How To Incentivise Your Users To Register When They Checkout

A majority of online stores have the ‘checkout as a guest’ option available for convenience for the user.

This process works really well for people like Sandra (Sandra is today’s fictional character) but not so well for marketers and those managing content on e-commerce stores. It reduces their chances of being able to use email marketing to encourage repeat business.

How Can We Get People Like Sandra To Register?

Let’s first understand Sandra’s story.

Sandra has been waiting all week for the Black Friday sale to happen. She already knows the product that she wants and the website she wants to buy it from, as they’ve been advertising it all week on social media.

She hasn’t shopped with this store before, so feels like there’s no real benefit to creating an account at the moment.

Guest Checkout

The guest checkout can seem like the easy option and it is. The goal is to achieve more sales, so providing a registration journey for Sandra might become a hurdle.

Guest checkout means Sandra can get in and get out like a contestant on Supermarket Sweep (classic daytime TV).

Checkout with Paypal Or Apple Pay Can Also Skip Registration

The faster checkout options seen on many e-commerce websites now, also mean that some users can completely bypass the registration stage anyway. I purchased some sunglasses recently and paid using ShopPay (Shopify payment). My details are stored within ShopPay, so when I returned to the store I struggled to find my login details.

It was only when I remembered that I’d paid with ShopPay, I realised that I couldn’t see my previous prescription or order because I’d failed to create an account.

This is another example of users skipping registration and marketers capturing nout.

So 2 Scenarios And 2 Clear Reasons To Encourage People To Register

What’s the answer, James? Hurry up will you, I’ve got shopping to do!

Sorry let me get on to it.

So this week when I was booking a cheeky night away with the Mrs, I visited the Crowne Plaza website. I spotted something that was certainly worth a Swipe and Deploy.

Members get a discount on their rooms, and that membership is free as part of the registration process.

Not rocket science I know, but effective for those bargain hunters.

A lot of people will search for coupons to get 10% off a purchase and will join mailing lists to get discount codes. But membership adds an extra layer, as it also feels exclusive.

So coming back to Sandra, if we dangled the option of a discounted member price in front of her, she might oblige and register. Then we could send her product updates and sale emails to tempt her back for other goodies that the store sells. Black Friday is all about discounts, so why not capture some new registered users in the process?

Member Discount Only For Registered Members

Showcasing the other benefits of membership could also encourage users to register. Things like being able to view past orders, like with my glasses order, would have benefited me as I had to resubmit my prescription details for another order (a friction point).

To tackle the faster payment types, you’ll need to alter your journey to feature the registration before displaying the payment options. Or label the payment types to make it clear that without registration you won’t obtain your discount.

What’s To Swipe & Deploy?

As a marketer, your goal is to generate traffic and for that traffic to convert into sales. So providing faster ways to pay assists in quicker conversions, and more of them. But then you’re also tasked to deliver results on repeat business and growth to your email list. Sometimes it’s hard being in marketing!

So if your objective is growing your registered users, then introducing a member rate is the takeaway here. You’ll need to introduce tiered pricing within your products. Giving all registered users a set price discount, and altering the messaging within your cart and checkout journey.

Don’t forget to showcase any other benefits you might want to introduce to further incentivise the user to join, above and beyond a discount. Some brands provide next-day delivery or even free delivery, whereas for some users, being able to see past orders is actually good enough.

That’s a wrap for Swipe & Deploy #19. Join me next week when I’ll share another insight or piece of inspiration from around the web. 

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