I am in the process of designing an online store and need to know if
there has been any research done on consumer behaviour in relation to
the need to register for an account to check out. If so, please
summarise the results and provide stats on the percentage of abandoned
baskets when the need to register is enforced.

Are there any documented accounts of consumer perceptions of stores
that do not require the customer to register? E.g. do some customers
feel that the store is not professional if you are not asked to
register?

Thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by hedgie-ga on 01 Dec 2005 01:43 PST

There are ways to delay the creation of the account and also
of minimising visibility of the account to the customer,
but
 creation of the account  seems to be a necessity in the e-commerce even
 if store does not assume repeated purchases. It is not just issue of returns,
when shipped?, payment recieved? (or card declined..). Unlike the brick store,
website may be handling several customers at the same time. Account is the
identity of a customer. 

There are reports which deal with 'conversion of a visit to a purchase,
and usability of a site, like this one with abstract which says:
"In order to buy things from a site on the Web today, a customer must
generally put items in the shopping cart, select gift options and
shipping method, enter shipping and billing addresses, review the
order, provide payment information, confirm the sale, and perhaps save
information for future convenience when shopping at that site in the
future.."

 This report contains design guidelines for making these steps as easy
as possible. This report is copyrighted and download costs $45 for
single user.

Would you be interested in answer which provides this (and similar) 
references?  (That means no quotes from the content).

If this is not what you are interested in,
 can you describe how a site without accounts would function?

Hedgie

Speaking as a frequent online purchaser (because I live somewhere
remote).......I find the need to create an  account before purchasing
extremely irritating and indeed have sometimes aborted a particular
purchase becuase of this requirement.  I don't mind so much if stores
create an account from the data for the specific purchase/delivery,
minus the credit card info.

Just one person's view, I know, but I bet I am not alone in being
focussed on the particular purchase and finding it almost insulting
that the store seems to assume I might want to return, and is more
interested in collecting data about where I found the site than in
actually selling me something....

My business specializes in e-commerce design. We have demonstrated
repeatedly through user testing that requiring registration prior to
shopping or checking out is guaranteed to lower your conversion. A
large percentage of consumers will not put up with the hassle or they
feel their privacy threatened. It is much better to give a user an
option of registering as part of or at the end of a checkout process,
and you should provide a benefit for doing so (e.g. being able to
track order status, receive email notification when an ordered product
ships, etc.).