Retention · 6 min read
Guest wishlists convert better than gated ones — the data
We A/B tested login-required saves against guest saves across 320 stores. The login wall costs more than it captures.
Every merchant asks the same question before turning on wishlists: do we require an account, so we can email the shopper later? The intuitive answer is yes. The data says otherwise.
The test
We ran a 320-store split test over eight weeks: half gated wishlist saves behind account creation, half allowed guest saves with a 90-day cookie that merges on login. Guest stores saw 2.6× more saves per session, and 61% of guest wishlists eventually converted to an account anyway — just later, on the shopper's terms.
Where the login wall actually helps
It is not that accounts are worthless — logged-in shoppers do have higher lifetime value. But forcing the account at the point of saving trades a small number of high-intent captures for a much larger number of abandoned taps. Ask for the account after the second visit, not the first heart click.
If your wishlist app still requires a login, that is the first setting worth revisiting this quarter — it is costing you saves you will never see in a report.
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