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Elastic Path’s Jason Billingsley and Netconcepts‘ Stephan Spencer. (along with a cameo by EP’s Gord Janzen) presented this webinar to accompany the white paper and research series called The Ecommerce Checkout Report (free download).

The report inspected the Top 100 online retailers and reviewed for 23 tactics commonly used in Checkout. The results attempt to begin a dialog in order to answer questions like: Does a shorter checkout process really decrease shopping cart abandonment? Should you use an order confirmation screen? Does live chat improve conversions? Study samples included a variety of vertical market groups including apparel and accessories, computers and electronics, and both high and low ticket value product retailers.

See also:

nitobi’s Robot Replay

Jason’s post on travel “Stop the checkout to save the customer money?“

UK etailers and online shoppers now have another means to complete purchases as Google launched its “Checkout” payment system Thursday (April 12th). Hitherto available just to US customers, Google aims to expand its reach and offer some serious competition to eBay’s PayPal which is well established as a market leader in this integrated payment space.

Despite entering the fray relatively late and having a batch of technical foibles to overcome in early days, Google Checkout stands a great chance of keeping even more consumer traffic within the Google sphere of influence. Ergo, shoppers might click on an etailer’s Google AdWord (making Google money in the process) then make payments through the Google check out (again benefiting Google) while also contributing to Google’s ability to cross-reference and aggregate consumer patterns and tastes.

Don’t get me wrong, this baked-in process can certainly build conveniences and efficiencies into the shopping process and, with Google massive corps of engineers, I suspect problems will be sorted out in due process. Further, Google’s deep pockets and cross-market clout will help build confidence against the biggest problem, fraud.

Indeed, many auction users have been approached with all sorts of schemes requiring payments by money order, wire transfer or one-off e-payments via PP or others. By being the pioneer, PayPal caught the brunt of the scammer’s most clever trickery and according to BBC article ” Google unveils UK payments system” PayPal’s challenge could be an advantage for Google,

Google is also trying to take advantage of what could be Paypal’s biggest reputational risk.

As market leader and provider of a fully-integrated payments system - running transactions and transferring money directly between buyers’ and sellers’ bank accounts - Paypal is by far the biggest target for fraudsters and abuse of its service.

Google Checkout, in contrast, works solely as a wrapper for regular credit and debit card transactions, offering to simplify the process by storing card data and shipping information centrally.

Its staff promise that they will “make buyers whole” if they suffer fraud, as well as representing retailers when they face the risk of losing money when a deal goes wrong.

My major concern is how closely Google is looking at purchasing habits and comparing them against your other online activities and profiles. Sure this could result in more relevant ad placements but also a bit of uneasiness from simply too much information floating around Google’s massive databases. What have you purchased that you’d prefer not to be marketed about?

But I like choice (and you probably do too) and Google Checkout is designed to be an option, not an absolute. Again from BBC:

Google’s Obi Felton is also at pains to stress that Google Checkout buttons tend to sit alongside retailers’ other payment methods when it comes time for the customer to pay, rather than trying to supplant them.

Google’s soft-sell means shoppers can choose whichever method they prefer to pay and that ability to choose pleases me.