Most brands spend their energy on getting traffic and very little on the last screen before the money arrives. Yet that screen is where intent is highest and where small problems cost the most. Nobody adds a product to the cart by accident.
The size of the problem
Baymard Institute, which has run large-scale checkout usability research for years, puts the documented average cart abandonment rate at 70.22%, calculated from 50 studies. Not all of it is fixable: many people use the cart as a wishlist or are just comparing prices. But when Baymard asks shoppers who abandoned during checkout why they left, the answers point to very concrete problems.
Why shoppers abandon during checkout
- 40% — extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees)
- 20% — delivery was too slow
- 19% — did not trust the site with their card details
- 18% — the site wanted them to create an account
- 17% — too long or complicated checkout
- 17% — website errors or crashes
- 13% — returns policy was not satisfactory
- 12% — could not see or calculate the total cost up front
- 10% — card was declined
- 9% — not enough payment methods
Source: Baymard Institute’s survey of shoppers who abandoned during checkout, excluding those who were “just browsing”. Shoppers could give more than one reason.
Fix these first
Show the full cost before the checkout. The top reason, and the one that is easiest to fix. Put shipping costs or a free-shipping threshold on the product page and in the cart, and calculate taxes and duties as early as possible. For international orders this matters even more since the US and EU changed their de minimis rules.
Allow guest checkout. Offer an account after the order is placed, not before. Pre-fill whatever you can and remove every field you do not strictly need.
Make the delivery promise concrete. “Arrives Thursday” beats “3–5 business days”. If you cannot be fast, be precise.
Then work on trust and payment
Trust is built by details: a checkout that looks like the rest of the store, recognisable payment logos, a visible returns policy, real contact information. Payment methods should match the market — wallets such as Apple Pay and PayPal, pay-later options where customers expect them, and local methods in markets like Germany or the Netherlands. Card declines are partly a technical issue: 3-D Secure flows and provider configuration are worth a regular check. This is the kind of work we do in payments & checkout.
Measure before and after
You cannot fix what you do not see. Track each step of the funnel — product view, add to cart, checkout start, payment, order — split by device, and set up error monitoring on the checkout. Then change one thing at a time. We describe how we set this up in CRO & analytics.
And recover some of the rest
Even a perfect checkout loses customers who were interrupted. A well-timed abandoned-cart email or message brings a share of them back — without discounts if the reminder is genuinely helpful. It is one of the first flows we build in email & SMS.
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