Are you worried not having a guest checkout on your Shopify login page will mean you could lose customers or sales?
Not in 2023!
Although guest checkouts have advantages—faster first-time purchases and ease for customers—they are bad for long-term.
Guest checkouts mean customers leave your site without sharing any vital information that you could use to engage with them in future.
It means, you won’t be able to apply personalization and customer engagement strategies—vital to eCommerce marketing.
That’s why guest checkout could be bad for your Shopify brand. In this blog, we’ll dig deeper into how you could deal with the drawbacks of guest checkout via its alternatives.
What is a Shopify guest checkout?
With guest checkout, customers can make an online purchase without having to register for an account. To complete the order, they merely input their name, shipping address, and billing information. This removes obstacles like worries about privacy or security or the trouble of opening yet another account that can prevent potential customers from completing a purchase.
Guest checkout makes checkout faster for customers. And customers don’t have to login to your Shopify store. It appeals to clients who seek a simple, hassle-free online shopping experience, which promotes accessibility and encourages impulse buying.
Offering a guest checkout option can be a useful tactic to draw in new consumers and maximize conversions in the cut-throat eCommerce environment, even though it may limit businesses’ ability to collect customer data and drive repeat purchases.
So, what should you choose—guest checkout vs login? To answer this question, we’ll look at some of the drawbacks of guest checkout.
Drawbacks of guest checkout on Shopify
1. Ecommerce brands cannot collect customer information
When a customer chooses the guest checkout option, they do not have to leave any information such as their name, email, phone number, etc.
This impacts how you would segment these customers or interact with them in the future.
Without registering, businesses lose out on the chance to gather insightful information and develop a thorough customer profile. This limits their capacity to customize upcoming interactions, personalize marketing initiatives, and offer a more relevant purchase experience.
2. Lower customer retention and repeat purchases
Without a customer account on your Shopify store, customers are less likely to recall your website, making it more difficult for you to build brand recognition. Additionally, customer account features like order history, saved payment methods, etc., that improve the overall shopping experience are lost to guest shoppers. In comparison, Shopify login and sign-up can help retain customers and cultivate loyalty over time.
3. Risk of fraudulent transactions
In 2020, eCommerce shopping scams accounted for 38% of all reported scams worldwide. Compared to registered accounts, guest checkout carries a larger risk of fraudulent transactions. Fraudsters can easily take advantage of guest checkout because there aren’t as many verification methods and authentication procedures.
The result: Ecommerce stores may have a higher rate of chargebacks and financial losses without the additional security layers that come with account creation. This is one reason to avoid relying too much on eCommerce guest checkout.
4. Missed post-purchase marketing opportunities
With guest checkout, opportunities for post-purchase marketing activities become limited.
Businesses are unable to send follow-up emails, promotional offers, or personalized recommendations to motivate repeat purchases since guest shoppers do not share their contact information. Businesses may also miss possibilities for relevant product upselling or cross-selling based on customer preferences and purchase history when customer account is missing.
5. No information about abandoned carts
More than 69% of shoppers abandon carts. But the good news is, eCommerce brands can recover these lost sales by retargeting abandoned cart campaigns.
And now the bad news – if you don’t know what guest shoppers left in their carts because you don’t have access to their personal information, your abandoned cart campaigns suffer.
As you see, there are more than a few reasons to avoid relying on eCommerce guest checkout. So, what are the alternatives?
8 alternatives to guest checkout to boost customer sign-ups
If you think guest checkout is a must and there aren’t other ways to ensure shoppers don’t leave without making purchases, you’re wrong. There are, not one of two, but many ways to capture customers’ information. Let’s explore them here.
1. Create a comprehensive Shopify customer account page
It’s one of the most common methods to gain customers’ information and start building a long-term relationship—customer account page.
