdown menu, and select the item type ("Products" or "Vehicles").

3) Fill in the fields on the "Edit item" page. The more relevant information you include, the better we can match searches to your item.

4) Click "Edit" next to the Payment header and select the "Google Checkout" checkbox, which tells us that you to include a "Buy button" on your hosted page enabling customers to use Google Checkout when they buy from you.

5) At the bottom of the page, click on "Publish." You'll be asked to sign up for Google Checkout. If you don't want to include your bank account information immediately, that's okay; you can provide this information later.

6) You'll receive an email when someone buys your item.

Once you've posted a single item with the Checkout payment option, you'll be able to use the same account to sell other items too. You can manage your order history, edit items, and post additional items from the same dashboard. If you have lots of items to submit, you can also create a bulk upload and specify Checkout as a payment option. Google Base will create individual pages with a "Buy button" for each item in the bulk upload -- and you'll be on your way to making sales without having to maintain an independent site.

Posted by Dror Shimshowitz, Product Marketing Manager

Summer's almost over, which means it's time to send the kids (or yourself) back to school. Here at Google Checkout , making shopping easier is our prime directive, so we're now featuring dorm furniture, backpacks, tech gear and numerous other products for academia. And to ease your way into back-to-school shopping, we're also offering $10 off every purchase of $30 or more at these participating stores throughout August. So students everywhere -- start your shopping engines.

Posted by Scot Wingo, CEO, ChannelAdvisor

At ChannelAdvisor, we provide software and services that empower online retailers to manage search (paid and natural), comparison shopping engines and online marketplaces as online sales channels. We work with retailers of all sizes, from the very large to the very small. When we first heard about Google Checkout, we knew folks would immediately embrace it -- and in retrospect, that was an understatement! Because of their entrepreneurial nature, online merchants immediately understand and want to take advantage of what we call the three economic benefits of Google Checkout:

1. The competitive 2% and $0.20/transaction processing fees.

2. The free transaction processing credit that gives merchants a huge economic boost on their existing AdWords spend. Most merchants look at reinvesting that benefit into higher bids, more keywords or both.

3. The Google Checkout badge (the little shopping cart next to your AdWords ads), which can give merchants' sponsored listings a clickthrough boost, which can further increase their ROI.

Our merchants are really loving Google Checkout -- so I wanted to highlight two customers who exemplify what we're hearing:

First, Mark Fitzgerald with Grapevinehill.com (they sell shoes, not wine). He says, "We've seen a material number of buyers choosing Google Checkout, so we're really enjoying the increased AdWords ROI. We absolutely love the free payment processing credits we are earning."

Second, John Wieber at Laptopbroker.com has also seen strong Google Checkout buyer adoption. John says,"We have not had a single chargeback or transaction issue. Most importantly the use of the Checkout via ChannelAdvisor Merchant is simple and quick. We are confident that Google will quickly enhance its service to become the best solution on the Internet."

So that's our take. Thanks to the team for not only inviting me to be the guest blogger today, but for creating such a great product. We're all eagerly waiting for what new enhancements will be coming, and to see how things go this holiday season with Google Checkout.