When it comes to America's favorite pastime, professional and weekend athletes tend to take their equipment very seriously. Bats have come a long way since the original Louisville Slugger, with players demanding certain types of materials, weight, and size. Luckily, there's JustBats.com and BeAPro.com.

For the past eight years, JustBats.com and BeAPro.com, based in Kansas City, MO, have been appealing to every player's inner Babe Ruth with an enormous catalogue of sporting equipment. According to Chief Technology Officer Michael Kearns, service is the company's number one priority. "Our mission is to create customers for life by offering 110 percent satisfaction in every transaction," he says. "With Google Product Search and Google Checkout, we're continually attracting new customers, and we're seeing a lot of repeat business."

Solutions that fit like a glove

	"As an e-commerce company, Google was always on our radar. We knew that adopting the wildly popular Google Product Search would translate into increased traffic and conversion rates for us."

Kearns explains that three years ago, the company was looking for a cost-effective web marketing campaign that would drive new and repeat customers to its sites. Business is seasonal and the staff is small, so the firm's resources were devoted largely to operations. To bolster its in-house marketing resources, the company turned to Google to attract visitors year-round. The ideal marketing program would provide measurable results and instant data reporting to help the team determine and refine its web-marketing effectiveness.

To reach a wider base of ball players, Kearns and his colleagues began promoting their products on Google Product Search, a service that allows BeAPro.com to display their complete catalog to customers who are actively searching for sporting goods. "As an e-commerce company, Google was always on our radar," he admits. "We knew that adopting the wildly popular Google Product Search would translate into increased traffic and conversion rates for us." Of course, he notes, it helps that Google Product Search is a free service for businesses, with no fees for listing products. "Google Product Search is an essential tool in the belt of all internet retailers," adds Kearns.

Teeming with consumer confidence

Providing an easier, streamlined purchasing process for buyers made perfect sense to Kearns and his colleagues. Soon after, JustBats.com added the zero-transaction- fee Google Checkout. "We support technology that makes life easier and allows transactions to be completed in the least amount of steps," he says. With a single login, customers can shop with confidence with fraud-protection measures built in for both consumers and merchants.

Pitch-perfect results

Just two minutes after adopting Google Checkout, JustBats.com received its first order using the flexible checkout option. After a full month of implementation, the company experienced a dramatic surge in unique visitors who were attracted by Google Checkout's convenience and risk-free shopping. Kearns predicts that traffic will double every year because of the confidence that goes hand-in-hand with the Google brand.

JustBats.com and BeAPro.com have also seen a marked lift in traffic and conversion rates. Eighty percent of all product search results originate from Google, says Kearns. Kearns foresees an overall trend of rising traffic, year after year, thanks to the winning lineup of Google solutions.