Should You Enable Guest Checkout in WooCommerce? Pros & Cons
Table of Contents
- Pros of enabling guest checkout in your WooCommerce store
- Cons of enabling guest checkout in your WooCommerce store
- Our winner: Encourage users to create accounts
- Top tips to encourage account creation
- How CheckoutWC helps you combine guest checkout with account benefits
- Automatic account creation with Enhanced Registration
- User matching on guest orders
- Express checkout as an alternative
- Elevate your checkout process with CheckoutWC
To enable guest checkout or not? That is the question. Shakespearean musings aside, this seemingly simple decision can have a major impact on your conversion rates, customer experience, and overall business strategy.
However, the guest checkout dilemma isn’t one-size-fits-all. A luxury boutique selling suits may have vastly different needs than an online supermarket offering weekly groceries. While some stores find guest checkout invaluable, others might see little benefit.
In this article, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of enabling guest checkout in WooCommerce. We’ll explore how it affects different types of stores and provide the insights you need to make the right call for your business.
Pros of enabling guest checkout in your WooCommerce store
Here’s why you might want to consider offering guest checkout to your customers:
- Reduces cart abandonment: When customers are ready to buy, the last thing they want is an unexpected obstacle. Baymard Institute found that 24% of users abandon their carts when forced to create an account. Guest checkout removes this obstacle, potentially keeping more customers in your sales funnel.
- Faster checkout process: In the world of online shopping, every second counts, and guest checkout is the essential express lane of digital retail. This is particularly beneficial for mobile users who often prefer quick, straightforward transactions.
- Better experience for one-time shoppers: Not every visitor wants a long-term relationship with your store, and that’s fine! Guest checkout is ideal for impulse buyers, gift purchasers, or first-time customers who want to try your products without committing to an account. In fact, CheckoutWC found that 70% of purchases were from guest customers on a sample of WooCommerce stores we tracked. While your results may vary, this suggests that many shoppers appreciate the guest checkout option.
- Improves conversion rates: After discovering that 77% of their customers abandoned purchases when forced to sign up or sign in, Creative Market implemented guest checkout and saw their conversion rate increase by over 40% among logged-out users. While some businesses worry about losing customer data through guest checkout, Creative Market’s experience shows that making purchasing easier leads to significant revenue gains, with guest checkout contributing 15-22% of daily GMV (Gross Merchandise Value).
In ecommerce, guest checkout can also be a tool for market expansion. It may help you capture sales from customer segments that typically avoid account creation, such as privacy-conscious shoppers or those new to online shopping.
A popular strategy is to ask customers to register for an account to get discounts or access exclusive products. This approach helps you build your email list and allows for better tracking of abandoned carts, potentially leading to stronger customer relationships.
Cons of enabling guest checkout in your WooCommerce store
While guest checkout can help with conversions, it’s not always the best option. Let’s take a look at some potential drawbacks:
- Less customer data collection: Guest checkout can make you miss out on valuable details like purchase history, birthdays, and favorite products. Without these details, personalized marketing becomes a lot harder, and you can’t retarget successful conversions.
- Harder to build customer relationships: Without user accounts, it’s challenging to track customer lifetime value, offer personalized product recommendations, or run those loyalty programs everyone loves. Over time, this could lead to less engaged customers and weaker brand loyalty.
- Potential security concerns: Guest checkouts can be more vulnerable to fraudulent orders due to less rigorous user verification. A Cybersource report found that guest checkouts are 2.6 times more likely to result in fraud than registered user transactions. That’s a huge risk that could lead to chargebacks and financial losses.
- May reduce repeat purchases: Without an account, customers can’t easily reorder products or track past purchases. This added friction can impact customer retention and lifetime value. In fact, studies show that repeat customers spend 67% more than new customers, which is a reason enough to encourage account creation.
Our winner: Encourage users to create accounts
While offering both options is ideal, we recommend gently nudging customers toward creating accounts.
“Guest checkout is a great option to have, but account creation should be your primary goal. Accounts lead to repeat business, personalized experiences, and valuable customer insights. They allow you to build lasting customer relationships, tailor marketing efforts, and ultimately drive more sales. Guest checkout can reduce friction for first-time buyers, but accounts are the foundation of customer loyalty and long-term success for your store.”
