Checkout Optimization: How to Stop Losing 70% of Your Buyers at the Finish Line
The average e-commerce cart abandonment rate is 70%.
Think about what that means. Seven out of every ten people who add a product to their cart — people who have already decided they want what you're selling — never complete the purchase.
That's not a traffic problem. It's not a marketing problem. It's a checkout problem.
And unlike driving more traffic or improving product pages, fixing checkout doesn't require more spend. It recovers revenue from people who already want to buy.
Why Checkout Abandonment Is the Highest-Leverage Optimization
Here's a simple way to think about the opportunity.
If your store does $500,000 in annual revenue with a 30% checkout completion rate, and you improve that to 40%, you've added $167,000 in revenue — from the same traffic, the same products, the same marketing.
No additional ad spend. No new product launches. Just fewer people falling out of a funnel they already entered.
Checkout is where intent is highest. It's where the decision is already made. Every friction point here is expensive.
The 8 Biggest Checkout Killers
1. Forced Account Creation
This is the most well-documented checkout killer in e-commerce.
Requiring users to create an account before purchasing adds a significant barrier for first-time buyers. They didn't come to your site to sign up for an account. They came to buy a product.
The fix is simple: offer guest checkout as the default option.
You can still capture the email (you get it as part of the order). You can still invite them to create an account post-purchase ("Save your details for faster checkout next time"). You just don't hold the transaction hostage to account creation.
One study by the Baymard Institute found that "having to create an account" is cited as a top-3 reason for checkout abandonment by 24% of shoppers. That's a quarter of your lost buyers — recoverable with a single change.
2. Hidden Costs Revealed Too Late
You've seen this as a shopper. You go through the entire checkout process — enter your address, your payment details, review your order — and then see the shipping cost for the first time.
It's $15. The product was $35. You leave.
This is called the "shipping surprise" and it drives a massive percentage of late-funnel abandonment.
The fix: Show shipping costs as early as possible. Add a shipping calculator to the cart page. Show estimated shipping in the product page. If you offer free shipping above a threshold, make the threshold clear everywhere — "Only $12 more for free shipping" does more for conversion than most A/B tests.
If you can't offer free shipping, at least show the cost before checkout begins.
3. A Checkout Process That's Too Long
Every additional step in the checkout sequence is a potential exit.
The industry standard is now one to two pages for checkout. Multi-step processes with 4, 5, or 6 distinct pages create fatigue — especially on mobile.
Audit your checkout: how many distinct pages or screens does a user go through between clicking "checkout" and seeing the order confirmation?
Consolidate where possible. Progress indicators help (users are less likely to abandon when they know they're on step 2 of 3 rather than wondering how many steps remain). But fewer steps beats better progress indicators every time.
4. Limited Payment Options
People have strong preferences about how they pay.
If your store only accepts Visa/Mastercard and a buyer prefers PayPal, Apple Pay, or Klarna, that's a lost sale. It doesn't matter that you do accept their card in theory — if their payment method isn't listed, many will leave rather than dig out their physical card.
At minimum, most e-commerce stores should support:
- Credit/debit cards (all major networks)
- PayPal
- Apple Pay and Google Pay
- Buy Now, Pay Later (Klarna, Afterpay, or similar) — especially for higher-priced products
The last one matters more than people expect. BNPL options can increase conversion rates by 20–30% for products over $100, because they remove the psychological friction of a large single charge.
5. Poor Mobile Checkout Experience
Over half of e-commerce traffic comes from mobile. Mobile checkout conversion rates are typically 2–3x lower than desktop.
Most of that gap is preventable.
Common mobile checkout problems:
- Input fields that don't trigger the correct keyboard type (number pad for card numbers, email keyboard for email addresses)
- CTAs that are too small to tap accurately — the Baymard Institute recommends tap targets of at least 44×44 pixels
- Page content that shifts after ad load or lazy-loaded images push the checkout button off screen
- Auto-fill not working correctly, forcing users to manually type every field
- No support for Apple Pay or Google Pay, which eliminates the need to enter card details entirely
Test your full checkout flow on an actual mobile device — not just a browser emulator. You'll find friction that desktop testing never reveals.
