Guest checkout prominence is a conversion lever most merchants are mishandling
Baymard Institute’s latest benchmark finding should concern any merchant running a checkout with an account-creation step: 47% of sites that offer guest checkout fail to make it visually prominent enough to be found quickly. That is not a minor UX detail. It is a direct cause of abandonment at one of the most critical junctures in the purchase funnel.
The core problem is straightforward. Offering guest checkout and making it findable are two entirely different things. A user moving at normal browsing pace who cannot immediately identify a clear guest path will either pause and hunt, or leave. Neither outcome is acceptable. Baymard’s large-scale usability testing confirms both behaviours happen at measurable rates.
Four failure patterns account for most of the damage. First, vague labelling: buttons that say “Continue” or “Check Out Now” do not signal to a reluctant registrant that this is the no-account path. Second, presenting guest checkout as plain text rather than a styled button, which visually demotes it relative to the sign-in option. Third, positioning guest checkout below the login form, so users who scan top-to-bottom may commit to the wrong flow before they see the alternative. Fourth, requiring email entry before the guest option even appears, which many users interpret as the start of account creation and triggers early drop-off.
For Dutch and Belgian merchants, this matters for a specific reason. Both markets have a strong base of privacy-conscious shoppers who are reluctant to create accounts with retailers they use infrequently. iDEAL and Bancontact users often return to checkout for one-off purchases, and any friction at the account step disproportionately affects this group. Making guest checkout the visually dominant option, with a direct label and a full button treatment, is a low-effort, high-impact fix that requires no A/B test to justify.
The concrete action: audit your account-selection step today. If your guest path is a text link, has an indirect label, or sits below the sign-in form, fix the visual hierarchy before any other checkout optimisation project. Baymard’s data suggests you are almost certainly losing a measurable share of intent-ready buyers at this step.
Source: baymard.com