But every eCommerce store has this feature. And so, you have to ensure your Shopify customer account page offers a unique experience. How do you do that? Here are some tips:
- Make the customer account page features relevant to your business
- Don’t add features that aren’t useful or relevant to your products or customers
- Customize the customer account page to match your company branding
Also read: Customer Account vs Guest Checkout – Why and When to Enable Both on Your Shopify Store
2. Enable social login
Social sign-up makes the registration process shorter and faster. Customers don’t have to fill up lengthy forms. Moreover, customers fill in authentic information as opposed to redundant email addresses. Social login feature allows you to use different social platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc., making it easier to cater to a wide set of audience.
One of the biggest advantages of enabling social sign-up is that you can target customers on their social media accounts, run personalized campaigns, and boost engagement and sales.
3. Let shoppers sign up after checkout
This happens a lot—first-time customers may end up registering on your website after making their first purchase. But here too, you will have to nudge the customers to sign up. Customers might not sign up on their own without coaxing.
For example, you can motivate customers to share their information in return for something—a newsletter, a small gift, a discount coupon, etc. You could also run campaigns on different channels such as email and social media, urging customers to sign up.
But there’s a catch. To be able to reach out to them on email or social media, you will need those details. So, you must ensure you ask customers to leave some contact information at the checkout stage. At the same time, you could let them know that they can register later, after making the purchase.
4. Offer a reward
Customers prefer fast experiences while shopping. And so, if they can complete their shopping without filling forms with their details, they choose the shorter route.
Unless… there’s something you give them that they cannot resist. Give them a gift or a discount. But do this smartly.
Give them the offer before you ask them to sign up or show them the Shopify customer account page sign up form. Smartly tie the offer to the next action you want them to take—in this case, sharing their contact information.
You can also make the offer after they’ve made their first guest checkout. Offer them discounts or reward points on their next purchase, so that they return to your Shopify store.
If you’re wondering whether this works, consider the sales psychology—principle of reciprocity—we humans pay back what we receive from others.
5. Provide valuable content
You can offer value to first-time shoppers by providing good content. For example, think informative content such as how-to guides, blogs, or newsletters. An example of this could be how cosmetics brands use questionnaires to recommend the best shades of makeup based on skin tone. The questionnaire engages customers, and brands get their email addresses or social media account information at the end.
6. Urge shoppers to join your loyalty program
Another alternative to collect shoppers’ contact details without asking them to sign-up for your Shopify customer account page is to ask them to join your loyalty program or rewards program.
Loyalty or rewards programs have exclusivity connected to them. They make customers feel special and hence, customers don’t mind sharing their information.
When it comes to loyalty programs, the FOMO psychology comes into play. Customers do not want to miss out on the perks and exclusivity of the programs. And hence, this psychological marketing tactic works well.
7. Give customers easy access to new collections/products
Shoppers shop from your Shopify store because they like your products. This is great! And you can use this opportunity to collect their personal information. Let customers know they can receive notifications on their email address, messenger, etc. You could share this message via a pop-up while they’re browsing the site or when they’re checking out as a guest.
8. Have a contact us form
Customers might not want to sign up for your Shopify customer account page but they might want to get in touch with you for other things. For example, they might have questions about your products and want to contact you.
One of the easiest ways to help customers reach you easily is to have a contact us form on your website. This is also an excellent way to collect email addresses and contact details. You can use the contact details to get those customers to sign up later.
For example, send them a discount code in return for signing up or free shipping. One of the best ways to get customers to sign up is to add free reward points in their account. For example, “Sign up and get 500 points in your account.”
Do you really need ‘guest checkout’ on your Shopify store?
The answer is yes and no, not really! Having a guest checkout option can be helpful to you to get first-time shoppers to make purchases. But alongside, you should also have marketing strategies in place to get those guest shoppers to sign up for your Shopify customer account page.
Once your guest shopper makes a purchase, you should be ready with strategies to collect their contact details on your Shopify checkout page, thank you page, etc. We’ve shared eight brilliant strategies that work for you to try.
Conversely, you should also make sign-up easy for your customers. Some ways to do so are: make the registration form short, ask for basic information first and collect more information later, make mobile-friendly pages, etc.
And to ensure you provide a good customer account page experience to your customers, you’ll have to have an efficient customer account page app.
Explore Flits Customer Account Page App for your Shopify store.
