Do Australian online shoppers prefer guest checkouts?

Do consumers prefer creating a new online account or checking out as a guest while shopping online? In this article, GetApp looks at consumer preferences regarding guest checkouts and how they can affect their purchasing behaviour.

In today’s digital world, consumers may be overburdened remembering different usernames and passwords for multiple online shopping accounts. However, it’s not only about keeping a record of the passwords, our survey finds that most respondents expect the checkout process to be completed in two minutes or less.

In this survey report, we will learn about the preferences of Australian online shoppers regarding guest checkouts. In addition, we will also talk about popular social login options, the online spending patterns of respondents, and how quickly they expect to checkout when shopping online. To find out data for this report, GetApp surveyed 1,040 respondents who shop online at least once per month. The complete methodology —including the selection criteria for the participants— can be found at the bottom of this article.

The meaning and relevance of guest checkouts

Guest checkouts are basically features that let shoppers make an online purchase without having to log in or create an account or save any information —such as a password, username, or address. In such a scenario, the customer’s information is used only for a particular order and is not stored in the website’s database for future use.

Some benefits of providing the guest checkout option to customers can be:

• With the guest checkout option, businesses typically ‘ask less’ of the customers. The buyers are not required to create an account, so they might not be sceptical about sharing too much personal information.
• According to Boldlist, guest checkouts can help increase conversion rates. In simple terms, many online shoppers might want to quickly and conveniently make a purchase, so the guest checkout process might help turn website visitors into customers. 
• People who are always in a hurry while shopping or are impulse buyers might not want to spend much time creating an online shopping account. Therefore, offering guest checkout options to such customers might help businesses lower the cart abandonment rate.

Majority of respondents would prefer guest checkouts

In part one of this survey, we learned the potential reasons that made customers abandon an online purchase. To improve the conversion rate on online shopping sites, businesses may need to lower the cart abandonment rate. While there are many possible ways to do so, creating a streamlined checkout process can prove effective.

When shopping online, there are typically three basic checkout options that most consumers will get. These include creating a new account, checking out as a guest, or signing in using a social profile —such as Google, Facebook, or Twitter.

In order to understand consumer preference regarding the checkout process, we asked respondents how they would like to checkout when purchasing with a new online retailer, and these are the responses:

Reasons why guest checkouts are a popular choice

The 54% of respondents who selected guest checkout as their ‘preferred choice’ were asked to choose the reason(s) behind it, and these are the answers:

• 32% of the respondents say they prefer the guest checkout option because they don’t need to provide as much information
• 30% of them prefer guest checkout as it’s a faster process than creating a new account
• 25% of the survey-takers don’t feel like keeping up with another online account, hence they would prefer checking out as a guest

Even in part one of this survey, we found out that a combined total of 76% of the survey-takers abandoned an online purchase because the account registration process was too complicated. In addition to this, the same survey also indicated that 35% of the respondents would abandon an online purchase if forced to create a new account. Other reasons behind the popularity of the guest checkout option could be privacy concerns. Part one of this series also mentioned that ‘a combined total of 71% of respondents decided not to shop due to privacy concerns —with 23% of them having done it once and 48% more than once’.

Apart from this —intriguingly— a combined total of 48% of the survey-takers would still use the guest checkout option even when they already had an account with an online company — with 41% of them doing it occasionally and 7% doing it often.

The data points listed above indicate that survey-takers are concerned about sharing their personal information with new online retailers. Additionally, complicated registration processes and the hassle of creating a new online account every time while shopping could also contribute to cart abandonment.

Popular social media platforms for creating a new account

21% of the survey-takers who chose to log in using an existing social media profile were asked to select their preferred platform for that, and these are their responses:

Among all the responses, Google, with 44% of the respondents selecting it, is the most popular choice, followed by Facebook with 39% of them choosing it. Login using a social profile is part of bring your own identity (BYOI), which we also learned about in part one of this survey. In the BYOI concept, customers can log into an online account using their existing identities on Google, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media platform without creating a new online account from scratch.

The data here also indicates that other platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Microsoft, or Yahoo are far from competing with Google and Facebook as the preferred social media platform choices. On another note, the potential reason for the popularity of such platforms could be the convenience they provide or that the respondents have pre-existing trust in them.

How quickly do consumers expect to checkout online?

Moving on to understanding consumer preference, we asked respondents how long they expected the checkout process to take. Unsurprisingly, a combined total of 53% of them would prefer the checkout process to get over in two minutes or less. The rest of the responses are:

Based on our research data, online businesses should ideally design the checkout process in a simple, quick, and convenient way. Most respondents expect to checkout in two minutes or less, which indicates that they want a faster checkout process. Businesses can perhaps accomplish this by adding guest checkout and social media login options for customers. Alternatively, companies can add the following features to help consumers checkout faster:

• Online businesses can offer multiple payment methods —credit cards, digital wallets, or buy now, pay later— and different shipping options
• They can reduce the number of fields in the registration or order form
• Companies can also enable Google’s auto-address filling option, which automatically fills in a customer’s shipping address

Respondents are shopping online as much as during COVID-19

Going forward, we asked respondents how often they currently shop online compared to 12 months ago, and these are the answers:

• 45% of the survey-takers shop equally as often
• 30% of them shop somewhat more often
• 13% shop somewhat less often
• 8% and 5% of them shop much more often and much less often, respectively

The responses point out that consumers’ shopping frequency has been somewhat consistent over the past year. In addition, as per the Australia Post eCommerce Industry report, almost 9 million Australian households made online purchases in 2020. The report also mentions that online purchases in 2020 grew by 57% YOY and that Australians spent a record $50.46 billion.

The data has specifically made a point that even after the rigorous effects of the pandemic, most respondents are shopping online much as they used to. The potential reasons behind this could be convenience in shopping from home, time flexibility, safety, and crowd avoidance.

Inflation has impacted shopping behaviour

After understanding the shopping frequency of the surveyed respondents, we asked them to rate their agreement or disagreement on whether inflation has impacted their online shopping habits over the last 12 months. This is what they think:

Clearly —for the majority of the respondents— inflation has impacted their online shopping behaviour —with 53% of them somewhat agreeing with it.

Online spending pattern likely to remain consistent

To understand whether rising prices can possibly affect consumers’ shopping habits, we asked respondents how much they plan to spend over the next 12 months. Interestingly, nearly half (49%) of the survey-takers are planning to spend about the same amount of money they are currently spending on online shopping.

Therefore, despite the inflation effects and other factors, many respondents will still probably spend the same amount of money while shopping online.

Guest checkout: a challenge or opportunity?

Guest checkouts might be a good option for some online stores, but not for all. Having said that, while guest checkouts might pave the way for a faster shopping experience, they can also cause some challenges. In some cases, shoppers can run into problems such as difficulty in order tracking, inability to track purchase history, and even issues in getting returns, refunds, and exchanges. In this sense, guest checkouts might be more effective for one-time customers.

Therefore, websites likely to receive repeat orders should consider keeping a mix of different checkout options —guest checkouts, log ins via social media accounts, and creating a new customer account.