8 ms·

Stripe Checkout is nice, but unfortunately it's not suitable for us, since the "Remember me" checkbox cannot be hidden. "Remember me" is confusing for users. W

by dirtae 13y ago

Stripe Checkout is nice, but unfortunately it's not suitable for us, since the "Remember me" checkbox cannot be hidden. "Remember me" is confusing for users. What is being remembered? By whom? When you're dealing with users who may already be concerned about whether it's secure to enter their credit card number into your website, I feel like the "Remember me" box is just adding another layer of confusion and concern. I'm surprised that the "Remember me" checkbox can't be hidden, given how focused on their customers Stripe normally is. The "Remember me" checkbox feels like something Stripe is pushing on me to help them with their business objectives, which isn't the vibe I usually get when dealing with Stripe.

j21 13y ago
I use Stripe Checkout myself, but I think if you make your own form you're be able to leave 'remember me' out. Correct me if I'm wrong though, haven't made a custom form in a while. https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/forms https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/forms
pc 13y ago
[Tl;dr on the below: the changes we make to Checkout are designed to increase our merchants' revenue. If a change doesn't do that, it will be reverted.] The confusion point you cite was our biggest concern in building the "Remember me" functionality. On the one hand, it's clearly good for our merchants* if customers don't have to constantly retype their card details. On the other hand, it'd be bad if we were scaring them away with something confusing. So we've been testing Checkout for months. After tons of testing across different sites, types of business, and devices, we're confident that "Remember me" does not harm conversion rate. On the contrary -- all the evidence we have shows that it increases it. If a business has a lot of returning customers, this effect can be very big. For example: we ran an experiment that simply removed the "Remember me" option on Humble Bundle, and determined that they would make less money without it. To your point about being focused on customers: our rule is to always do what's best for the merchant. I want to really emphasize this point, because I believe it very strongly. The strategy tax example you cite is precisely what we insist we can't do, and where we believe other companies and products have gone wrong. We've discussed the possibility of allowing users to hide the "Remember me" checkbox, and our belief is that having that option is probably not the best thing for the merchant. We consider it our job to optimize the Checkout in order to maximize our users' revenue. If we add more options, we can easily end up with something confusing and inconsistent. Having a ton of configuration options would also make it harder to pursue other ideas and avenues. The whole point of Checkout is to enable ongoing iteration and improvement. As a result, we'd much rather make the macro guarantee ("we'll work on increasing your revenue"), and build the infrastructure that enables us to do that, rather than forcing merchants to guess what particular tweaks might work best. Still, even though we've leaned against doing so thus far, we're by no means strongly opposed to removing it. Perhaps, for example, we should have an option that doesn't show "Remember me" but will pre-fill the details if they've been entered elsewhere. Again -- our goal is just to do what's best for the merchant. * We generally don't like the term merchant, but I'll use it here for clarity.
- pdb123 13y ago
  It's awesome that you've tested Checkout and are confident that it helps conversion. Would you guys consider releasing the experiments that your ran? I think it'd be a great lesson in testing out products pre-launch.
  - pc 13y ago
    Yes, we'd love to write a blog post about this, and have considered doing something along these lines. Look out for more on this front.
- teej 13y ago
  I think the trap here, a function of scaling any business, is that what's best for most of your customers isn't necessarily best for all of your customers. Another perspective is that what's right for your 2013 customers isn't necessarily the right thing for your prospective 2014 customers. One possible outcome of your decision is that you're optimizing for customers who have repeat business and against customers with one-off business. That may well be right thing for Stripe. I am a strong supporter of opinionated software but I think that view has to be colored with "this solution will be wrong for some customers" and "we are not building a solution for every customer". I imagine these assumptions are implied in your explanation above.
  - pc 13y ago
    For sure. We haven't seen evidence yet that there are things that are amazing for some segments and bad for others -- but if we did (or if we do in future -- we're still measuring), that'd certainly inform our approach. Also, it's probably worth emphasizing that the traditional Stripe integration options are all still present and always will be.
    - benmathes 13y ago
      You could also automatically run split tests on a per-merchant basis, thereby automatically auto-tune the checkout for each merchant.
timdorr 13y ago
What if it said "Remember payment details" or "Remember your payment info"? Although, I agree with the core complaint. It should be a simple parameter to turn that section off and hide it. Or possibly a parameter to change the text next to the checkbox.
- boie0025 13y ago
  Right, I think a good compromise would be to make the field title a parameter.
  - pc 13y ago
    Yeah, that's probably a good idea. (It's also possible that we should have an option to disable the checkbox while still enabling customers to log in with their payment details if they've been entered elsewhere...)
mfrommil 13y ago
Or have a small (?) next to it explaining in more detail what "remember me" actually does for anyone interested. -Provides enough detail to answer anyone's questions about what it does -Doesn't clutter the overall UI
- pc 13y ago
  Yup, we do that.
  - dazmax 13y ago
    You should add that to the "Show me" tour on the website, because currently it looks like the user has to check the box before they see the info, which seems like it would have more psychological friction than also having a (?) button.
diziet 13y ago
The potential with saving payment information and tying it to a phone number is really, really exciting. Imagine having a customer come in and buy something without having to enter their credit card. I just donated to Watsi without having to take out my wallet.
pbreit 13y ago
I suspect few merchants would experience meaningful drop-off by this inclusion and that over time the feature will benefit all Stripe-using merchants (by increasing the universe of "express checkout enabled" buyers). As a developer (or really any type of employee or contractor) you should balance your desire for control with actual business results.
bertil 13y ago
Sorry, point of confusion here: what do you want to happen without the line? It's not clear from your comment. Let Stripe remember the customer without asking (because repeated payments are an obvious thing, and you have to keep the details in your books anyway, so for them, it's a no brainer) or on the contrary don't even consider the possibility (because you don't expect any repeated sales)? In the first case, the problem is that you point it out to customer and make them scare of something innocuous, that they would find obvious if they had to go through it; in the second, you force them to click out an unnecessary option. Comments seem to point at both options, without realising the confusion.

