As our online activities doubles, so as the number of online orders. It looks as if almost every website out there asks you to “sign up” or “sign-in” — and the process is hardly ever easier. Nor are these accounts held to the same standards from one site to the next, leading to insecure passwords.
No one wants to make yet another account unless there’s a much benefit to doing so. Consumers will even go to good lengths to avoid signing in to finish a purchase, up to and including totally abandoning their cart in favor of a different store.
In short: customers everywhere are going through new account fatigue, and it could be dangerous for your store.
The obvious solution to this problem is the guest checkout option, which doesn’t require shoppers to create an account or save any personal data to finish a purchase. However, adding guest checkout isn’t a great move for every online store, and it could sometime cause more problems than it solves in some cases.
Let’s find out how you can decide if guest checkout is a perfect fit for your store, based on a couple of important criteria like the possibility of reorders, order frequency, and the overall benefit of customer accounts.
Guest checkout vs. Account checkout: the basics
Guest checkout allows your shoppers to purchase from your store without logging in to an account or saving any data in your database. The customer’s data is applied to one order only and is not stored for reuse.
On the other hand, the checkout process with an account enables shoppers to store data for reuse. This can be fruitful if customers later return to your store — they can just utilize their stored data to order rather than typing it in by hand again.
Why setting up guest checkout isn’t necessarily a great move
So if account fatigue exists, allowing guest checkout just takes a couple of minutes, and the no-account-required option may increase conversion rates, you might be thinking why anyone wouldn’t have this choice.
The truth is that it’s practical for some stores to ask their customers to create accounts. In some cases, the availability of guest checkout can cause more issues than it solves. You may face:
- Problems reviewing, tracking or modifying orders
- The inability to simply reorder products
- A manual vs. automatic processes required for exchanges, returns, or refunds/credits
The most ideal way to choose whether or not you should have a guest option is by thinking about a couple of specific factors. The following are some important points to remember as you choose whether or not asking for an account is a great move.
Read more: https://www.builderfly.com/how-to-determine-if-guest-checkout-is-right-for-your-store
