There's a lot of problems with the current CS Cart checkout from a UX point of view. Hopefully they will be addressed in the upcoming checkout revamp. Meanwhile we'd like to solve the most burning problems one by one.
The main is definitely cognitive overload at the beginning of the checkout. One great way to simplify the number of choices would be to assume that if user is not logged in, they will always start in a guest mode and only at the end will be offered to set up an account.
It would provide 2 benefits: simplify the first step and increase chances of registration - user is more likely to create an account when they already provided other information.
Currently the only solution that I can see is the 'auto guest registration' plugin that sends an email with a autogenerated password at the end of the checkout. However this is a very bad practice from a security point of view.
Is there any way to ask a guest user to provide a password at the end of a checkout process?
Unregistered users are given the option to create an account on the checkout summary page (after completion of checkout).
The problem you're going to encounter is that if you assume they do not have an account and are not logged in, that an error may be generated for a duplicate email address if they indeed to have an account.
Trouble is that many users will not know if they have an account or not. So the system should figure that out for them.
Seems like the more friendly way to do it is to enter an email address if the user is NOT logged in. If an account exists for that email address, simply auto-fill the email and request their password and log them in.
Indeed, there already is a possiblity to register guest after the checkout. However I think it's one step too far (after returning from the payment gateway), usually it's before. I'm pretty sure most people ignore that page once the transaction is complete.
Regarding you second suggestion - there's an addon to allow registered users using their email for guest orders, I think it makes sense.
What we've done eventually to make the checkout experience optimised is:
1) increasing the login time to 6 months (so that as many people as possible are logged in and go directly to step 2)
2) remove step 1 completely in the settings and set the default path to guest user - this way new users get the simplest possible checkout experience - start filling in data immediately, after the checkout they can provide the password
3) for the error message about duplicate email we've added a link to log in with return_url set to checkout (so if someone logs in, they return there)
4) instead of 3 we're considering using the addon to allow registered users to order as guests
Re #2: so a registered user who doesn't remember they are will have to enter all their contact info and then gets redirected to the login page and back again with the info updated to what's in their profile?
Personally, I think step 1 should always be:
- if user logged in, skip
- if not, collect email addres
- if that's a current customer, take them to login and return to step 3.
- otherwise proceed to step 2 preserving the email address
Not sure on extending the cookie and corresponding sessions table to remain active for 6 months. Do you have any data on how many of your clients come back after the standard 2 week time? Depending on traffic on your site, that could make the table pretty big. Note that this table is read/written for every page access in your store. So the bigger the index, the longer it takes.
Can't speak to the addon for allowing registered users to checkout as guest. Not sure why that would be a good thing if what I described above were implemented.
Re #2: so a registered user who doesn't remember they are will have to enter all their contact info and then gets redirected to the login page and back again with the info updated to what's in their profile?
Personally, I think step 1 should always be:
- if user logged in, skip
- if not, collect email addres
- if that's a current customer, take them to login and return to step 3.
- otherwise proceed to step 2 preserving the email address
Not sure on extending the cookie and corresponding sessions table to remain active for 6 months. Do you have any data on how many of your clients come back after the standard 2 week time? Depending on traffic on your site, that could make the table pretty big. Note that this table is read/written for every page access in your store. So the bigger the index, the longer it takes.
Can't speak to the addon for allowing registered users to checkout as guest. Not sure why that would be a good thing if what I described above were implemented.
Just for clarity - what I presented was not the ideal flow, but the best that we can achieve with the current code. I agree that it could and should be further optimised.
Regarding ordering as guests, it should be possible even for existing users, I think. Some rationale is presented on this addon's page: http://www.cscartrocks.com/guest-checkout-pro.html
The goal is to decrease any traction as much as possible and some people just don't want to remind the password etc. That's why we prolonged the session time - to increase the chances of someone reusing their old session.