by dirtae 13y ago

j21 13y ago

I use Stripe Checkout myself, but I think if you make your own form you're be able to leave 'remember me' out. Correct me if I'm wrong though, haven't made a custom form in a while. https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/forms https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/forms

pc 13y ago

[Tl;dr on the below: the changes we make to Checkout are designed to increase our merchants' revenue. If a change doesn't do that, it will be reverted.] The confusion point you cite was our biggest concern in building the "Remember me" functionality. On the one hand, it's clearly good for our merchants* if customers don't have to constantly retype their card details. On the other hand, it'd be bad if we were scaring them away with something confusing. So we've been testing Checkout for months. After tons of testing across different sites, types of business, and devices, we're confident that "Remember me" does not harm conversion rate. On the contrary -- all the evidence we have shows that it increases it. If a business has a lot of returning customers, this effect can be very big. For example: we ran an experiment that simply removed the "Remember me" option on Humble Bundle, and determined that they would make less money without it. To your point about being focused on customers: our rule is to always do what's best for the merchant. I want to really emphasize this point, because I believe it very strongly. The strategy tax example you cite is precisely what we insist we can't do, and where we believe other companies and products have gone wrong. We've discussed the possibility of allowing users to hide the "Remember me" checkbox, and our belief is that having that option is probably not the best thing for the merchant. We consider it our job to optimize the Checkout in order to maximize our users' revenue. If we add more options, we can easily end up with something confusing and inconsistent. Having a ton of configuration options would also make it harder to pursue other ideas and avenues. The whole point of Checkout is to enable ongoing iteration and improvement. As a result, we'd much rather make the macro guarantee ("we'll work on increasing your revenue"), and build the infrastructure that enables us to do that, rather than forcing merchants to guess what particular tweaks might work best. Still, even though we've leaned against doing so thus far, we're by no means strongly opposed to removing it. Perhaps, for example, we should have an option that doesn't show "Remember me" but will pre-fill the details if they've been entered elsewhere. Again -- our goal is just to do what's best for the merchant. * We generally don't like the term merchant, but I'll use it here for clarity.

pdb123 13y ago
It's awesome that you've tested Checkout and are confident that it helps conversion. Would you guys consider releasing the experiments that your ran? I think it'd be a great lesson in testing out products pre-launch.
- pc 13y ago
  Yes, we'd love to write a blog post about this, and have considered doing something along these lines. Look out for more on this front.
teej 13y ago
I think the trap here, a function of scaling any business, is that what's best for most of your customers isn't necessarily best for all of your customers. Another perspective is that what's right for your 2013 customers isn't necessarily the right thing for your prospective 2014 customers. One possible outcome of your decision is that you're optimizing for customers who have repeat business and against customers with one-off business. That may well be right thing for Stripe. I am a strong supporter of opinionated software but I think that view has to be colored with "this solution will be wrong for some customers" and "we are not building a solution for every customer". I imagine these assumptions are implied in your explanation above.
- pc 13y ago
  For sure. We haven't seen evidence yet that there are things that are amazing for some segments and bad for others -- but if we did (or if we do in future -- we're still measuring), that'd certainly inform our approach. Also, it's probably worth emphasizing that the traditional Stripe integration options are all still present and always will be.
  - benmathes 13y ago
    You could also automatically run split tests on a per-merchant basis, thereby automatically auto-tune the checkout for each merchant.

timdorr 13y ago

What if it said "Remember payment details" or "Remember your payment info"? Although, I agree with the core complaint. It should be a simple parameter to turn that section off and hide it. Or possibly a parameter to change the text next to the checkbox.

boie0025 13y ago
Right, I think a good compromise would be to make the field title a parameter.
- pc 13y ago
  Yeah, that's probably a good idea. (It's also possible that we should have an option to disable the checkbox while still enabling customers to log in with their payment details if they've been entered elsewhere...)

mfrommil 13y ago

Or have a small (?) next to it explaining in more detail what "remember me" actually does for anyone interested. -Provides enough detail to answer anyone's questions about what it does -Doesn't clutter the overall UI

pc 13y ago
Yup, we do that.
- dazmax 13y ago
  You should add that to the "Show me" tour on the website, because currently it looks like the user has to check the box before they see the info, which seems like it would have more psychological friction than also having a (?) button.

diziet 13y ago

The potential with saving payment information and tying it to a phone number is really, really exciting. Imagine having a customer come in and buy something without having to enter their credit card. I just donated to Watsi without having to take out my wallet.

pbreit 13y ago

I suspect few merchants would experience meaningful drop-off by this inclusion and that over time the feature will benefit all Stripe-using merchants (by increasing the universe of "express checkout enabled" buyers). As a developer (or really any type of employee or contractor) you should balance your desire for control with actual business results.

bertil 13y ago

Sorry, point of confusion here: what do you want to happen without the line? It's not clear from your comment. Let Stripe remember the customer without asking (because repeated payments are an obvious thing, and you have to keep the details in your books anyway, so for them, it's a no brainer) or on the contrary don't even consider the possibility (because you don't expect any repeated sales)? In the first case, the problem is that you point it out to customer and make them scare of something innocuous, that they would find obvious if they had to go through it; in the second, you force them to click out an unnecessary option. Comments seem to point at both options, without realising the confusion.