I think for small things it makes sense, but for a $2,200 purchase I'm surprised he would back out over such a small barrier. Either way, I agree, but for high-information purchases I doubt it matters as much.
I think the lesson is rather that, for impulse purchases, even a very small bit of friction can interrupt the impulse and blow the sale. If he'd spent weeks agonizing over it before buying it, knowing registration was part of it, he'd have probably gritted his teeth and done it because that annoyance would have been factored into the price over which he agonized, and he'd have had time to rationalize it as a small thing. Instead, he went from "WOOHOO! Printing out real objects! Just a few more..." to "WTF? I HATE registration requirements! Why do they have to make me do this?" in a moment.
Our propensity to buy peaks at a certain value - say 10 points for me in this instance.
Every time an obstacle is placed in the way that propensity gets reduced by a value related to the frustration level. As the points reduce our propensity to buy becomes irrelevant in the face of the many other things going on.
They had already for me lost points for 1: not making it clear that the printer only uses PLA and not ABS (-3), 2: the fact that it doesn't accept ABS (-2) and 3: because only one color of PLA is available at the moment (-2). The unnecessary registration was enough to halt the process. (-6)
Note how relatively large the usability scores are versus the functionality scores. Being easy to deal with is absolutely paramount in commerce.
It also seems likely that if you're in the kind of fey, excited mood that leads to impulse purchases then you'll be more prone to rage quitting the browser when something annoys you.
It doesn't matter if he was being fickle or not with his purchase, at the end of the day makerbot didn't make $2,000 from the loss of this sale. Any company that requires it's customers to register before making a purchase is just asking to get hurt.
Look at it another way. Here we have a process which may not be much of a barrier to customers who consider the product a major purchase but is apparently chasing away potential buyers who are prepared to spend several thousand dollars on an impulse purchase.
It is not a small barrier. It is a warning indicator. If there are already some problems (minor) on the site, there may be also hidden problems with the product I wanted to buy. The quality of the site is just another indicator to guess the quality of the product I am buying.
But having a user register for an account isn't inherently a problem with the website, not like a error, missing page or broken feature. It is merely a step in the purchase process that needs to be optimized. I wouldn't assume that the requirement to register for an account (which is completely reasonable, although unnecessary)would indicate that there is a problem with a physical product they produce.
