Google is rolling out an option that hands the shopper’s cart over to your own site to finish the purchase, instead of the sale closing on Google. If you sell through Google’s UCP checkout, you can switch this on and get the buyer onto your checkout page with the cart already filled. It is rolling out in the U.S. now, with Australia and Canada early next year, and no other countries are named.
UCP, the Universal Commerce Protocol, is Google’s plumbing for letting people buy from a brand without leaving Google.
The reason this matters is what you lose when the sale closes on Google. In concerns reported back in January, one retailer put it this way: the customer never visits the store, sees accessory suggestions from other sellers, and feels less connected to the brand. Cart transfer is the path back to your site.
Turning it on
In Google’s developer docs the capability is called Transfer to merchant cart. You turn it on by supporting the Cart API, and merchants with hub access choose the transfer feature as part of Merchant Center validation. The checklist for this option skips full product feed setup, product warnings, and customer support details, so it is a lighter build than full checkout on Google. In the same Merchant Center tab there is a sandbox where you can test the cart and checkout requests Google might send you.
Getting into the hub is three steps:
- Complete the technical setup.
- Submit an interest form.
- Wait to be selected.
What you will be able to measure
Google says analytics is coming to the UCP hub. The docs describe a UCP Analytics Reporting dashboard in the same Merchant Center tab, open to merchants with UCP enabled and the Performance role. It follows the checkout from the click on the Buy button to the completed purchase, and shows average order value, cancellations, account linking information, and your top selling UCP products. That data is not in the Merchant API yet.
The catch is access. You cannot simply switch this on. You submit the form and wait to be selected, and for now the rollout is the U.S.
