Is there a design that allows users to checkout easily while still encouraging them to create an account? The answer may surprise you.
Watch this episode of The Cro Show, a game show for conversion rate optimization and marketing experimentation fans, and see if you can guess which test variation performed better during a recent Cro Metrics client experiment.
Full Transcript:
Matt Vincent: The test that we are looking at today is for a an organization that we work for that hosts a national fundraising platform for a new generation of donors.
They give everyone a chance to dream big and win once in a lifetime prizes while helping to make the world a better place.
So what we were doing today is testing – um sorry, Drew.
So we’re planning to do – so we’re testing a way to help users get through the checkout funnel more easily in a bit more streamlined process.
So our primary metric here was actual checkouts.
So this is our control here.
And what we’re doing is we’re testing removing some of the additional options here, like checking out as guest or within an account.
And then from there, seeing if we can just drive users into the funnel a little bit more easily by just going right through to check out or actually inverting these as well and seeing what would happen if we force an account creation as a as a primary or the default option here.
So again, so this is control.
V1 is where we inverted things and we force users to have to either deselect checking out with an account by checking out as a guest or clicking log in.
And then V2, as I was saying, removed all of those items and allowed users just continue to check out.
So again, what we are hoping we’re hoping to learn here was if we were to invert those items or remove them altogether, would we see an impact on checkout?
Would we see an impact on account creations?
The goal here was to increase checkouts, again.
But by not actually hurting our account creations if possible.
So what questions do you all have?
Drew Seman: What – do we know what percentage that people have some sort of a log in account?
Matt Vincent: I mean, no, I don’t think we do.
I mean, I don’t I’m just trying to think if there’s a easy way that I could get that number.
Philippa Boyes: Is this the last chance customers have to log in before they complete their purchase?
Matt Vincent: No, there’s a log in after this state as well.
Philippa Boyes: OK.
Matt Vincent: And they’re not required to log in in order to checkout.
Philippa Boyes: And they could have logged in previous to that state as well, right?
Or, is this their first chance?
Matt Vincent: No, sorry.
So this was we only this treatment is only shown to users who are not logged in.
Philippa Boyes: Got it.
Cara Binsfield: So I’m going to go ahead with more market research and potentially go over too, on this.
But this time it’s UX research and not psychology.
I read a Baymard article recently that said you should always default to guest checkout or like even remove create an account or log in from your checkout flow in eComm because Baymard basically had this whole article saying that users really don’t want to give you their email address unless they need to.
And so like only your like top percentage of all your users.
Like, I still log in as a guest and get put into it – like my account gets pulled back up even for sites that I shop at regularly because I just like don’t want to deal with it.
And Baymard like said that too.
So I think everybody’s like me and they would prefer V0 or V2.
Zeinoun Kawwass: And the color blue.
Cara Binsfield: Yes, that too.
Carl Light: But which of the two, Cara?
V0 or V2?
Cara Binsfield: I like V2 because like don’t give me so many options just like get my stuff done.
But that’s why I said V0 or V2.
But if everyone’s exactly like me, then we’re V2s.
James Buo: I think v1 feels like there’s too many options.
Matt Vincent: Even though they’re the same number of options – well, actually, no, there’s create an account.
James Buo: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They just stack up.
Drew Seman: It looks like there’s more. That’s right.
Zeinoun Kawwass: I would think that eliminating friction by going, you know, faster route with V2, it might be the winner.
Matt Vincent: All right, should we bring it to a vote?
Katie Green: I think we should.
And let’s do – how many – there’s two variations?
Matt Vincent: Two variations.
Katie Green: Zero. One, two, whatever one you think won.
*group chatter*
Matt Vincent: All right, so our results, um, Winner for V2.
And so here’s the cool thing.
All right, so we did see a really nice lift in actual checkouts with significance.
And then RPC, you know, probably not surprising, was fairly flat.
So being able to see a nice lift here for RPV as well.
Just overall, really nice to be able to report on.
But the best part of this for me was that at the end of the flow, you just had an opportunity to create an account and we still saw a lift in account creations all the way at the end.
So control users could create one at the start at the actual cart page or after completing their donation.
And V2 users only had it at the end and we still saw that lift.
And that to me is like super sick because we saw a really nice lift overall.
And then running it through the excel stat sig calculator, we saw that that also hit stats sig.
So this was like a major win overall for the client.
Katie Green: Thanks for watching and be sure to subscribe to have more test ideas sent directly to your inbox.