Avoid Impulse Buying by Disabling Amazon’s 1-Click Ordering

Before this year’s Amazon Prime Day empties your wallet on October 13, it’s a good idea to turn off 1-Click shopping in your Amazon account. It will be worth it if it helps you avoid the buyer’s remorse — a survey revealed that impulse shopping increased by 18% early in the pandemic — much of it online, on Amazon, enabled by 1-Click buying.

Amazon’s patented 1-Click is ingenious and convenient, of course, dispensing with the virtual shopping cart that normally allows you to review your items before committing to a purchase. But it’s worth considering that the average shopping cart abandonment rate for purchases is about 69%, according to a number of studies. What does that mean? In the time it takes to click “proceed to checkout” and review your shopping cart, 31% of people find a reason to not make their purchase.

And that’s a good thing! Sober second thoughts are always a good idea when you’re spending money, and they require more than the time it takes to click a mouse. (In fact, waiting 24 hours is a generally a good rule to follow for your discretionary purchases if you are trying to cut down on your spending.).

To Amazon’s credit, they’ve recently made it much easier to turn off one-click settings:

1. In your Amazon account, look for “Accounts and Lists” on the top right of your screen, and select “My Account” in the drop-down menu.

2 . Then, on the lower left of your screen, under “Ordering and shopping preferences,” click on “1-Click settings.”

3. You’ll be taken to the “My Payments” screen; the option to disable 1-Click will be in the top right corner.