The $300 million button
A large online store showed, after tapping "Checkout", a screen with two fields (email and password) and two buttons: "Login" and "Register". It seemed reasonable, and it was stopping sales.
- First-time buyers didn't want to create an account. They wanted to buy.
- Returning buyers couldn't remember which email or password they had used. There were 160,000 password reset requests a day, and 75% of those people never finished the purchase.
- 45% of customers had more than one account, some as many as ten.
The change was small: they removed "Register", added "Continue" and a note saying you didn't need an account to buy. 45% more people bought: 15 million dollars more in the first month and 300 million in the first year. Jared Spool, who worked on the case, told the story.
Why people abandon a purchase on a website
On average, seven out of ten carts are abandoned (70.22%, according to the Baymard Institute, which pools 50 studies). Many people were only browsing. Among those who were going to buy, the most common reasons are:
- Extra costs that show up at the end (shipping, fees): 40%.
- Delivery too slow: 20%.
- Not trusting the site with their card: 19%.
- Having to create an account: 18%.
- A long or complicated checkout: 17%.
- Not being able to see the total up front: 12%.
Almost all of that is fixed on the website, not in the product.
How to check yours in ten minutes
- Buy something on your website from your phone, as if you were a new customer, and count the steps.
- Write down every piece of information it asks for and ask yourself what you use it for. If you don't use it, remove it.
- Check at which step the total with shipping appears. The sooner, the better.
- If an account is required, offer guest checkout and let people create one at the end, as an option.
- If you sell on WhatsApp, count how many messages it takes to close an order: those are steps too.
How we do it at Exos
We tell our clients to remove everything that slows people down before payment: checkout without an account, only the information that gets used, the total visible from the start and as few steps as possible. That's how we build stores and websites.
And if you're about to launch one, start small: launch something small and watch what people do.