Users on Kmart’s and Sears’ web properties can now use their OpenID credentials to sign up and log in to these sites. MyKmart.com and MySears.com, which are both owned by the Sears Holding Company, implemented technology from Viewpoint and JanRain to allow users to use their login credentials from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google, Yahoo, AOL, and Windows Live, as well as from any other OpenID provider. This marks one of the first times that such a large, mainstream online retailer has adopted OpenID.

As Sears points out in its press release, it simply makes good business sense for the company to allow its users to use their social IDs to log in to its properties. After all, not having to sign up for yet another new account on yet another site greatly reduces the likelihood that a potential customer would just abandon the process and head to a competitor’s site.

I’m a huge supporter of OpenID – and identity portability generally – and would absolutely agree that it makes good business sense to lower the barrier of entry for new registrations, in order to encourage more reviews, comments, questions, and ultimately purchases from end users.

But what exactly is Sears letting you sign in to?

My Sears or Yours?

It seems that the use of OpenID here is restricted to the community sites – MySears.com and MyKmart.com – as opposed to the commerce sites – Sears.com and Kmart.com. (Speaking of which, since these are community sites, shouldn’t it be OurSears and OurKmart?)

The sign in / register process for those sites does nicely now handle portable identity (this will look familiar if you’ve seen other JanRainRPX powered sites):

Sign in using existing identities on MySears.com

Where the whole system breaks down is when you get to the point of actually making a purchase.

If you use your Facebook identity, for example, to register on MySears.com, the experience is relatively smooth. You pick a screenname (which they suggest based on your name as Facebook knows it), provide an email address, and accept the terms of service, and you’re in.

Say you read some reviews and decide to make a purchase, say of this Crafstman(tm) Mower:

Lawn Mower detail on MySears.com (reduced)

Clicking on “Buy it on sears.com” takes you out of the community, MySears.com, and over to the commerce site, Sears.com. (It doesn’t actually add the item to your cart, but puts you on the product detail page).

Unfortunately, Sears.com doesn’t seem to know I was signed in over at MySears.com. It asks for my zip code, to show in store pricing and availability, and has the ability to show me reviews, including the option for me to write a review:

Write a review on Sears.com (reduced - click for full size)

So what’s the difference between the reviews here on Sears.com and the reviews over on MySears.com, other than two letters in the domain name? Why are some reviews part of the community experience and other reviews part of the commerce experience?

If you add to cart, and proceed to checkout, you’re once again asked for your email address (from my point of view, one of the benefits of using OpenID or other portable identity systems is that you don’t have to keep re-providing the same info multiple times) and whether or not your have a Sears.com password:

Easy Checkout at Sears.com

Similarly, throughout Sears.com there is a “My Profile” link in the upper right corner, but apparently “My Profile” on Sears.com is different than my profile on MySears.com (which is actually labeled “My Home” in the nav). Thus clicking the MyProfile link results in this modal dialogue:

Register on Sears.com

Perhaps I’ve belabored the point – the community experience and the commerce experience clearly aren’t sharing registration here. Letting users leverage existing identities is a great leap forward, but why does it only apply to the community? I can bring my identity to MySears.com but not to Sears’ Sears.com?

But why are there two experiences in first place? Presumably because one is hosted by Viewpoints, the reviews/community vendor, and the other is powered by Sears’ ecommerce platform. The problem is that the end user should neither know nor care which parts of the experience are provided by what vendor, or managed in what technical platform.

Perhaps there’s concern about associating an OpenID or other portable identity to an account with actual credit card information in it?

If you’re an ecommerce site working to leverage the power of community, are you providing two separate-but-equal experiences?

If you went to the mall, chatted with the sales clerk and maybe other shoppers about some item you were considering buying, wouldn’t it be odd if they asked you to go next door to the store to purchase it after you’ve made up your mind? Why do so online?

Thesis: Open Source and Design are fundamentally philosophically incompatible. Antithesis: Open Source and Design are profoundly similar in core beliefs and approaches. This talk works to articulate a meaningful synthesis between these two positions.

The talk, unfortunately, wasn’t accepted for presentation at the conference, but they suggested that instead I do a shorter, podcast or video podcast version for the Extended Content program.

I did, and that content now has gone live on the SXSW site:

In our first installment of the Extended Content series, John Eckman tells you everything you need to know about open source and design. The differences and similarities, how they benefit each other and why they have trouble getting along.

Extended Content at SXSW Interactive

(Unfortunately they don’t allow embedding, so you’ll have to go there to watch it – and at least on two browsers I tried it on, you’ll have to wait for the whole thing to preload before it starts playing – so go get a cup of coffee or whatever while it loads).

It’s just shy of 20 minutes, and having been created back in February 2009 feels (to me) a bit outdated in spots – mostly the continued evolution of the work Mark Boulton and Leisa Reichelt have been doing with the Drupal community (not just on Drupal.org but also on Drupal 7 itself), which I encourage you to check out if you’re interested in the subject.

Mozilla Labs posted a screencast yesterday of a new feature as part of the Weave project, which enables OpenID at the browser level, which will have potentially significant impact on adoption and use of portable identity technology.

Weave is a Mozilla Labs project, started back in December of 2007, which (before this latest announcement) was mostly known for their Sync service, which can synchonize (and keep in sync over time) bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history, and tabs, keeping your firefox browser experience consistent across multiple computers. It’s quite useful for those of us who have a work desktop, home desktop, and laptop, or some other combination of multiple computers regularly used.

This new effort, however, integrates OpenID into the Firefox user experience:

Our sprint changes the browser to provide single-click login to sites with saved passwords as well as sites that support a federated identity (OpenID in this case). It also provides the option to automatically sign in when the page is loaded, essentially providing a single-sign-on-like experience regardless of the login method being used. In the case of OpenID, we intercept the login procedure and, taking advantage of the fact that you’re already logged into your browser, and then use Weave identity to let you into the site.

Screencast

Unfortunately, for now, you have to install the latest weave development build which also requires you to be running Firefox 3.5 beta, so it isn’t really quite ready for public consumption.

There’s also, of course, the risk that people will use this poorly – storing saved OpenID on shared machines, etc – but I think the model of allowing the browser – after you’ve logged into it – to login on your behalf – will be a really good UX improvement over time, and one I hope the other browsers will take up and implement themselves.