Mountain View, Calif., — In an attention-grabbing strategy of inter-mingling their products, Google aims to tap customers from their more successful products to their less successful ones. On its Google Checkout page, Google claims that when you use a “Checkout” icon and buy an AdWords ads, you will not only get the Checkout sale processed for free, but it will also lead to higher conversions and can increase ad click-through by 10%.
The 10% higher clickthrough figures is surely getting noticed now, as well as another statistics from the Google Checkout Merchant page, which contends that ads displaying the icon also have a 40% higher conversion rate. That’s quite a number.
Furthermore, what is more interesting is that Google quotes one advertiser, Fred Lerner of e-commerce network Ritz Interactive, claims that the Checkout icon has given them a ‘23% increase in clickthrough rates’.
Google Checkout is a payment service designed comparatively after PayPal, but improved with Google’s clout: AdWords clients that use Checkout can get their Checkout transactions processed for free.
They also get higher visibility in Google’s search results, simply because the Checkout icon is so prominent, according to Blogoscoped, which posted imagery of a Checkout-infused ad in the following Google search:
Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land notes, “Google first changed to a larger badge set about two years ago and then added a more colorful option in August.” They are still playing around with the look too.
Google Checkout charges non-Adwords merchants 2% plus $0.20 per transaction. AdWords clients may use the service at no cost for sales of up to 10 times their monthly AdWords spend; after exceeding that limit, they are charged 2% plus $0.20 per transaction.
If using the Google Checkout badge becomes a big trend, it may just increase Google Checkout’s market share significantly. “Good for Google, perhaps less good for competition like EBay-owned PayPal,” says Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped. It could certainly go a long way in branding the service