Forum Moderators: buckworks
As a seller of high ticket items $100-$10,000. It seems to me that having customers create an account is beneficial. The reasons for this are quite a few, paramount among them the ability to give returning customers special discounts attached to their accounts, and creating an online "home" for them.
I would imaging that these reasons are less valid when you sell low ticket items or the nature of your product is such that you don't get return customers (one time purchases).
So, my question is:
What has been your experience with requiring (or not requiring) your customers to create an account?
Any measurable differences you could share would be appreciated.
What has been your experience with requiring (or not requiring) your customers to create an account?
Requiring? What would the results be in a Brick/mortar shop if customers had to fill out a form-- name, address, phone, email, etc. --before they could shop.
A few of our competitors' sites did this (OSCommerce crap as I recall). Those sites didn't last long
Not good, admittedly. However the nature of the medium is quite different. Most people who purchase tangible goods online expects to supply this information, however there is a negative connotation associated with "creating an account".
I gather that Jsinger is reasonably opposed to the practice, while the webmasters of Amazon.com are not.
Has anyone stopped requiring account creation and seen a jump in conversions?
I don't know how they do it in the U.S., but here in the Netherlands their are very many companies that give out certain cards/passes where you can get discounts from that particular company. In order to receive the card/pass, you will have to register. If you don't register, you don't get the discount. It's a form of marketing and the results are amazing. It creates brand awareness and repeat customers and companies are able to personalize the direct mail folders customers receive. I am certain that they also do this in the U.S.
Regarding regsitration on a website: I would not require it, unless of course, it is membership based. However, I would list the pros of registering and make it worthwile for customers to register by offering special discounts and incentives.
On my "Oscommerce Crap Site" I handle it like this: The registration procedure is smoothly embedded in the checkout process.
So if a customer clicks on "Checkout" he is asked to fill out the form with his personal data to be able to ship the products and he is asked for a password, so he can check the status of his order online.
However you should not "sell" this as "registration before buying".
So what you should not do is redirect the customer to a page where it says: "Before you can buy you have to register". That will cost you customers.
Redirect him to a page where it says something like: "Please fill out the form below so we can ship your order. Select a password so you can check the status of your order online in your customer account."
Or any other reason why they would need a password. It is important that the user has a benefit from the customer account idealy directly connected to his order. This way a customer account is no problem at all but very benefical for customer loyality measures.
BTW, for me anyway, coming up with yet another PW takes a fair amount of thought. How many top secret words can I tape to the bottom of my keyboard!
