As any frequent online shopper knows, it can become a real hassle to come up with usernames and passwords for every site that you shop. Also, many websites sell or give out your email address and before you know it your inbox is full of spam. On the other hand, sometimes you don’t receive shipment notifications or email correspondences from the companies you actually purchased from because your email account filters them into your junk mail or spam box. The risk of credit card fraud can also be a deterrent for some people when making online purchases. If you are among the many people who would like to simplify their online shopping, you may want to get acquainted with Google Checkout.

To use Google Checkout, you simply create an account for yourself which is saved on Google’s secure server. This account will contain your personal information such as name, billing address, shipping address and phone number. You can sign up by going to any site that offers Google Checkout as a payment option. These sites will have a shopping cart icon next to them when you use Google search engine. There is no need to sign up ahead of time. Just fill up your cart as usual and when you are ready to check out, click on the Google Checkout button. As you are filling in your information for your order, you are also signing up for your Google Checkout account. Once you have completed your account, your information will be saved and the next time you go to checkout, you simply sign in and click a button to check out. Your Google account will do all the rest.

One of my biggest pet peeves about online shopping is having to come up with a username and password every time I shop at a new site. With Google checkout, I only have to remember one. Granted, not every site that you like will have this as an available payment option, but it seems to be getting more and more popular. If you shop online often, this will save you a lot of time. Another nice feature is that if you have orders from multiple sellers, you can track them all in one place.

Most websites will ask you for your email address when you are checking out. This is usually a necessity because most online sellers will contact you by email with useful information like shipment and tracking information. However, some sites will also sell or give away your email address to other companies which means more spam for you. With Google checkout, you can create an email address specifically for your account so that all emails associated with your online orders will go to that box. This will minimize the amount of spam that you receive in your personal email.

Google Checkout is also very secure. Your credit card information is kept on a secure server protected by 128-bit encryption and your payments are processed by Google who then pays the merchants for your orders, so your credit card information only goes as far as your Google account. The merchant that you buy from does not even have access to it.

As a consumer, I definitely sing the praises of Google Checkout, but merchants should take their time deciding if and how to use it. There are some drawbacks to offering Google Checkout such as lack of customer service and the inability to view Adwords conversions for sales associated with Google Checkout. The only way to contact customer service at Google Checkout is through email, and from my experience, they do not get back to you quickly, if at all. Also, skewed Adwords figures for businesses can be a lot of work to hash out, especially if a high percentage of your sales are through Google Checkout.

All in all, I would say my experiences with Google Checkout have been mostly positive, both as a consumer and a merchant. This is a tool which gives consumers a much more convenient way to shop, and any kinks on the merchant side will hopefully get worked out in time.