Google Checkout

[WOP]

Another Vote for Google Checkout

Add us, we have two V7 sites and V8 sites in design stage

[scsishop]

Actinic get your act together

This stalling by Actinic is completely unacceptable , It can only be at the request of the "mighty paypal " that they are stalling , lets be honest what other reason can there be, If anyone thinks they can ignore google checkout and sell as much as the next guy then please think again.

Also who the hell wants to do Paypal any favours , they have done me over a few times via Ebay and there £500 payment protection is the biggest load of rubbish out there .

Come on Actinic get your act together VERY SOON or you will loose a mass of your customers and THEY WILL NOT COME BACK .

Also how can you expect people to fork out loads of money for upgrades when the new version is virtually no different,

and also how can you expect people to pay £250+Vat a yeat for cover when you cant even understand what the other person is saying.

what a joke


Rant over ( for now )


Gav

[leehack]

breathe.......and.......breathe.............

[NormanRouxel]

Maybe every 10 or so rants the forum should post a link back to post #104 from Chris Barling.

We have taken the request on board and although we have previously investigated a "full" Google Checkout integration (it's a huge amount of work), we are now looking to see if there is a quicker way of getting Google Checkout going.

NB quick, in the world of software development, does not mean instantaneous.

[buspassjohn]

[/URL]from Chris Barling.NB quick, in the world of software development, does not mean instantaneous.

No in the case of Actinic and Stock Control, it means 2 years and counting!

[Froogle]

No in the case of Actinic and Stock Control, it means 2 years and counting!

Actinic don't do stock control, they do "stock monitoring" I mean wtf is that? I monitor the stock myself, I watch it going out the warehouse door.

I am pretty disappointed with the whole software to be honest and if I hadn't invested 4 years in it I'd have moved by now.

What ecommerce software doesn't offer flexibile shipping options, unique voucher codes, stock control and now GC? - Actinic doesn't, every single other package out there does.

Maybe we should start a thread "who is going to leave Actinic if they don't integrate GC fast?" If people started posting on there I bet Actinic would take notice.

[Jan]

FYI - I've been asked to move this posting into the main thread.

The £10 Google checkout offer is only assigned to certain stores and it finishes in a few weeks time.

http://groups.google.com/group/googl...fcf64c7cc5e507

This is a quote from that forum thread :

------------------------------------------------------------

I had a similar message last week from Donna at Google.

However, even as we speak, Google continues to tell buyers that they
will receive £10 off "ANYWHERE you see the Google Checkout button".


We now have an increasing number of upset customers who haven't
received their discounts - they think that they have been "ripped off"
by us and/or Google and are threatening to complain to Watchdog,
Trading Standards, Advertising Standards, the courts, etc.


Not a very good start is it? And Google have just gone quiet and
we've received no further replies to our e-mails. Looks like we won't
be ditching Paypal just yet!

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Regards,

[cbarling]

As previously promised, we are looking at integration of Google Checkout. Here is an update.

The simple integration mentioned elsewhere on community (post the cart contents to Google at the end of the checkout process) would take a few days. However, it breaks the Google Checkout terms and conditions, so is not a flyer.

A full integration of Google Checkout would take 600-800 days effort. It’s similar to Paypal Pro (which we have just completed) but considerably more complicated due to various rules and methods used. A full integration would mean that every Actinic feature would work with Google Checkout. It’s getting EVERYTHING working, in what is a fairly complicated architecture, that is the cause of the large estimate. This would also deliver Google orders into the standard Actinic order processing tab.

Some of the technical issues are around getting things like cart discounts, dynamic upselling in the cart, product discounts, digital download etc all working. To quote a line from the internal document, one of the items of work is “Perl HMAC-SHA1 signature”. I don’t know what that means but it sounds difficult. Another illustration is that we need to trawl right through the application as we expect a customer email address to be available, and Google Checkout does not necessarily pass the customer email address through to the merchant. I’ve listed these points just to provide some background to the high estimate, and hence the difficulty. It’s because of the range of Actinic functionality that it’s so much work.

One of the helpful points about this thread, other than helping to gauge demand, is that people have indicated that they don’t need a full integration. Hence we are exploring some ideas that could provide a Google Checkout capability, leaving all order processing in Google. We might be able to do this and still move forward with other development priorities that we have previously committed to. We might then subsequently be able to do a full integration.

There has been some discussion on the thread about why Actinic has integrated Paypal Pro and not Google Checkout. We have been working on Paypal Pro since January 2007 and had previously integrated it into Actinic Express during 2006. At the point that we started on Paypal Pro, there were lots of user requests for this and none for Google Checkout. This was a big factor in our thinking.

