Customer registration at purchase time

I am an affiliate of some sites that require visitors to register with the site as part of the purchasing process ( or click here for returing customers).

Is it just me, or do others feel that this acts as a block to people making a purchase?

Experineces pleae anyone, of the pros of getting people to register up front ( I never do - I go searching for another store) or cons of this. M

I guess it depends on the purchase. If it something that needs delivery of some kind, I don't mind overly much with registering because I have to provide my address and stuff anyways. Overall though I don't like it that much. IMO, Just because I buy something from you doesn't mean that I want to stick around your site or want your emails.

Delivery details are par for the course - but to start asking for the customer to select a password and have to LOG IN to purchase - to me this is becoming a real barrier.

Views of merchants, other affiliates and shoppers would be real welcome on this. M

To me, customer registration before a purchase is presumptuous and sort of bad manners and is a roadblock to the sale. Some e-commerce sites don't even show your shipping charges until after you register. I'd be curious to know if anyone here has tried both methods and as to whether pre-registration increases a shopping cart's abandonment rate. I'd guess...yes.

That is a pet peeve.. not showing shipping charges! I hate that, and will go out of my way to find somewhere else to buy something.

Most E-commerce sites ask for registration before moving on to the rest of the checkout pages. This is to enable user account and order tracking features. You can let customers track order by order number, but then you're going to deal with emails regarding "what is my order number?". It's mainly done for security purposes so noone else who has your email can log in and view your account info and order history. The big names ask for registration, amazon, wal-mart,etc.. i dont think they have problems with it.