– Ian Misner, General Manager at Kestrel
Top tips to encourage account creation
- Use behavioral data to tailor account benefits. Analyze shopping habits and offer perks that align with customer preferences. For example, if a customer frequently reads recipe articles and searches for cooking videos, offer account benefits like exclusive access to premium recipes, personalized meal planning tools, and early notification of cooking class registrations. This personalized approach shows you understand their needs.
- Create a tiered loyalty program that starts with account creation. Think of it as a video game where each purchase levels them up. Who doesn’t love unlocking new achievements?
- Offer sign-up incentives like welcome discounts, free shipping, or early access to new products. These perks provide immediate value when creating an account.
- Highlight account-exclusive features such as saved payment methods and easy order tracking. With these tools, members can complete purchases faster and keep tabs on their deliveries effortlessly.
- Develop a post-purchase email sequence that showcases personalized account benefits. Keep these emails engaging and include simple steps for account creation.
P.S. Consider a post-purchase account creation incentive. A small reward right after guest checkout can be the perfect encouragement towards account creation. A fantastic tool for this is Constellation, Kestrel’s membership plugin. You can offer guest checkout for convenience but also encourage account creation later with perks like discounts or exclusive products.
How CheckoutWC helps you combine guest checkout with account benefits
CheckoutWC offers a powerful solution that balances the convenience of guest checkout with the benefits of customer accounts. It helps reduce cart abandonment while still enabling personalized marketing and customer relationship building. Let’s explore the features that make this possible.
Automatic account creation with Enhanced Registration
CheckoutWC’s Enhanced Registration feature simplifies the account creation process. Here’s how to set it up:
- In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to CheckoutWC > Pages.
- By default, you’ll be taken to the Checkout tab. Scroll down to find Login and Registration.
- Enhanced Registration should be enabled by default. If not, select it and save the changes.
This feature automatically generates a username and password and emails it to the customer using native WooCommerce functionality. Customers can complete their purchase without extra steps and later choose whether to confirm their account. This approach significantly reduces friction during checkout – giving you a great solution for reducing the rate of abandonment that typically happens at this stage – while still providing the option for account creation.
User matching on guest orders
CheckoutWC’s User Matching feature automatically links guest orders to user accounts, both for new purchases and when new users register. Like Enhanced Registration, CheckoutWC enables this option by default, but here’s how you can access it:
- Navigate to CheckoutWC > Pages.
- Under Login and Registration, you’ll see the option to enable or disable User Matching.
User Matching addresses common guest checkout challenges by allowing you to collect data and segment users effectively, even from guest purchases. You can gather useful insights from every sale, regardless of the customer’s registration status.
By associating all order history with the correct user profile, you’ll gain a clearer picture of your customers’ shopping habits. This improved understanding leads to more targeted marketing efforts and better customer service, benefiting both your business and your customers.
Express checkout as an alternative
For shoppers who hate creating new accounts but love their PayPal or Apple Pay, express checkout is a solid option. It’s fast, familiar, and doesn’t require memorizing yet another password (because, let’s face it, we’re all drowning in passwords already).
Express checkout strikes a perfect balance: it’s speedy for customers while still grabbing essential data for merchants. With CheckoutWC, your store’s checkout process gains direct access to Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, and Amazon Pay. The best part? Express Checkout is enabled by default when you install and activate the CheckoutWC plugin!
Elevate your checkout process with CheckoutWC
We’ve covered a lot of ground on guest checkout, and by now, you should have a good idea of whether it’s right for your store. Remember, there’s no perfect solution here. While encouraging account creation is generally a smart move, your specific business needs might require a different approach.
CheckoutWC is a comprehensive checkout optimization solution that enhances the guest checkout experience and offers features that can streamline your entire checkout process. The results from our customers speak for themselves.
One of our users, Scott Marquart from Stringjoy, says:
“CheckoutWC has taken our WooCommerce checkout to the next level! WooCommerce is great, but its checkout flow leaves something to be desired. With CheckoutWC, we were able to create a simple, streamlined, elegant checkout flow that made the purchasing process effortless for our customers. After launch, we saw an over 50% increase in conversion rate. Who wouldn’t want that?”
– Scott Marquart, Stringjoy
CheckoutWC helps you meet and exceed customer expectations by providing a user-friendly, efficient checkout experience that could lead to more sales and happier customers. Ready to take your checkout process to the next level? Get started with CheckoutWC today!
