Can customers purchase from my shop without creating an account?

Can customers purchase from my Zen Cart shop without creating an account?

I have seached this up and down the treads and found so many conflicting posts. Can anyone clear this up? In 2007, ZenCart said they were working on the ability for customers to make a purchase without having an account. Ive only assumed, since it's been four years, this has changed.

I found some posts saying an addon is available to skip the steps for forcing customers to make an account. However, certain members reply there are problems with the addon.

Can anyone help? Is there an easy way or setting I am overlooking?

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&products_id=1655

You'll find that some Zenners have problems with most of the more complicated mods, often because of conflicts with other mods. You'll have to try it to see if it works on your site. One thing you can do is compare the files in the COWOA mod with the files you've already modified.

I haven't used the COWOA mod. I want my visitors to create accounts.

I would also point out that the mod does, indeed, create an account, so far as I know. The visitor just doesn't know it.

Home of the Spartans... Spent a lot of time there while in college in Michigan. Thanks for the link. Looks like it auto creates an account and then sends them an email about their account... unless you disable that feature.

I was initially concerned with customers being discouraged about signing up for an account (with the worry of junk mail), and then not placing an order so I wanted to simply skip that step and have them go straight to checkout. However, I may reconsider this because it would be good to collect all the customers information and have them on a mailing list.

salt and spice:

However, I may reconsider this because it would be good to collect all the customers information and have them on a mailing list.

The main problem with checking out without an account is that you still need the customers to enter their names and addresses for delivery purposes, and these need to be recorded in the database so that you can retrieve them when processing the order, so on a purely practical level checking out without an account isn't actually possible.

Whether the customer 'knows' they are creating an account is another mattter, and this is what the COWOA mod does.

Cheers
Rod

I was initially concerned with customers being discouraged about signing up for an account (with the worry of junk mail), and then not placing an order so I wanted to simply skip that step and have them go straight to checkout. However, I may reconsider this because it would be good to collect all the customers information and have them on a mailing list.

Please note: Your customers do not have to create an account until they go to checkout - They don't need an account to browse your shop or add things to their cart.

Thanks for the information. I'm going to leave alone and move onto something else. Thanks for the help!

salt and spice:

Home of the Spartans... Spent a lot of time there while in college in Michigan. Thanks for the link. Looks like it auto creates an account and then sends them an email about their account... unless you disable that feature.

I was initially concerned with customers being discouraged about signing up for an account (with the worry of junk mail), and then not placing an order so I wanted to simply skip that step and have them go straight to checkout. However, I may reconsider this because it would be good to collect all the customers information and have them on a mailing list.
COWOA does NOT work as you have stated.. for shoppers who chose the guest checkout option, it does indeed create an account in the shadows for the reasons RodG pointed out.. but it does not email guest shoppers this info..

ETA: didn't see this was a 3 year old post before I responded.. lol..