Have you ever abandoned a shopping cart because the store forced you to create an account? Surely yes. We've all done it at some point.
This is a practical exercise that I have set up to illustrate something I see every day: how data should rule over opinions when making decisions. To make it more visual, I have proposed a super typical scenario today: the classic e-commerce that puts a lot of money into Ads, attracts a lot of traffic, but then the numbers don't work out because of friction.
The basic problem
If we look at a typical conversion funnel, the scenario is usually this: thousands of users enter, but the 84% abandon the cart. Basically, we're throwing marketing money down the drain on the last inch.
If we were to set up a Funnel Scan in GA4, we would see a drop similar to this:
- Users who add to cart: 100%
- Users who start Checkout: 75%
- Users who reach "Create your account to pay": 70%
- Users who go on to add address: 14%
The problem is very clear: almost 80% of the people who already got the card back out as soon as we ask them to register out of obligation.
The Business Dilemma
From a CRO and analytics point of view, the solution doesn't have much debate: You have to set a "Guest Checkout" right now.
But of course, in the real world this is where you run into other departments. Marketing might complain: "If we let them buy as guests, we are left without their email to send them the newsletter and do retargeting. We can't lose those leads."
The solution: let the data speak
To avoid getting into "I think..." wars, your best bet is to set up a quick A/B Test and divide the traffic in half:
Version A (Control): Original flow with mandatory registration.
Version B (Variant): New flow with "Payment as guest".
Knowing what the industry says (and with the support of studies like those from the Baymard Institute), the results would end up proving this:
- Guest Variant: A jump of more than 30% in the final conversion and much more return on advertising investment.
- The opportunity cost: Fewer emails captured for the newsletter database.
Conclusion
The moral of this exercise is quite simple: have a user's email to (maybe) sell them something tomorrow It's not worth losing someone who wants to buy from you TODAY.
The data almost always leads us to the same golden rule: the main conversion (the sale) always rules over the secondary ones (the lead). Removing stones from the user's path is the fastest and cheapest way to make money in an e-commerce.