6/19/2005 08:19:00 AM|W|P|Vishen|W|P|Rumor has it that Google's going to compete head-on with Ebay's Paypal service by offering an online payment solutions to merchants. It seemed inevitable but I don't think too many predicted that Google would take this route. Google has always been seen as an innovator, not a competitor in "older" internet developments like merchant accounts and online payment processing. Offering a Paypal-type service does not seem to fit the Google identity... BUT it is a perfect match.... Google can now drive traffic to your site via Google Adwords, track how a visitor moves across your site viaUrchin On Demand (which Google acquired last month)... and finally collect money from visitors that make a purchase and extract a small merchant account fee. By obtaining all services from one provider rather than 3 different providers Google will make life easier for millions of online store owners. It has already slashed the price of Urchin on Demand to $200. I hope Google manages to slash the price of merchant account fees too. In addition, this may improve Google's current tracking tool. Sellers may soon be able to get precise data on exactly how much their ad expenditure on Google contributes to sales. Now here's the scary part...this is going to milk profits out of sellers and fill Google's coffers. Adwords is a bidding tool. Merchants compete with each other to buy placement on Google. Really.. only the top 3 placements count. The rest get relatively low attention. The better your position, the better traffic you get. The better your site conversion rate, the more you can afford to bid. The more you can afford to bid - the more visitors you get. It's a simple concept and this form of Pay Per Click advertising contributes to almost all of Google's revenues. Now by offering Urchin on Demand as a Site Analytics Tool, Google allows merchant to optimize their visitor path with the goal of increasing sales. The better optimized your site, the more you can afford to bid. But what happens if Urchin becomes so prevalent that most merchants start optimizing their sites? Well a bidding war occurs - gradually pushing up click costs at the expense of merchants, all while benefiting Google. Now with Google offering a payment option the scenario becomes scarier. If a larger number of competing merchants have well optimized sites and accurate tracking to predict visitor cost and revenue per visitor , assuming all else equal, than the only factor merchants can use to compete with each is their Google placement. This will inevitable drive up prices with merchants seeing lower and lower return on their Adwords expenditure - all while lining Google's pockets. As a merchant who's been seeing his cost per click on Google rise by considerably year to year, this scenario is scary. It may help online merchants in the short term- but erode profits in the long term.|W|P|111919515895303845|W|P|Google to go into Online Payments|W|P|email@vishen.com7/24/2006 10:57:43 PM|W|P|Anonymous|W|P|Thank you!
[url=http://nnedlqij.com/mchr/fhbf.html]My homepage[/url] | [url=http://totorbnv.com/ginj/tnlh.html]Cool site[/url]7/24/2006 10:57:51 PM|W|P|Anonymous|W|P|Well done!
My homepage | Please visit7/24/2006 10:58:01 PM|W|P|Anonymous|W|P|Thank you!
http://nnedlqij.com/mchr/fhbf.html | http://bmomnuga.com/rrpr/skei.html