Guest Users: A Tiny Flaw in the UX of the UK’s Top E-commerce Sites

So, I might just be talking to myself here and technically, this is a rant turned into something more positive that we all love…an unsolicited UX audit. Yay! Who doesn’t love to give advice that nobody asked for? ;)

Okay, jokes aside, where was I?

Yes, so it’s summer, and for someone relocating to a different country from a warmer region, I didn’t really come with summer/warm weather clothes. Weird, I know. It should be the opposite. Meh. Anyway, so, in order to avoid looking like a clown with the added possibility of passing out from a heat stroke in these London streets wearing winter stuff in the summer, I decided to do a little shopping. I’m technically new to the UK so I don’t have accounts with most UK online stores and to speed things up, I don’t want to have to go through the gymnastics of customer KYC and onboarding, so, I just shop as a ‘Guest User’.

Shopping as a Guest User on PLT, Harvey Nichols, and Asos, I noticed a tiny flaw. It’s seemingly insignificant but it frustrated my soul (I exaggerate but allow me to be extra, okay?). That flaw is Guest users’ inability to view an order history despite signing up after the purchase.

So, the current flow for Guest Users on the e-commerce sites is as follows (image below):

We need to understand that on an e-commerce site, the primary action for the user is to make a purchase and if like me, some users are too in a hurry to take the Signup/Login step for whatever reason, they would opt for the quickest path, the Guest User path. In the case that a user just completed a purchase by selecting the Guest user option instead of signing up or logging in, they receive their order summary in their email and then make the decision to go ahead and signup afterward (New user) or login (existing user). When they do so eventually, they should have access to their recent order history. So, it’s quite puzzling that there seems to be a break in the user experience on most of these sites.

Obviously, as a Product Manager or UX designer, it’s imperative that in order to make the decision to tweak this user flow/UX, data needs to be employed so that one can ascertain whether this break in the user’s experience of the product is a problem shared by many or just a few. However, it can be argued that;

1. Because this flow is the standardized flow that users are used to, even though they find it annoying or frustrating, they might shrug it off as a feature that’s not important enough to warrant a complaint.
2. If a user is using the guest flow as a means of saving time or steps in the journey, they might see the flow as meeting their immediate need and not as a flaw. Thus, making it would be to take extra time to register a complaint.
3. Not every e-commerce product redirects the user to their profile page to track their order, some have direct links from the email to the third-party delivery partner.

My point is that it’s difficult to know how much of a pain point this is for users because the Guest user option is a temporary fix. However, I was thinking, what if as a suggestion, we say:

User should be able to manually input their order number from the guest purchase to record their purchase on their profile in order to better track it. orderId integer, name and email strings can automatically or manually be matched to the attributes in the Customer Class.

OR

clicking the email link triggers the same match/verification logic???

What if, eh?

Adding the above suggestion to the current flow (image above), the new flow should look something like this:

Now that I’m done ranting, I’m wondering, is this an edge case? Could that be the reason why it hasn’t been done or has it just been overlooked in error because we follow standardized UX flows and story maps that don’t take the guest user flow/experience much into consideration?

I’m not sure what to think, to be honest, I just know that clicking on ‘Track Order’ CTA in my email and getting redirected to my new Order history or Profile page on the web app only to see that my previous order does not reflect, annoyed me and I wondered how many people have had similar experiences and emotions.

Has this ever happened to you? Did you think about it much or did you just shrug it off as not worth your time/stress?

Product Managers in the E-commerce space, have you noticed this in your qualitative data? Is this an edge case? Please, let me know.