6. No Trust Signals at Checkout
The checkout page is where purchase anxiety peaks.
Users are about to share their payment information. They want reassurance that this is safe, legitimate, and that their data is protected.
Trust signals at checkout:
- Security badges (SSL certificate indicators, "Secure Checkout" language)
- Payment provider logos (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal — these are recognized trust signals)
- Money-back guarantee reminder ("30-day free returns — right in the checkout")
- Contact information or live chat — the ability to ask a question before buying dramatically reduces anxiety
Small changes to trust signal placement can have outsized effects, because they address the specific anxiety that peaks right before a user clicks "Pay."
7. Confusing Error Messages on Form Fields
A user makes a typo in their card number. The form rejects it. The error message says: "Invalid input."
Which field? Which input? What's wrong with it? They don't know. They try again. It still fails. They give up.
Form validation errors are a significant source of checkout abandonment — especially on mobile where typos are common. The issue is rarely that users don't want to fix the error. It's that they can't figure out what to fix.
The fix: Inline validation that identifies the specific field and states clearly what's wrong ("Please enter a 16-digit card number" rather than "Invalid card"). Validate in real-time as users complete each field, not after they click submit. And don't reset the entire form on error — preserve all the data they've already entered.
8. Checkout Doesn't Work on All Devices and Browsers
This sounds basic. But checkout functionality breaks more often than most teams realize.
A payment gateway works on Chrome desktop. It fails on Safari iOS. A promo code field works on Android. It doesn't on older iPhone models. Your checkout loads in 2 seconds on broadband. It takes 12 seconds on a 3G connection in rural areas.
Test religiously: Chrome, Safari, Firefox. iOS and Android. Desktop and mobile. Fast and slow connections.
Use your analytics data to identify which device/browser combinations represent the highest-traffic segments for your store — and make sure those work flawlessly.
The Post-Abandonment Strategy
Even with an optimized checkout, some abandonment is inevitable. A portion of it is recoverable.
Abandonment Email Sequences
If you captured an email address before the abandonment (which happens if the user entered it early in the checkout), an automated email sequence can recover 5–15% of abandoned carts.
The first email should go out within 1 hour. Subject lines that reference the specific product ("You left [Product Name] in your cart") outperform generic ones ("You forgot something").
Three-email sequences typically outperform single emails:
- Email 1 (1 hour): Simple reminder, no discount
- Email 2 (24 hours): Add social proof or address a potential objection
- Email 3 (72 hours): Optional small incentive ("10% off if you complete your order today")
Exit-Intent Overlays at Checkout
When a user shows exit behavior on the checkout page (moving mouse toward browser navigation, back button), a well-timed overlay can capture the reason for leaving or offer a reassurance that addresses the most common objections.
Keep these simple and non-pushy: "Something stopping you? Our team can help — chat with us now" is better than a discount pop-up that trains users to abandon intentionally.
How to Prioritize Checkout Improvements
Not all checkout problems are equal in impact.
Use this framework:
Map your funnel. Identify the exact step where abandonment spikes. Cart to checkout start? Checkout start to payment entry? Payment entry to confirmation? The biggest drop-off is your highest-priority fix.
Quantify the opportunity. Estimate: if abandonment at step X dropped by 15%, how much additional revenue would flow through?
Fix bugs before testing optimization. Broken error messages, mobile incompatibilities, and hidden shipping costs are bugs — not A/B test candidates. Fix them directly.
Test behavioral changes. Once the obvious friction is removed, run structured A/B tests on checkout flow length, trust signal placement, and CTA copy.
Final Thought
Most e-commerce growth strategies focus on top-of-funnel: more traffic, better ads, higher-ranked content.
Checkout optimization works on the bottom of the funnel — where intent is highest and friction is most costly.
The people who reached your checkout already decided to buy. Every friction point you remove translates directly into revenue from people you've already earned.
Fix the finish line. Then work backwards.
Want to find where your checkout is losing buyers?
We do full funnel analysis and checkout audits for e-commerce brands. Book a free 45-minute call and we'll walk through your funnel data together — and identify the highest-impact fixes before you run a single test.