What is Guest Checkout in eCommerce Shopping?

From household to groceries products, more of us are shopping online for everything these days. But all online shopping platforms demand more passwords and log-in screens, all of which can get quite tiresome for users. If you have an eCommerce website, the last thing you want to tackle is customer fatigue. In case you have a lengthy checkout procedure, you might face a lot of cart abandonment which directly reduces conversation rates. 

If you want to increase your conversion rate and reduce cart abandonment, guest checkout will be highly beneficial for your eCommerce business. In the eCommerce world, guest checkout is one of the simplest ways to shop from any website without logging into an account. With the help of this feature, a buyer can directly purchase products from an e-commerce website without creating an account. In guest checkout, users don’t require to provide their information in your database, such as username, password, contact number, email address, shipping/billing address, etc.  

This feature is designed to make users’ shopping experience more convenient and easy to shop. When you provide easy shopping methods to your customers, they shop multiple times from your website and even promote your products to their close ones. It’s directly hit your business in a positive manner. One-click checkout for ecommerce business highly matters as it provides an easy checkout procedure to your customers. 

Meaning of guest checkout in simple words 

Before proceeding ahead, it is necessary for you to know the basic meaning of guest checkout. Guest Checkout refers to the ability for buyers to purchase from your eCommerce store without creating/logging in to an account or saving any personal data in your database. 

Guest checkout is opposite to the customer account checkout process. With a buyer account, shoppers store your details for future purchases. The next time you click on an eCommerce store, your saved data automatically completes the checkout process, and there’s no need to type it all in again. 

When is guest checkout beneficial for eCommerce websites? 

Guest checkout is beneficial for your eCommerce store in many circumstances. With a higher guest checkout conversion rate, guest checkout is surely the better option for many online stores. A customer always needs comfort while shopping from online stores and guest checkout is the process that makes a customer’s shopping experience better than ever. 

• It encourages new buyers with a faster checkout process and saves them from lengthy login processes. 
• It optimizes the conversion rate and removes an extra step of the checkout procedure. 
• It tempts customers with a low level of trust who don’t want to share their card details on your platform.
• It also encourages customers who might be on the fence about purchasing but don’t want to create a new account. 

Should your store have a guest checkout option?

Online shopping is fun until customers don’t struggle with the hectic and lengthy sign-up process. The list of online accounts in our names is also rapidly growing with the number of eCommerce/online stores opening up. It seems difficult to purchase online products without having signed up for an account. Moreover, the signing up process is never easy, and having to recall the passwords for every online shopping store is also a cumbersome process. 

For first-timer shoppers, submitting all personal information like card details, username, password, and billing address might be tough due to trust issues. Forcing buyers to sign up for a store account before they reach the checkout section can also make the conversion rate nosedive. Furthermore, asking your buyers to pause their shopping just to fill out a form doesn’t make the shopping experience enjoyable for your customers. 

If you want your shopper to purchase from your store, you should make the checkout process as hassle-free as you can. For new or first-time shoppers, you allow them to use the guest checkout option that helps you in more conversion rate and building up the trust factor. 

Best practices for guest checkout 

When a user gets multiple options in eCommerce stores, they gradually start spending a lot of time on your websites scrolling for many of your popular products. For a hustle-free shopping experience, guest checkout is a good option that you can provide to your customers. Once you have finally decided to have a guest checkout option in your online store, remember some of these short and best practices: 

• A perfect checkout is restricted to one page. All vital information such as billing, payment, delivery, and contact address information should fit into that single page. Do you know 87 percent of buyers will abandon their carts if they find that the checkout process is too lengthy? 
• A slow-loading site, especially during the checkout process, can make your buyer pull out of the sale. It also makes them question the site’s credibility. 
• You need to keep the CTA button specific and clear. Make sure the CTA buttons are action-oriented and that nothing is left unclear. 
• Help your buyers to autofill their details even in the guest checkout process. The one-click checkout process can make their shopping experience even better. After each purchase, ask your user whether they want to save their details or not? 
• Keep the guest checkout form as simple as you can. Try to remove unnecessary questions.
• Provide them with a variety of payment options.

Conclusion

Even many users nowadays believe in automated checkout processes. But still, there are plenty of users that still use the guest checkout process because it is easy and seems safe to them. Therefore, guest checkout is a very important factor in eCommerce shopping which helps you in building trust factor and more conversion rates.