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New Feature: Google Checkout

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

From now on, as well as being able to create extra pages, embed videos and get detailed information about your visitors, you can now even sell products and services through your clever little site.

We’re doing this through Google Checkout, which is another one of Google’s great new services. A whole bunch of online sellers have already chosen Google Checkout over various other e-commerce providers such as PayPal due to Google’s straightforward, simple approach, great support and up-to-date information.

Sounds brilliant, so how do I use it?

  1. If you don’t already have one, you’ll need to create an account with Google and then sign up for the Google Checkout service. You can do this by going to http://www.google.com/checkout and clicking the “Sign Up Now” link under the Sell with Google Checkout heading.
  2. Use your Google Checkout account to generate your Google Checkout code for each product. You should see something like this:
    Choose your options...

    Choose your options...

    Followed by this:

    ... and generate your Google Checkout code

    ... and generate your Google Checkout code

  3. Now you’ve got the code you need, log in to your clever little site, and go to the page you want to put the product button onto, and click the “Google Checkout” button on the toolbar.
    Click the Google Checkout button...

  4. In the window that pops up, simply paste in the code from Google and then click “Insert”. When you go to do this again for another product, the second piece of code will already be there for you, as this part should always be the same anyway.
    Paste your code into the window that appears...

  5. You’ll see a placeholder appear on your page, which represents your new Google Checkout button. You can move this around the page in the same way you would an image, or delete it again in the same way you would with any text or images.

    If you save your changes and click “View Changes” to view your site normally, you’ll see the new buttons appear on your page, ready to be used.

    Your Google Checkout placeholder...

    Your Google Checkout placeholder...

    ... and it's equivalent button on your site

    ... and it's equivalent button on your site

Okay, cool. So what can I do now?

Well, here’s a few ideas: You could create an online art gallery and sell one-off items you’ve created, like paintings or sculptures. Or, you could utilise all those extra pages and create a full blown online e-commerce shop. You could even use your website as an online box office and sell event tickets through it.

The possibilities are endless!

Google Analytics - Now Added

Monday, May 11th, 2009
Maps, graphs, pie charts and pretty colours - Google Analytics has it all

Maps, graphs, pie charts and pretty colours - Google Analytics has it all

Of all the things Google have come up with over the past few years, one of our favourites is Google Analytics. Using this ingenious package, you can build up a great picture of the people who visit your website - this includes where they are in the world, what stuff they were looking at on your pages, what they searched for in order to end up on your site, and how long they spent there.

You can also quickly and easily compare statistics with those collected previously - for example, you can easily see how many people visited your site in the first quarter of 2009, compared to the same period in 2008. Of all the various website statistics packages we’ve used, it’s definitely the best.

Obviously we didn’t think that you guys should be without this excellent tool, so, as of today, we’ve sorted that all out for you. All you need to do is sign up for a Google Analytics account (which is free), and then plug in the unique “Web Property ID” they give you into the handy drawer on the Admin Home page of your site. Easy!