Google Checkout - too good to be true?

The old adage has it - if it is too good to be true - then it probably isn’t.

Google came pushing it’s google checkout. Free payment gateway! Too good to be true?

Well it appears that it is.

Firstly we have the absolute disaster as it is poorly compatible with a number of affiliate networks. Well my first response is that the tracking is the responsibility of the merchant - not the payment gateway or the network.

But the big problem is that google checkout does NOT redirect the customer back to the merchant website once the transaction has ended. This is bad for the merchant - no second chance for a second impulse buy, and secondly the affiliate - as more often than not the tracking script is placed on the ‘checkout success’ page, so if there is no user visiting the success page - there is no tracking of the sale.

Google has its own solution for this, but it requires the merchant or affiliate network to be approved. This is basically a pain to all involved. More info on this see a4u forum

Also something to remember - google is not a bank! Just because google is the biggest internet company doesn’t mean that it’s payment solution will do everything and do it free. Paypal has only just really been accepted as being a bonified payment gateway and not just an ebay payment system.

I was originally tempted by GC but I am now treading with caution.

There are also alot of people worried about the amount of information that google is collecting - just in time for launch of its own CPA / CPS affiliate style model. Not sure if this worry is just or not.

I am sure that time will tell

April 30th, 2007 Posted by scifind | affiliate marketing, paypal, google, Networks | one comment

Beware Extra Fees On NOCHEX

This information might be of interest to merchants accepting Nochex as a payment option.

Nochex is a low cost payment system ideal for lower volume ecommerce vendors and ebay vendors, often used along side, or inplace of other cc processors or paypal

Nochex - sometimes talked about as the UK paypal - is starting to get complaints in the way that the ‘payement gateway’ processes credit card payments.

On Working Lunch today (BBC2) there were claims that credit card purchases using the Nochex service were treated as cash advances, and because of such they were subject to additional charges and much higher interest rates.

This can be a real pain if you are using the service for ‘micropayments’ - especially downloads, that may only cost the user £1, might cost nearly 5 times that with the addition of credit card fees.

Nochex have responded with the following warning on their payment pages.

Please be aware that a limited number of card issuers may charge you a cash advance fee for funding this transaction by credit card. This is not a charge made by Nochex.

This is accompanied with a link to a very short help article:

Cash Handling Fees
 Some Visa and MasterCard issuers (including Capital One, GM, MBNA, Mint, Sainsbury’s and Tesco) may charge you a cash handling fee when using your credit card to fund a Nochex payment.

If you are unsure whether you will be charged a cash handling fee we recommend that you either speak to your card issuer before you make the payment or choose an alternative card (such as your debit card) to make the payment from.

This fee is not charged by either the Merchant to whom you are sending this payment or by Nochex.

This is slightly worrying. I personally don’t use Nochex, but I do use PayPal alot. I am starting to wonder if there are similar issues with these other ‘Micropayment’ card payment processors?

If anyone knows the answers please post a comment!
 

March 27th, 2007 Posted by scifind | eBay, ecommerce, paypal | one comment

Shopping Cart Software.

Small side track from Affiliate Marketing - but I have been working with various shopping cart packages these past few month on a variety of side projects. Just thought that I would list the major contenders here along with a few thoughts.

osCommerce and Derivitives.

I have been using osC for years but have passed over the original osCommerce package for some of the derivitives.

I have used the major osCommerce derivitive CRELoaded on several projects of late, most notably www.shopscifi.co.uk, www.cricketretail.com and www.somethingsmellsnice.com after a bit of a teething problems a year or two ago with  CRELoaded I have really adopted this as my shopping cart software of choice.

The other major osC derivative shopping cart software is Zen cart, though I have not used this directly I have seen it in action with ForbiddenPlanet  and am quietly impressed by the results. 

All the major osCommerce derived software have great communitys supporting the shopping carts with help, advice and contributions in form of modules

Away from osCommerce software there is still alot of choice.

CubeCart.

I have played with this and it is OK. Nice and tidy. Limited functionallity in the free version - but fork out the £40 (or so) for the full version and add some of the contributions and you have a fantastic little shopping site on your hands.

http://www.cubecart.com/site/home/ - again there is an active forum and dedicated mods and skins site at http://www.cubecart.org/forums/index.php

X Cart

X Cart - Professional - slightly more expensive and there is a very affordable support and a huge range of (paid for) addons. Best thing about this is that it uses Smarty Template Engine based templates, thus making it exceptionally easy to drop chunks of code into a template - ie:

<title>{$entry.Name|title}</title>

<a href={$entry.Name|link}>{$entry.Name|productname}</a>

There is not so much a development community - but a competitivly priced development team to provide help support and extra functionallity .

CMS Addons

It is worth noting that popular CMS systems have ecommerce plugins. Drupal have an ecommerce system see here.

Joomla has an ecommerce plugin - virtuemart 

 Free And Simple eCommerce Solutions.

Ok - so after all this we must pay a quick mention to the PAYPAL shoping cart  - there done it. Ideal for the trader with no programming knowledge - other than the occasional bit of HTML and no budget to get a developer in.

A slightly more elegant system  - free and easy is mals eCommerce this works in a similar way to the paypal shopping cart but can intergrate with a number of different online payment systems a fantastic implimentation of this can be found at http://www.bridal-jewellery.co.uk

February 2nd, 2007 Posted by scifind | oscommerce, cubecart, xcart, x-cart, ecommerce, php, mysql, paypal | 2 comments