Does Google Checkout Affect PPC Performance?

Google checkout has been around now for some time and is used by many websites as either a sole payment option for website transaction or as an additional service to an existing payment platform much like the way Paypal has been integrated previously. While this topic is nothing new or groundbreaking it is something worth investigating again to aid in the constant battle to refine PPC campaigns and improve websites SEO.

Firstly, is Google checkout a good payment platform?

As a standalone payment system it works well and offers most of the functionality other baskets offer (for a summary of website payment systems see my previous article). There are a few reported drawbacks of the system, for example as a website operator you are required to login to the Google checkout system to update some of the customer information regardless of your website back office platform which can be frustrating and time consuming. Also because it operates as a standalone system for the customer they can cancel their order through it directly and all you will receive is an email telling you this, leaving you to update your own records.

The benefits are the low operating and transaction costs (most packages beating Paypal) as well as very easy integration to your website. The main claim from Google is that having their checkout system installed on your website will lead to 40% higher conversions than a website not offering this checkout function.

While Google do not support this with any survey data it is not an unreasonable difference if you are comparing this with a website where you have to enter you details each time. My problem with this is I genuinely don’t believe the checkout solution will give 40% more conversions than a comparable system like Paypal or integrated solution on a large website like Amazon or Play. It will be aimed more at smaller websites doing much smaller volumes where checkout process is lengthy or unrefined.

Does it help your paid search (PPC) campaign?

So the system sounds good so far? Google claim using its checkout platform has an extra incentive though as it increases the click through rate of a PPC ad running for a site that has Google checkout installed on it. The reason is Google allow the use of an extra icon that appears below your PPC ad telling people you operate checkout and therefore gives them an incentive to click on your site if they have a Google account already set up.

Google state this extra click rate amounts to around 10% more which is a large amount considering the competitiveness of the PPC marketplace. Again there seems to be limited support data for this claim and given Google’s position on wanting to sell more checkout packages the claim cannot be held as unbiased. Unfortunately they are probably the only ones who could provide the data to support such a claim but you can look into this on your site. Generally we have found that the claim of 10% extra clicks is quite accurate and although this has varied across different websites offerings (as you would expect it to), we have seen this sort of increase after using the checkout icon.

The main problem is on average we found this does not lead to proportionate increase in conversions. It did lead to an increase, but if you are managing a campaign to a tight cost per acquisition (CPA) target then this extra 10% may actually do you more damage than good. There are of course circumstances where this may not be the case. If you are running on a reduced budget and your ads appear in lower positions you are likely to attract clicks if the ads above you don’t feature the icon, simply because it stands out more and this may work out well for you. But again this will depend on the overall landscape for that keyword or market, for example how many other people have the checkout button, are their ads or offerings more relevant.

The problem we have identified can be compared to bidding higher on a keyword and your ad appearing in the top positions where you are always likely to accrue numbers of junk clicks as well as more volume overall just because you stand out. In the case of using a Google checkout icon you are getting the extra traffic with your shiny new logo on your ad but this brings with it people not really interested in your website but were grabbed in by the ad. The best advice is to try it with your site as it may work really well and you may be happy with the increase of clicks and conversions that it brings.

So what are your options if you have checkout installed but don’t want the icon as you don’t want to risk the higher click rates and costs that come along with it? Well, currently you don’t have much option! So if you have checkout installed and want to run more tightly managed campaigns you may need to look at a different payment processing provider.

When to use the checkout icon in your ads?

While this is something to bear in mind for retailers when considering implementing Google checkout on your site, the same targets are not always in place, and some PPC campaigns will simply focus on driving traffic to a website. More importantly, some websites do not directly sell and instead offer services that can be enquired about, or even in cases contain no call to action apart from providing the user a phone number that they can contact the company on.

But why is this relevant to having a Google checkout icon on your PPC for a site promoting services? Bizarrely, you can still have one on your website if you play it properly. This is something e-consultancy alluded to years ago but the point still stands. Basically you can add a basket to your website even if you sell nothing, giving you the logo in your PPC ads. While Google may police this, there are ways round even having a useless basket on the site.

For example, if you were an air freight contractor, who is unlikely to transact online given the nature of your business, but you do want to drive traffic to an enquiry page, they could benefit from increased PPC traffic by implementing Google checkout and selling a keying somewhere on the site. While this is quite a strange concept, it is something worth considering to make your ad stand out in a paid search arena where all ads look the same and leave you with little to differentiate your offering.