When someone is ready to buy, every extra step is a chance for them to leave. Yet many online stores still put up a wall at the worst possible moment: they require shoppers to create an account before they can check out. It’s one of the most common — and most expensive — mistakes in ecommerce.
Why does forcing account creation cost you sales?
A shopper who has decided to buy wants to pay and move on. Asking them to register first breaks that momentum: now they have to invent a password, hand over details they didn’t plan to share, and remember one more login they’ll probably forget. A lot of them simply abandon the cart instead.
This isn’t a fringe problem — it’s still everywhere. In Baymard Institute’s ecommerce benchmark, [42% of sites interrupt users to push account creation before or during checkout](https://baymard.com/blog/delayed-account-creation). Every one of those interruptions is a chance to lose a customer who was already reaching for their wallet.
“But how do I build my list without registration?”
This is the usual objection, and it’s a fair one — your marketing database matters. But guest checkout doesn’t mean you walk away empty-handed. You still capture the shopper’s email to send the order confirmation, which means you can still send receipts, shipping updates, and future offers. You’re simply collecting that email without making registration a condition of buying. You get the sale and the email — instead of gambling on both.
What should you do instead?
Make guest checkout the default, fast path, and make it easy to find — not buried beneath a login form a shopper has to squint to get past. Then invite account creation after the purchase is complete, on the confirmation page, where it costs you nothing. By then the customer is happy, the sale is locked in, and “save your details for next time” reads as a genuine convenience instead of a barrier.
The principle underneath this applies far beyond the account step: when a visitor has decided to act, your job is to remove friction, not add it.
Forced account creation is rarely the only thing quietly costing you conversions — it’s just one of the easiest to spot. If you’re not sure where else your checkout or funnel is leaking, that’s exactly what a conversion review is for. [Book a consultation](/contact/) and we’ll take a look.