I’m interested to know whether most people offer the guest checkout or require customers to register when purchasing.
[quote name=‘Lyn’]I’m interested to know whether most people offer the guest checkout or require customers to register when purchasing.[/quote]
Give them guest checkout - These is no reason for them to register for your store otherwise, not enough benefits 
[quote name=‘JesseLeeStringer’]Give them guest checkout - These is no reason for them to register for your store otherwise, not enough benefits :p[/QUOTE]
My question wasn’t what should I do on my site - I was interested to know what most people do on theirs.
[quote name=‘Lyn’]My question wasn’t what should I do on my site - I was interested to know what most people do on theirs.[/quote]
We allow both, from 100 orders this month - only 25 people register and that is typically what I see throughout the many websites I manage. More often than not - There are no “real” benefits from registering for an account especially if your business area exists of new customers. (Amazon is different to Ikea)
I get far more checkout as guest than registered
at least 60
And thats even with a 5% promo running if they register
John
Hello Lynn,
We do not offer “Guest Checkout” simply because the majority of our customers are long time, repeat customers and they need to have the ability to view past order history & often have special payment terms, etc.
It really depends upon your particular business and clientele base. If you sell mostly b2c and the nature of your business & products doesn’t lend itself to regular repeat business, then offering guest checkout may be the best idea.
In our case, for us to offer Guest Checkout actually creates far more problems than any benefit gained when the customer comes back next month and realizes they must now add their account details all over again & they have no way to retrieve details of what they last ordered. The reality is that the customer has to enter essentially the same amount of information when placing an order regardless of guest or registered user, only difference is they must create a password.
The whole idea behind guest checkout is to give customers a warm fuzzy in that they do not have to go through the dreaded process of “Registering” (uhm…adding a password). Ok, so some people are afraid of the term “Register”, so, we just tweaked the language variables to remove the word register from our vocabulary…Funny how simple word choices can have such a substantial effect on the outcome! 
We have also attempted to briefly explain on the site why it is to their benefit to take one more step by adding a password to create an account. The benefits far outway the negatives…
Good points Struck. What word do you use instead of register?
Hot damn .. i'm reading up on all threads re registered accounts vs guest check outs and want to know what word was used by Struck.. and he never even bothered to reply .. can he do that after 5 years or is he out of business by now ?
Reading up because we noticed how unlike the old webshop, people can NOT check out as a guest when they already have an account (we transferred all addresses so as to make it easier for people, to move along, not HARDER).
Yvana
Since my partner and business associate Yvana pointed out we are very very interested in how Struck solved it.
At any rate this all comes to the essence, is there an addon available that would allow to guest checkouts for otherwise customers who have registered before in our store yes or no and if no would a modification be an option and how intrusive would that modification be in regards to future store upgrades ?
A real addon would be nicer in my opinion as you could always uninstall it later when you do an store upgrade (I could be wrong here).
Any thoughts ?
Anthony
Apparently it already exists: http://www.alt-team.com/cs-cart-guest-checkout-by-default-add-on.html
At least I figure it is what solves the problem of lazy/forgetful customers who can't be bothered to sign into their existing accounts and want to quickly buy something.
I do hope you can always link their order to the existing account like you can now.
BTW, made this
"The username or email you have chosen already has been registered before. Please log into your existing account! If not possible, request a new password.
You can also send us an email or talk to us in the chat window if you keep having problems."
to replace the current text in : error_user_exists
Yvana