When shopping online, many shoppers prefer to checkout as a guest to avoid the long process of signing up as a customer. However, when shoppers don’t create a customer account when checking out, you have fewer chances of bringing back these anonymous customers for another purchase.
Shopify allows merchants to choose how they want their customers to checkout. You can let shoppers choose if they want to check out as a guest or create a customer account or you can make it mandatory to create a customer account.
We believe that both the customer account page and guest checkout are important for Shopify stores, allowing you to capture different kinds of shoppers.
Let’s look at the advantages and drawbacks of both methods and how you can enable customer account pages and guest checkout on your Shopify store.
Comparison of Customer Account Page vs Guest Checkout
Let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages of customer accounts and guest checkouts and why both are important for your Shopify store.
| Guest checkout | Customer account | |
| Suited for | First-time visitors who are still building their trust in your store | Repeat customers who are familiar with your brand. |
| Shopping speed | Faster checkout | Takes a little more time |
| Cart abandonment | Less likely to abandon their carts | Mandatory registration will drive higher abandonment. |
| Sending cart abandonment reminders | Hard to track customers who abandoned their cart | Allows you to remind customers who abandoned their cart |
| Order and browsing history | No saved history | Saved order history |
| Personalization | Little to no personalization | Personalized recommendations |
| Repeat shopping | Harder to reel back anonymous shoppers for repeat purchases | Higher repeat purchases |
Don’t have a customer account page on your Shopify store yet? Install Flits and see the difference.
Guest Checkout
Guest checkout is perfect for new and first-time store visitors.
On their first interaction, shoppers won’t be able to trust your store and will be skeptical of sharing their personal details. By mandating that they share their details and sign up for an account, you may end up losing them altogether.
In fact, 28% of shoppers abandon their cart because the site required them to create an account.
However, with guest checkout, you provide these first-time visitors with a frictionless checkout experience. Visitors can quickly make their purchases and not have to worry about revealing personal details. So there are some guest checkout benefits you should consider.
Drawbacks of Guest Checkout
There are some drawbacks to guest checkout. Shoppers who have purchased cannot be marketed to and the email provided during checkout will only be used for shipping communication.
Their purchase and browsing history will also not be stored. Due to this, the shopper will not have a personalized experience when they come back to your Shopify store later.
This can be easily solved by asking shoppers to register with a customer account post-purchase.
Also read: Why guest checkout is doing more harm to your Shopify store during the BFCM and holiday season sale
Customer Account Pages
Shopify customer accounts allow you to build a relationship with the shopper, making the shopping experience much more interactive. Shoppers can easily log in to your store, receive personalized recommendations based on what they bought and viewed, and even earn rewards for shopping or taking action on your store.
With a customer account page already created, the shopper doesn’t have to spend time entering their billing information. With such a convenient shopping experience, customers will continue choosing your brand, increase repeat purchase, and loyalty.
You can also send marketing messages to these shoppers, letting them know about your sale or new products, increasing your store’s sales.
Contrary to popular opinion, even customer account pages can enable a faster checkout process as the purchase information like delivery addresses is already saved.
Also read: Shopify Customer Account Page Breakdown: How The Man Company Provides a Positive Loyalty Experience
PS. Setting one up is really easy with the help of a Shopify customer account page app like Flits. The Shopify app comes with Shopify customer account page templates that easily blend with most of the best Shopify themes and design styles.
Things to keep in mind regarding Customer Accounts
Many first-time shoppers are not comfortable making a customer account. They may not fully trust your brand with their personal details. So, if you’ve made it essential to create an account, you’re sure to have more abandoned carts on your Shopify store.
What’s more, creating a customer account takes time, from entering details to switching to your email and confirming your account. This length process can also be putting off for new shoppers who would end up choosing another store to shop for the item they need.
However, this can easily be solved with social login, a feature on eCommerce stores that lets shoppers register an account using existing social profiles like Facebook and Google. And also implementing strategizing like incentivizing creating an account.
We found the 10 strategies you can use to motivate shoppers to sign up for an account on your Shopify store. Check them out here!
Now we know that setting up a customer account obviously seems a lot more lucrative than offering guest checkouts. After all, it helps you gather more information about your customers. But what’s the best practice we recommend to our customers?
Enabling both guest checkout and customer accounts on their Shopify store, and doing their best to show a shopper the value of signing up for an account.
So how do you enable both?
Looking for a Shopify customer accounts app? Install Flits today.
How to Enable Both Customer Account and Guest Checkout on Your Shopify Store
Enabling a guest checkout or customer account isn’t a mutually exclusive option. You can provide both the options to shoppers buying from you. Shopify lets you enable this within your dashboard.
This way, you can cater to both kinds of shoppers without losing out on the other.
Turning an anonymous customer into a registered customer account
Many merchants worry about losing marketed audiences if they enable guest checkout. You can avoid this with a post-purchase message. On your thank you page, you can prompt anonymous shoppers to create a customer account.
You can offer these shoppers a reward or a coupon code to incentivize them to create an account and actively engage with you. Here’s how The Man Company did it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I enable customer accounts on Shopify?
You can enable customer accounts on Shopify through the Settings page on your Shopify dashboard. You can choose between “Accounts are disabled”, “Accounts are optional”, and “Accounts are required”. You can also do this by installing the Flits app on your store to offer customized Shopify customer account pages to your shoppers.
What is guest check out?
Guest checkout allows shoppers to make a purchase from your store without logging in to an account or saving any information in your database (such as username, password, shipping/billing address, etc.). Although, we do recommend having the ability to sign up as a customer account page, side by side.
Which is better – customer account or guest checkout?
From our experience, we have found that guest checkout is a great conversion strategy if you’re looking at one-time buyers. But if you need to convert customers into repeat buyers, you need them to make a commitment to your brand; this is where Shopify customer account pages come in.
Provide a flexible and easy shopping experience!
When shopping online, especially as a first-time visitor to your Shopify store, a shopper may not be fully confident to provide personal details and make a commitment by creating a customer account. With guest checkout, you can let these visitors shop your products without asking for too much.
Once these shoppers realize the value and quality you provide, they will be more likely to create a customer account on your store and even come back for multiple purchases. By enabling both customer accounts and guest checkout for shoppers, you can provide them with an easy and positive shopping experience on your Shopify store.
However, once a shopper has agreed to create a customer account, it’s important that you provide a unique and personalized experience for them. This is where Flits helps. Using the Shopify app, you can transform your customer accounts in such a way that customers can:
- Easily view their order history
- View and easily purchase from their recently viewed items
- Reorder products they previously purchased
- Access return, refund and exchange policy information easily
- Participate and earn rewards from loyalty programs
Install Flits and deliver a personalized experience for your Shopify customer account.
