Paul Rouke - Usability Professional

The latest update of our flagship e-commerce system UCDCommerce adds support for the Google Checkout payment system. This allows users to make purchases without having to register on the site, taking advantage of the reliability and trust of the Google brand to help encourage users to make their purchases.

Trust and convenience

For first-time visitors to an e-commerce site, having to register and enter their payment details can be a daunting process. Fear of fraud and the desire to avoid having to maintain a list of passwords for every e-commerce site they visit means that many users can be discouraged from buying from companies not already known to them. Google Checkout helps to overcome these worries by ensuring that all payment details are handled by Google and not the retailer, and also ensures that the user needs only to maintain their Google password and not a separate one for the retail site.

Advantages for retailers

Google Checkout is good news for retailers too. It removes some of the barriers to purchase which leads to more conversions, and it can also add value to Google AdWords campaigns – if your e-commerce site implements Google Checkout, your AdWords advertisements will automatically have a ‘Google Checkout’ logo appear next to them, letting the user know that they are only a few clicks away from being able to buy the product advertised. This can be a crucial advantage in making your advertisements stand out from the crowd and, again, can lead to better conversion rates.

The User Experience

Here at PRWD, we take user experience very seriously, so we have naturally considered the impact on user experience of adding Google Checkout support. Fortunately, Google take user experience seriously too, and their checkout interface is well-designed, following good interaction design principles. We’re confident that Google Checkout can enhance the experience of your site’s users.

Future Developments

This is just the latest new feature to be added to UCDCommerce. We’ve got lots of interesting plans for the future, which we’ll be revealing over the coming weeks and months.

Tags: google, UCDcommerce