Five small checkout fixes that move revenue

Getting a visitor to add something to their basket takes a lot of work: advertising, content, product photography, reviews, good copy. By the time someone reaches checkout, you have paid for all of it. If they leave at that point, the whole investment is lost.

It happens far more often than most store owners expect. The Baymard Institute, which has studied checkout usability for many years, puts the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate at around 70% (Baymard Institute, cart abandonment research). Some of that is unavoidable: people browse, compare and save items for later. But Baymard's research also identifies a set of recurring checkout problems that drive people away, including unexpected extra costs, being forced to create an account, and a process that feels too long or complicated.

Those problems are fixable. This note covers five changes Jayesh and our team look at first when reviewing a store's checkout, with exactly what to do and how to test each one.

Before you change anything: measure the funnel

You cannot improve what you cannot see. Set up your analytics to track each step separately:

1. Product page viewed.
2. Added to basket.
3. Checkout started.
4. Shipping details completed.
5. Payment details completed.
6. Order confirmed.

Look at the drop between each step, on phone and desktop separately. The biggest drop is your first priority. Phone and desktop often behave very differently, and a fix that matters on one may not matter on the other.

Fix 1: Show the full price early

Unexpected costs at the final step are one of the most common reasons shoppers give up. Delivery fees, taxes and handling charges that appear only on the last screen feel like a bait-and-switch, even when they are fair.

What to do:

• Show delivery costs, or a clear delivery calculator, on product pages and in the basket.
• State whether displayed prices include tax.
• If you offer free delivery above a threshold, show progress towards it in the basket: "Add a little more for free delivery".
• Make sure the total in the basket matches the total at payment, with no surprises.

How to test: compare the drop from "checkout started" to "order confirmed" before and after the change. Watch basket views too; showing costs earlier may move some drop-off to the basket, which is a cheaper place to lose someone than the payment page.

Fix 2: Offer guest checkout, clearly

Forcing shoppers to create an account before they can pay adds work and doubt at the worst moment. Many first-time buyers do not want another password.

What to do:

• Make "Continue as guest" the most visible option at the start of checkout.
• Ask only for an email address to send the receipt.
• Offer account creation after the order is placed, with one click, using the details already entered.

How to test: track the share of orders placed as guest checkouts and the completion rate of the first checkout step. A rising completion rate is the signal you want.

Fix 3: Cut and simplify form fields

Each field a shopper must fill in is a small effort and a chance for an error. Baymard's checkout research has repeatedly found that many stores ask for far more fields than they need.

What to do:

• Remove anything not required to process and deliver the order. A second address line, company name and phone number can usually be optional, and clearly labelled as such.
• Use a single "Full name" field where your systems allow it.
• Default the billing address to "same as delivery".
• Enable address lookup or autocomplete so most of the address fills itself.
• Use the correct keyboard on phones: numeric for card numbers and postcodes, email keyboard for email addresses.
• Make sure browser autofill works on every field by using standard field names.

How to test: time yourself completing checkout on a phone before and after. Then track completion of the shipping step.

Fix 4: Make errors kind and specific

Many checkouts fail not because the shopper gives up but because a form rejects their input without explaining why. A vague "Please correct the errors" at the top of a long page is enough to make someone leave.

What to do:

• Validate fields as the shopper completes them, not only on submit.
• Show error messages directly beside the field, in plain language: "Card number looks one digit short" rather than "Invalid input".
• Accept common formats: spaces in card numbers, dashes in phone numbers, lower-case postcodes.
• Never clear correctly entered fields when an error occurs, especially card details.

How to test: use your analytics or a session-recording tool to count how often each error appears. Fix the most frequent ones first.

Fix 5: Reassure at the moment of payment

The payment step is where doubt peaks. Shoppers are about to hand over card details and want to know that the store is legitimate, that payment is secure and that they can change their mind.

What to do:

• Offer the payment methods your customers actually use, including popular digital wallets, so many buyers can pay in a couple of taps.
• Show a short, clear returns and refund summary next to the payment button, with a link to the full policy.
• Display the expected delivery date, not just "standard delivery".
• Keep the design of the payment step consistent with the rest of the site. A sudden change of style feels like being redirected somewhere unsafe.
• Make contact details or chat visible in case of questions.

How to run the changes

Treat each fix as a small project rather than a redesign:

1. Pick the fix that targets your biggest funnel drop.
2. Ship it within a week, with the funnel tracking already in place.
3. Run it long enough to cover normal weekly patterns; two to four weeks is typical for most stores, depending on order volume.
4. Compare step completion rates and revenue per visitor, not just conversion rate, so you also see changes in order value.
5. Keep the change if it helps, roll it back if it does not, and move to the next fix.

Where you have enough traffic, a proper split test, with half of shoppers seeing each version, gives the cleanest answer. Where you do not, a careful before-and-after comparison is still far better than guessing.

A quick self-audit

Go through your own checkout on a phone, as a first-time customer, and answer honestly:

• Did I know the total cost before I reached payment?
• Could I check out without creating an account?
• How many fields did I fill in, and were they all necessary?
• Did any error message confuse me?
• Was my preferred payment method available?
• Did I know when my order would arrive and how to return it?

Any "no" is a fix waiting to be made.