![]() Google announced the release of a gadget for utilizing Google's Checkout (shopping cart) with Google Sites and Google Spreadsheets. The basic concept is to create a spreadsheet with item information, quantity, price, and url of a picture; then utilize the gadget to turn your Google Sites page into an e-commerce platform! The Google blog says you'll be ready to go in three easy steps under five minutes. The reality is that it takes a bit longer to do, but you don't need any coding and you can integrate simply into Google Sites as advertised. Links to the checkout gadget:
The best step by step instructions are available on Google's code development site for Google Checkout. Google Checkout forum has questions and answers. Within this site is a live feed to Painted Miniatures - this is "real" e-commerce site integrated within my Zingodia website in that if you purchase an item, your credit card will be charged and I will ship you the product! Some lessons learned...
2009/12/19 - update - the latest version of the Google Checkout Gadget provides for pop-out pictures, custom data collection, inventory control, and shipping terms as setup in your Google Checkout settings. Only drawback is that all items must be sold on a single page. The above gadget xml links will still work but will not have these additional features. For a live example of the latest checkout, select this link to Painted Miniatures 2 - again, this is a "real" e-commerce site with credit card processing. 2010/01/07 - update - the latest version of the Google Checkout Gadget provides for digital delivery of product automatically (see digital delivery example - it's done in a sandbox so that you can go through the checkout process and receive a link to the picture) as well as full HTML support in the title and the description columns - I've modified the first line in the Painted Miniatures 2 site and blogged about the enhancement. NON-PROFITS - can also utilize a special version of Google Checkout which does not utilize the gadget, but should work within Google Sites by cutting and pasting some html code into an appropriate container. |