Over at IndyHall Labs, we’re a bunch of independent designers, developers, usability experts, etc. – you’ve heard this from me before. However, we have a policy that is relatively long standing (in terms of the age of IndyHall Labs) and it’s getting a little attention.
There are people out there, you see, that won’t use Google Checkout. There are people that won’t use PayPal. There are people that won’t use their credit card online at all. As a person that sells software for a living, well, those are people you assume won’t become your customers. Giving personal (and financial) information to a 3rd party processing agent is certainly something… well… personal.
There are a plethora of reasons that one might choose to pay via PayPal but not Google Checkout. There are just as many reasons that the opposite may be true. Personal horror stories of one or the other top the list, or at least knowing someone that has a personal horror story.
As people who collect money, the same sort of choice is presented when you build a custom e-commerce system. We did so so we could provide a better user experience and integrate it tightly with our on-the-fly licensing back-end – we could have used a service such as Kagi, but we wanted to be able to customize our solution and customer presentation more tightly.
So when it came to choosing a 3rd party payment processor on the seller side, the same sort of arguments were brought up and debated. We chose to start collecting money via Google Checkout at IndyHall Labs because we found it just a tad more stable – our own personal horror stories of PayPay losing payments, or us not getting the appropriate receipts – things that may well be fixed now. Because of the custom nature (and some of the magic) of our e-commerce system, each payment processor takes a degree of time to integrate, so we started with our chosen one – Google Checkout – and plan to eventually build in PayPal as well. But as soon as we had any way of collecting money, we wanted to launch our software.
But I’ve digressed – the point is, currently, we don’t accept PayPal. You’d be surprised how often we get emails like “I would totally buy your software but I refuse to use Google Checkout, can I use PayPal?” Eventually, the answer will be “of course” but we haven’t completed the API integration yet. So in the meantime, we’ve come up with a solution that we think works pretty well.
Go back to the second paragraph – we assume someone that won’t use Google Checkout will not become a customer. So we respond with an email similar to this (this is for Twistori Desktop):
We understand that you may not want to, or may be unable to use Google Checkout to purchase Twistori Desktop. We actually understand. Although we can’t currently accept PayPal, we have a solution!
Please pick from one of the charities below, and donate at least $12 (the price of a copy of Twistori Desktop) to it. If you can, mention “IndyHall Labs” in your donation so that we can track donations made in the name of our software. Pass the receipt along to us, and we’ll send you a copy of Twistori Desktop!
The Mara Triangle on WildlifeDirect
http://maratriangle.wildlifedirect.org/Operation Smile
http://www.operationsmile.org/PhilAbundance
http://www.philabundance.org/
So far, we’ve actually raised a small chunk of change for charity. People seem surprised by our response, and many donate more than we ask. We almost always hear back from those we send this email to. We couldn’t be more elated about it.
Recently, the entire concept has been gaining some love, and I wanted to point to one particular write-up. Over at Corvus Consulting they did a write up titled “Why I Paid $25 for a $12 App” – it’s the nicest write up about the program we’ve gotten.
So what’s the point of all of this? Just excitement. We had no idea this program would work out so well. We didn’t realize the incredible kindness of the people that purchase our software. It makes me wonder how we’ll handle continuing to make charitable donations once we’ve integrated PayPal into our e-commerce system. We certainly can’t go back now.
Besides, it feels too good 
5 Comments
Hey David
I’m the they at Corvus Consulting (it’s a one-man show), but I’m glad to help spread the word about this idea. It’s a great example for other vendors, especially the bigger ones who make their charitable work entirely at their discretion, where IndyHall Labs includes customers in that effort.
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Well Done! I Like it!
Thank you for sharing this. Well done!
You got a point there. I never thought about it that way.