Google has bolstered its Google Checkout service with the launch of the Google Checkout store gadget.
“In a matter of minutes, you can create an online store that’s powered by Google Checkout and has inventory managed in a Google Docs spreadsheet,” reports the Google Checkout blog. “Selling online has never been easier — no complicated coding or technical tasks are required.”
The Google Checkout store gadget is currently a ‘Labs’ product and which is labelled as ‘experimental’, meaning it could change or be dropped entirely at any time, works only with Google Checkout (of course). To set up a store, retailers simply create a copy of Google’s template spreadsheet and then replace the sample inventory with their own product list. They then ‘share’ the spreadsheet, choose the ‘Publish as a web page’ option, check the ‘Automatically re-publish when changes are made’ option and click the ‘Start publishing’ button.
The completed ecommerce site can then be published on any website, by simply cutting and pasting an HTML snippet automatically generated by Google, and can also be embedded into a blog post or a sidebar in Google’s Blogger service or on iGoogle.