The average online store loses roughly 70% of carts before checkout completes — Baymard Institute’s ongoing analysis of 50 separate studies puts the figure at 70.22%, with individual studies ranging from 55% to 84%. Most of that is unavoidable window-shopping: about 42% of abandoners say they simply weren’t ready to buy yet. But the rest is friction you can fix without touching your design system, and it’s the part worth chasing first.
We run the same short checklist before any client asks us to redesign a checkout flow, because in most cases a redesign isn’t what’s costing them sales. Three or four specific fixes usually move the needle more than a visual overhaul, and they take days, not sprints — the same philosophy behind how we run a full CRO sprint in one week instead of a months-long redesign project. Here’s the order we work through, based on what the abandonment research actually shows is driving people away.
What’s Actually Causing the Drop-Off?
Baymard’s research on shoppers who were genuinely considering a purchase (not just browsing) found a fairly consistent ranking of complaints. Extra costs appearing too late — shipping, tax, fees — is the single biggest reason, cited by 40% of abandoners. Slow delivery estimates account for 20%. Trust concerns around entering card details sit at 19%, being forced to create an account at 18%, a checkout that’s too long or confusing at 17%, and outright technical errors at another 17%. Further down the list: unsatisfactory returns policies (13%), not being able to see the total cost upfront (12%), declined cards (10%), and too few payment options (9%).
Notice what’s not on that list: font choices, button color, or a checkout page that “doesn’t feel modern enough.” Almost every top reason is about information and friction, not aesthetics. That’s why we start with a checklist instead of a mockup.
The Checklist We Run Before Touching Design
1. Kill the shipping-cost surprise
If shipping, tax, or fees only appear on the final page, move them earlier — ideally onto the product page or cart, not buried in step three of checkout. A shipping calculator on the cart page, or a flat-rate threshold shown site-wide (“free shipping over €50”), removes the single biggest reason people leave. This is a content and layout change, not a redesign.
2. Let people check out as a guest
Forced account creation costs you 18% of otherwise-willing buyers. If you need the account for order tracking or marketing, offer it as an option after the order confirms, not as a gate before it. Guest checkout with an optional “create an account” checkbox at the end recovers most of that friction without giving up the email capture.
3. Show the total cost before the final page
A running order summary that updates live as someone adds shipping method or applies a discount code closes the gap between “I don’t know what this will cost” and “I’m ready to pay.” This addresses both the extra-costs complaint and the separate “couldn’t see total cost upfront” complaint — two line items on the list, one fix.
4. Cut the number of form fields
Every field you can autofill, infer, or remove is one less reason to abandon a long, complicated process. Address autocomplete, saved payment details for returning customers, and combining “first name” and “last name” into fewer visual steps all shave real seconds off. We don’t have a universal number of fields to aim for — it depends on the product and required shipping detail — but if your form asks for anything you don’t strictly need to fulfil the order, cut it.
5. Add trust signals near the payment button, not just in the footer
Security badges, accepted payment logos, and a clear returns policy link placed right where the card details go address the trust concern directly at the moment it happens, rather than somewhere the shopper has already scrolled past. This is a five-minute layout change, not a system redesign.
6. Fix the technical stuff first, before anything else on this list
Website errors account for 17% of abandonment on their own, and they invalidate every other fix — a beautifully designed checkout that throws an error on the discount code field still loses the sale. Run a checkout end-to-end on mobile, on a slow connection, with every payment method you offer, before optimizing anything else.
Do Cart Recovery Emails Still Work?
Yes, but they’re a second line of defense, not a fix for the underlying friction. A recovery email sequence can bring back some of the 58% of abandoners who left for fixable reasons, but it won’t touch the 42% who were just browsing, and it won’t stop the friction from happening again to the next visitor. Think of recovery email as damage control for the checklist above, not a replacement for it — fix the checkout first, then use email to catch whoever still slips through. The same logic applies to what happens right after checkout succeeds: see our post-purchase experience audit for what to fix once the sale is actually made.
How Long Before You See Results?
Most of the fixes above are configuration and copy changes, not development projects, so you can usually ship the highest-impact ones — showing shipping costs early, adding guest checkout, fixing technical errors — within a week. We’d expect a measurable shift in checkout completion rate within two to four weeks, long enough to cover a full weekly traffic cycle and rule out day-of-week noise. If nothing moves after a month, that’s the signal you’re dealing with a deeper issue — pricing, product-market fit, or traffic quality — rather than checkout friction.
When You Actually Need a Redesign
A visual redesign earns its place once the checklist above is done and the numbers still lag, or when the underlying checkout technology itself is the constraint — no guest checkout option in your platform, no way to surface shipping costs early, a mobile experience that’s structurally broken rather than just unpolished. At that point the problem isn’t friction you can patch, it’s a platform limitation, and that’s a genuinely different conversation than the one this checklist is meant to have first.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s a “good” cart abandonment rate to aim for?
There’s no single healthy number — Baymard’s own range across 50 studies runs from 55% to 84%, so even top performers still lose more than half their carts. A more useful target is relative: track your own rate before and after each fix, and treat any sustained drop of a few percentage points as a real win rather than chasing an absolute benchmark that varies wildly by industry and price point.
Does adding more payment options actually help?
It’s a real factor, but a smaller one than the shipping-cost and account-creation issues — limited payment options accounts for about 9% of abandonment reasons in Baymard’s data, versus 40% for unexpected extra costs. Add a payment method if your specific customers are asking for it (Klarna, Apple Pay, and similar options matter more in some markets than others), but don’t expect it to move the needle as much as fixing the cost-transparency issues first.
Should we A/B test these changes or just ship them?
For anything reversible and low-risk — showing shipping costs earlier, adding guest checkout, adding trust badges — we usually just ship it and watch the completion-rate trend for two to four weeks rather than running a formal split test. A/B testing earns its cost when you’re deciding between two genuinely different approaches with real trade-offs, not when the research already tells you which direction is right.
The Short Version
Before you brief a redesign, run the six-item list above. Most stores recover a meaningful chunk of their abandoned carts from the shipping-cost surprise and forced-account-creation fixes alone — both are configuration changes, both address the two largest documented reasons people leave, and neither requires a new visual system. The same discipline applies further down the funnel too — once someone converts, a clear thank-you page that continues the conversion journey is the next place worth five minutes of attention.