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Mobile apps and online platforms have made it faster and easier for shoppers to get what they want, raising customer expectations around the speed and convenience of online shopping. Businesses looking to increase sales may want to explore ways to offer greater speed and convenience at checkout, allowing shoppers to complete purchases quickly and easily.
Shoppers like guest checkout, so bringing more speed and convenience to the experience can be a good place for businesses to start. In a 2022 survey, 43% of respondents said they prefer using guest checkout to make online purchases, and 72% of those respondents would still use guest checkout even if they already had an account with an online business.1
Every hurdle a shopper faces increases the chance they will abandon their cart. Customers are used to summoning a meal or reserving a movie ticket with just one click, and they expect an online shopping experience to be just as convenient. Simplifying your e-commerce business’s guest checkout experience to meet these expectations can help encourage more customers to complete their purchases with you.
Brass Butterfly, a Vermont-based business that sells handcrafted plant rooting vases and accessories, initially chose PayPal for its credibility, ease of integration, and ability to seamlessly support online payments. When Anne Hadeka, co-owner of Brass Butterfly, learned how Fastlane by PayPal taps into the scale and trust of PayPal’s customer network to accelerate guest checkout, she added it to her checkout stack.
Anne Hadeka, Co-Owner, Brass Butterfly
Fastlane by PayPal was developed by analyzing and optimizing the shopping experience to help businesses realize more sales. Below are more insights on how focusing on speed, convenience, and privacy to streamline guest checkout can help businesses increase conversion.
Shoppers want speed — 66% of customers in a 2022 survey said they expect online checkout to take four minutes or less.2 Among surveyed shoppers who said they prefer guest checkout, 74% favor it because they think it’s faster than creating a new account, and 82% of shoppers have abandoned their purchase when the account registration process took too long.3
One way to speed up your guest checkout is with a one-click solution that can auto-fill customers’ shipping and payment information. This is especially helpful for on-the-go shoppers. If they’re trying to make a purchase on their phone during their evening commute, there’s no need for them to take out their credit cards or spend time entering shipping details.
Customers don’t want another online account to manage — 56% of customers surveyed who prefer guest checkout said they like not needing to keep up with another online account.4 It’s no surprise: as of 2024, the average person had to keep track of 168 passwords.5 Mandatory account creation is among the hurdles that can cause shoppers to abandon their carts.
Businesses can make shopping more convenient for their customers by enabling guest checkout solutions that use passwordless authentication to verify shopper identities. With these solutions, shoppers can sign in securely by providing their email and a secure PIN-code sent to their phone — no password or account management required.
Shoppers value their privacy — 47% of surveyed customers who said they prefer guest checkout said they favor it because they don’t need to provide as much personal information.6
A quick and easy guest checkout option that lets customers complete their purchases without having to give their information to one more business means one fewer hurdle before conversion — and shows you respect their privacy and their time.
PayPal is delivering a fast, streamlined guest checkout experience that can help businesses give their customers the speed, convenience, and privacy they want — and ultimately help drive sales.
Fastlane by PayPal is an accelerated guest checkout solution that can help increase sales and bring more convenience to you and your customers by recognizing millions of customers across the PayPal network — and auto-filling payment and shipping information for verified guests. In fact, shoppers with Fastlane profiles have been shown to have a guest checkout conversion rate of around 67%.7
Discover more tips and trends to help boost checkout conversion this year.
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