3 ms·

Most of these forms are more complicated because of tax codes and such. If I don't know your name or your address, I can't adequately assess whether I should b

Most of these forms are more complicated because of tax codes and such. If I don't know your name or your address, I can't adequately assess whether I should be collecting sales tax. Failing to collect and report sales tax can come with very hefty fines. There's a whole bunch of other valid reasons too. If there's a problem, it's nice being able to actually contact your customer. Most businesses need to be able to produce receipts, with some data needed to even count as a receipt ("you were charged X on Y" via email -- which you may not have anyway -- usually doesn't cut it). And I'd love to see the data on this, but if someone has gotten to the point where they've decided to purchase and are presented with fields that are pretty standard just about everywhere else, I suspect abandonment rate is rather low. The pros just seem to outweigh the cons on this minimalism debate.

dave5104 14y ago
> I suspect abandonment rate is rather low. I'd say it depends on the situation. If you're shopping for something specific, say for a new hard drive or monitor or something, chances are you've been looking around for awhile and once you're in the checkout process, you've made up your mind to commit to that product. A few extra fields for payment data probably won't deter you. But on the opposite side of the spectrum, if someone is going to impulse buy, each field you force them to fill out gives them a few more seconds to decide "Eh, I don't really need this..." and abandon. In those cases, you want payments as frictionless as possible. I know I've done some impulse buys a few times after being drawn in via an email campaign or something--and subsequently decided to just forget about making the purchase.