This is an opinion piece. The views are the author’s own.
Picture this: you want to buy one lamp. The store wants your email, a password, a phone number and a promise to read its newsletter first. Plenty of people just close the tab.
Forcing an account on a first-time buyer is the online equivalent of asking for a membership card at the door of a corner shop. It isn’t good for shoppers, and by the numbers, it isn’t good for stores either.
The cost of the extra step
The Baymard Institute, which researches online checkout design, says 18% of users abandon a checkout if they’re forced to create an account. Its separate research says 17% of shoppers in a survey of more than 1,000 people had abandoned a purchase in the last three months because checkout was too long or complicated. Baymard doesn’t spell out the method behind the 18% figure on its guide, so treat it as a rough yardstick, not a law of nature.
Still, the advice is consistent. Baymard recommends a guest checkout for every user, and says it should be the most prominent option, placed above or next to the sign-in fields. It also suggests saving the account invitation for the confirmation step, after the purchase is done.
Why stores keep doing it anyway
My guess is that accounts are valuable to the store. They mean email lists, tracked habits and easier marketing. That is a perfectly fine goal. It just shouldn’t be the price of buying one lamp.
Checkout design is also hard to get right: Baymard’s benchmark found 59% of leading US and European ecommerce sites had a “mediocre” or worse checkout experience on desktop. Some of that is plain inertia.
What I’d like to see
- A guest button as big as the sign-in button, not a gray link beneath it.
- An offer to save my details after I’ve paid, in one click, with no new form.
- Order tracking by email link, so nobody needs a password to find a package.
If you’re shopping this season, the security case for guest checkout is real too: fewer accounts means fewer passwords for a thief to find. Our guide to shopping online safely on Black Friday and Cyber Monday has more.
A store that makes buying easy has earned my email address. One that demands it first has not.
More on Contoh
- How to Shop Online Safely on Black Friday and Cyber Monday
- Black Friday Now Lasts a Month. Pick Your Day and Ignore the Rest