Password In Checkout Does it Put Customers Off?

[jamo32]

Hi

 

Sorry I know it's an old topic but just wanted to ask does having to enter a password in checkout put customers off.

 

Kind Regards James

[MrPhil]

What osC version? What add-ons? What payment system? What password are you talking about? If the customer needs to sign into their account at some point, why would they be put off by entering a password? Is this a password for signing on to their PayPal account, or similar? What are you asking? If there are multiple passwords for account and payment, perhaps something can be done to have a consolidated signon.

[♥14steve14]

If you dont want your customers to enter a password when completing a sale, use a purchase without account addon. If you explain the benefits of creating an account, such as getting to see and amend address details, check on order status and the like, most people will sign up for an account. There are some that wont, so have the PWA option just for those customers.

[burt]

Hi

 

Sorry I know it's an old topic but just wanted to ask does having to enter a password in checkout put customers off.

 

Kind Regards James

 

Tell us your thoughts on it..

[jamo32]

People seem to get fedup of passwords some get weird ideas about signing up for accounts that they will receive hidden charges.

[burt]

Idea #1

Remove both password & confirmation fields from create_account and then;
- create a random password at successful creation of account


Idea #2

Remove both password & confirmation fields from create_account and then;
- have the customer choose to create a password at the end of the buying process

 

 

 

Any more?

[Jack_mcs]

People seem to get fedup of passwords some get weird ideas about signing up for accounts that they will receive hidden charges.

I think it may also be that they don't want their private information stored.  Installing PWA as Steve mentioned is the way to go. Creating an account without their approval may cost you in lost customers. Above all else, you need to be honest with them. I would change the PWA text to let them know that only their order data is stored. That should also be in your shops policy pages too.

[MrPhil]

People seem to get fedup of passwords some get weird ideas about signing up for accounts that they will receive hidden charges.

 

Hidden charges? That's totally unethical, as well as illegal. You should not (and in most places can not) automatically sign them up for anything that they'll be charged for in the future, unless they explicitly opt in. If they fear that, they're suffering from paranoia (are you running a store for conspiracy theorists?). Much more reasonable is that they fear they will be inundated with spam, or that their information will be sold to others. You will have to reassure them in your privacy policy that you won't do that. You will have all their information on hand anyway (potentially including credit card numbers), so it's up to you to be ethical (and secure) with it.

 

Of course, many people are not comfortable with creating yet another account (with password) for a store they're not sure they'll ever visit again. They might even assume you're keeping their credit card number around, and might be tempted to slip in an unauthorized future charge but 1) that's illegal 2) that's forbidden by your card company 3) you'd have to be PCI-DSS compliant to hold a credit card number anyway. More reasonably, they probably figure they'll forget they have an account soon enough (or at least, forget the password), so why go through all the extra effort to come up with a user name and password? If you do some searching on this forum, you'll find this has been thoroughly hashed over at least once. The best bet seems to be to offer Purchase Without Account (guest purchase) in addition to having an account.

[Thelostfleet]

I think it may also be that they don't want their private information stored.  Installing PWA as Steve mentioned is the way to go. Creating an account without their approval may cost you in lost customers. Above all else, you need to be honest with them. I would change the PWA text to let them know that only their order data is stored. That should also be in your shops policy pages too.

 

About a year ago I wrote something like the PWA contribution for my site and so far about 50% of my customers choose to purchase without creating an account.

To give one's customers a choice between purchasing with an account or without any account is therefore a serious aspect wich may have important repercussions on your business.

However, there is some "hypocrisy" both from the customers and the sellers offering to purchase without creating an account. If the sellers do not store any paiement data, there is not real difference between a purchase made with or "without" an account ; in both case the customers addresses have to be provided by the customers and stored in our databases.

[Jack_mcs]

@@Thelostfleet That's why I said the customer should be shown what is being recorded. I agree having the option is important. I see the same sort of results between the two accounts.

[trier]

Hi,

 

Don’t know if it’s of any interest/relevance -

on the basis that the information we hold for a customer is the bare essentials to contact the customer and despatch the order (i.e. no payment details) a sophisticated password is not desperate, it’s hardly worth anyone spending time and effort to ‘hack’ into an account. To this end we offer a simple(ish) generated password comprising mmmddxx (all lower case) mmm = current month, dd =  current day, and xx = 2 random alpha characters.

 

The generated password can be changed, or removed for guest checkout.

 

Hopefully there is nothing too unacceptable with this????

[Thelostfleet]

 

Hi,

 

Don’t know if it’s of any interest/relevance -

on the basis that the information we hold for a customer is the bare essentials to contact the customer and despatch the order (i.e. no payment details) a sophisticated password is not desperate, it’s hardly worth anyone spending time and effort to ‘hack’ into an account. To this end we offer a simple(ish) generated password comprising mmmddxx (all lower case) mmm = current month, dd =  current day, and xx = 2 random alpha characters.

 

The generated password can be changed, or removed for guest checkout.

 

Hopefully there is nothing too unacceptable with this????

 

 

Even with such "basic" informations, some customers are paranoïd :)

[MrPhil]

A password is for an account, where certain information about a customer and their order(s) can be kept. It is certainly possible to use Purchase Without Account and not have any account (or password) at all. The customer is someone limited in what they can do with their most recent purchase, and past purchases are not remembered. It's up to you whether their email address is remembered past full completion of the sale, and used for marketing (laws vary; tell all customers exactly what you will do with their email addresses).

 

@@trier, there's no point in automatically creating a full account, if the customer doesn't want one. Just make sure you have some way (e.g., purchase number and email address) to tie back to that purchase should merchandise not arrive, be damaged, need service, or need to be returned. If a customer is not interested in opening an account, don't force them to.