OpenID vs custom user login for a website used by non-tech people

Question

Does anyone have experience with implementing OpenID on a non technical website? If you do, how were your non tech users reacting to the concept of OpenID and creation of the account on a different website?

I really like the idea of a single sign-on, but I am afraid that non-tech people who are used to create an account on every website would find it to complicated or even suspicious.

I know I could implement both (and that might be the route I will have to go) but I am trying to avoid implementing custom user login.

Also if you have links to some successful non-tech websites using OpenID only, it would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Yahoo released their OpenID usability research results a while back. This will give you an insight on how OpenID is perceived by non-techies.

Answer 2

JanRain has some casestudies on OpenID usage at http://www.janrain.com/openid/casestudies

Answer 3

http://openiddirectory.com/ is a directory for sites that uses OpenID. You might find something interesting there.

Answer 4

I have the same question actually.

I will add my own input - my only real experience with OpenID is on stackoverflow here. And I will say it is confusing. Perhaps it's related to the way stackoverflow allows anonymous accounts to be joined together, in any case the overall experience was less than straight forward.

In particular it wasn't really clear that I had created an account with stackoverflow. I wondered if I was really registered or not. That is one thing that worries me. A form login is clear that an account was created.

I would really like to hear someone tell me what the benefit is of using OpenID. Why is it better than a form login? Clearly it adds some small amount of complexity, so that must be offset by some benefit for which I don't understand it.