The $300 million button

A story about how changing a button increased a site’s annual revenue by $300 million.

An e-commerce site was seeing high rates of cart abandonment. Customers seemed to abandon their carts when presented with a simple registration form — one input, two buttons (Login and Register), and a link (Forgot Password) — at the start of the checkout process.

The team assumed users would appreciate the registration form as a way to speed up checkout on subsequent purchases, since they could create an account once and not have to re-enter information later. Usability studies show that first-time users hate registering and will leave a site rather than do so. They simply want to complete their purchase and not enter into a long-term relationship that makes them a target for marketing emails.[4]

Repeat customers also had trouble with the form, since they often didn’t remember their credentials. 75% of customers who requested to reset their password never completed their purchase because they didn’t remember the exact email they used for registration.

When designers made registration optional and allowed users to check out as guests instead, annual revenue was boosted by $300,000,000 and the number of purchasing customers increased by 45%.

Credit — https://app.uxcel.com/lessons/what-is-ux-design-317#the-300-million-button-6626