I was involved in a similar project and we found that "passive registration" (as you defined it) is better.
In addition to that I'd pay particular attention to information you want to capture from customers during checkout process to capture only fields that are necessary to checkout, with a view to obtain further information using email or other marketing techniques.
Passive Registration, Ting, 16 Feb 14:52 Hi,
I'm in the process of redesigning checkout for
an ecommerce website.
One of the main areas that customers are dropping out
in the existing site is during the registration
...
Re: Passive Registration, Alex Chudnovsky, 16 Feb 15:27 Paul,
I was involved in a similar project and we found that "passive registration" (as you defined it) is better.
In addition to that I'd pay particular attention to informat ...
Avoid the word 'register' - just check them out, Obi Felten, 19 Feb 10:51 Fully agree with Alex here - there is no excuse at all for making users go through a registration process before they can check out.
After users hit the checkout button, they wa ...
Avoid the word 'register' - just check them out, JamesMax, 10 Jan 19:39 Interesting. I am in charge of a web news site for IFAs - Citywire - where we do have a registration process but I am noting that a lot of competitors have pop ups see trustnet whi ...