Why HMV (and others) should stop making users register before checkout

When you make a customer register before their checkout, in many cases they abandon their sale. Unfortunately this is a lesson many retailers have yet to learn.

A good couple of examples come from Jared Spool and ASOS. Jared Spool added $300m to its annual revenues by removing their registration button while ASOS halved its abandonment rate by not mentioning the need to create an account on their registration page.

HMV have checkout registration issues:

On Econsultancy a customer describes how because he simply forgot his e-mail and password to his account it took 10 minutes to reset it and start placing the order. He goes on to mention that the only reason he didn’t switch retailers was because he had already purchased a gift voucher from a coupon website. He also highlights that Amazon offer an easier and more hassle-free way of resetting your account also allowing you to make a new one with an address you have previously used, something HMV does not.

Consumers HATE registration and here are the stats to prove this.

A quarter of consumers would literally abandon making a purchase if they had to register, surely you would imagine this would ring many bells for retailers that force consumers to do so…

We understand that retailers favour having customers follow through with the registration process because not only does it provide a good resource for marketing emails it theoretically makes subsequent purchases easier with stored address and payment emails.

Amazon being a good example where their one-click purchase options (with your stored details), making it very easy for repeat customers.

Online Retailers that make compulsory registration before purchases:

This is common practice for retailers such as HMV, Tesco, Play.com, TopShop, etc. It is arguable that these sites would greatly improve their abandonment rates by removing the need to register.

Online Retailers that make it optional to register before making a purchase:

Giving customers a choice would seem like the logical path to follow, House of Fraser’s introduced this option to their new website. Clever and the best of both words.

Online Retailers that do not require any registration at all when making a purchase:

Comet offers this process where customers concentrate on selecting their delivery options rather than registering first, meaning less time to think over their purchase which would translate into shorter abandonment rates.

So which one would be more beneficial to your website?

I believe that a good approach would be having the option to do both. A website could still collect your details (e-mails will always be needed for order confirmation/delivery to be sent out), therefore marketing e-mails could still be sent to consumers after they have placed an order.

Removing this barrier on your website can translate not only into higher sales as well as lower abandonment rates, but consumers may come back again and again simply because they will not be hassled to sign in every time they wish to place an order.

If you would like more information on shopping cart abandonment and tips to avoid this please you should read this