In the next few weeks we will be promoting Paypal Pro heavily. That’s what we have today, so that’s what we will promote. However, don’t take that to read anything negative about Google Checkout, I expect both to be successful in the future.

Chris

[buspassjohn]

In the next few weeks we will be promoting Paypal Pro heavily. That’s what we have today, so that’s what we will promote. However, don’t take that to read anything negative about Google Checkout, I expect both to be successful in the future.

Chris

Pure arrogance or what?

[los_design]

A full integration of Google Checkout would take 600-800 days effort. Chris

Sounds like a project scope to upgrade a client site from v8.04

(runs for cover.....)

[leehack]

3 years for one person to do this is madness. How have others already implemented this? There has been requests for months if not years to improve the checkout process, surely this has to be the last nail in it's coffin?

Would it be easier to scrap the current checkout, streamline it and then integrate Google checkout? Kill 2 very big birds with one stone.

[Widdy]

I have been on the phone to paypal pro today and they tell me that if I have 5 sites I have to pay £100 a month to use it so I think that is a no go-er for me and probably most others who have multiple sites. As far as I am aware google is better for multiple sites.
Before I changed over to Actinic I used os-commerce which is a free cart, they have had google checkout available since mid 2006 with the following

This Google Checkout module for adds Google Checkout as a payment module within .
This allows merchants using to build their sites with Google Checkout as a payment processing option.
The plugin provides Level 2 integration of Google Checkout with .

Plugin features include:
1. Posting shopping carts to Google Checkout
2. Shipping support (Currently, flat rates, item rates and table rates are supported)
3. Tax support
4. User and order updates within
5. Order processing using Admin UI

I do not understand why it would take so much work to integrate it as I am not a programmer, but others have done it (they did it free of charge as well) .

The bottom line is I want google checkout but the choices are we can wait for it or go elsewhere with another cart,
I personally will stick with Actinic, when I shop online I buy from the store with the service, quality of goods, error free, professional and quick website and competitive pricing, not the store that offers google checkout. In the future I think consumers will be swayed by stores offering Google Checkout, but there is not enough brand awareness of it at the moment.

Actinic have not ruled it out and there is so much interest in it they will integrate it, keep voting

[george]

when I shop online I buy from the store with the service, quality of goods, error free, professional and quick website and competitive pricing, not the store that offers google checkout. In the future I think consumers will be swayed by stores offering Google Checkout, but there is not enough brand awareness of it at the moment.

Actinic have not ruled it out and there is so much interest in it they will integrate it

Good post.

[justinhill]

2.5 man years?

Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut since I haven't actually paid for my Actinic software yet (18 days to go) but I have to say I'm a bit surprised by all this.

I last used Actinic years ago when it was at version 4, I think. After that, I was seduced by the power of the new eBay thing and I went off to do my selling there. Years later I'm thinking of coming back to Actinic so I go look at the web site and yes, they're still there and yes, they're bigger and better than ever. Marketworks is the leading third party tool for eBay. Over there, people are fed up becuase they don't handle Nochex. As soon as I turn up over here, it's the same thing only with Google Checkout (which Marketworks integrated pretty quickly, oddly enough since you can't use it for eBay listings - only for the storefront).

These things are a commercial decision. Years and years ago I ran a programming team (back in the days before Windows was invented) and I well recall how we could present a change request as needing anything from 3 to 300 days depending on how we worded it. Basically, if they wanted to do it, it wouldn't take long. If they didn't fancy it, it was presented as a 'big job'. I suspect that if Actinic really felt they needed Google Checkout, they'd discover it didn't need quite as many man-hours as they thought.

Back in the version 4 days as I recall you could take credit card payments the 'proper' way - with your bank-based PSP. Paypal, Paypal Pro and Google Checkout are alternatives aimed at the new breed of very small time players who can't fund (or don't get approved for) the traditional PSPs.

Does Actinic consider Google Checkout to be too targeted at the small-time operator to be important for the kind of customers they want to attract?

[jont]

others have done it (they did it free of charge as well)

There is often no support or only forum support if things go wrong with open source software so things are not as water-tight as needed (and demanded) for commercial software. As a store owner you need to know the site is working correctly and when it falls over (it will) there is someone who can help out... rather than waiting 5 days for a 15 year old Russian schoolboy to come online and offer advice. Suddenly the prospect of losing 250 customers with the site down compared to 3 because they want to pay via Google looks a little grim.

Open Source will also literally have a team of thousands around the globe all contributing towards the code so 800 man days can be done in relatively short period of time due to the amount of men (and women) involved.