Cart abandonment is often blamed on price — but a large share of it comes down to friction in the checkout flow itself, not the number on the total. The Baymard Institute's ongoing research puts the average cart abandonment rate around 70%, and a significant portion of that is attributable to fixable UX problems, not genuine price sensitivity. Here are seven of the most common mistakes we see, and what to do instead.
- Small checkout frictions such as forced accounts, hidden costs and long forms add up to lost orders.
- Audit your own checkout on a phone before changing anything.
- Track a few metrics: cart-to-checkout rate, checkout completion and payment failures.
- Fix the cheap, high-impact issues first, then tackle bigger projects.
1. Forcing account creation
Always offer guest checkout, with account creation as an easy, optional step afterward — ideally by simply asking the customer to set a password on the confirmation page, using the details they already entered. Forcing account creation before checkout is one of the single biggest, most consistently measured causes of abandonment, because it adds a barrier at exactly the moment the customer is most ready to buy.
2. Hiding total cost until the last step
Show an estimated total — including shipping — as early as possible in the flow, ideally on the cart page itself. Surprise costs revealed at the final step are one of the top reasons customers abandon carts they were otherwise ready to complete. Even an estimate with a note like "final shipping calculated at checkout" performs far better than saying nothing until page four.
3. Too many form fields
Every additional field is a small additional reason to leave. Audit your checkout form field by field and ask whether you actually need it at the point of purchase — a company name field, a fax number, a second address line for every customer regardless of whether they need it. Address autocomplete and smart defaults can often cut a checkout form's field count by a third or more without losing any data you actually use.
4. No visible progress indicator
If checkout spans multiple steps, show customers where they are and how many steps remain. Not knowing whether they're on step 2 of 3 or step 2 of 8 creates uncertainty, and uncertainty is friction — customers abandon flows that feel open-ended even if the actual number of steps is small.
5. Limited or unclear payment options
Not offering the payment method a customer prefers — whether that's a specific card network, a digital wallet like Apple Pay or Google Pay, or a regional payment method common in your market — is a silent conversion killer, because the customer usually doesn't tell you why they left. Reviewing your payment gateway's supported methods against what your actual customer base uses is a low-effort, high-impact fix.
6. Errors that don't explain themselves
A red border with no message, or a generic "invalid input" error, forces the customer to guess what went wrong. Inline, specific validation — "this card number looks incomplete," shown at the field, the moment it happens — keeps momentum instead of stalling it. This matters most on mobile, where a customer re-scanning an entire form to find one bad field is significantly more likely to give up.
7. A checkout that isn't mobile-optimized
If a meaningful share of your traffic is mobile — for most stores, it's the majority — a checkout flow that was designed for desktop and merely "responsive" isn't the same as one designed mobile-first. Small tap targets, forms that trigger the wrong keyboard type (text keyboard for a phone number field), and layouts that require horizontal scrolling all compound into abandoned carts that never show up as a single obvious bug.
"Every extra field, every surprise cost, is a small tax on your conversion rate."
Quick Self-Check
Time yourself completing a real purchase on your own site, on a phone, on mobile data rather than office wifi. If it takes more than 90 seconds or you hit a moment of confusion, your customers are hitting the same thing.
How to audit your own checkout in an afternoon
- Place a real order on a phone, on a slow connection, as a first-time customer.
- Count the taps and fields between "Add to cart" and "Order placed".
- Try to make deliberate mistakes such as a wrong PIN code or a declined payment and see whether the error messages help.
- Check that total cost, delivery charges and delivery time are visible before the final step.
- Ask two people who have never used your store to do the same and watch where they hesitate.
Metrics worth tracking
- Cart-to-checkout rate: how many people who add to cart start checkout.
- Checkout completion rate: how many who start checkout finish it.
- Payment failure rate: how often payments fail or are abandoned at the gateway.
- Mobile vs desktop split: a big gap usually points to a mobile usability problem.
Quick wins and bigger projects
Quick wins include enabling guest checkout, showing the full cost early, reducing form fields, adding autofill and clarifying error messages. Bigger projects include redesigning the flow into fewer steps, adding more payment methods and improving page speed. Start with the quick wins and measure the effect before committing to larger changes.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good checkout conversion rate?
It varies widely by industry, price point and traffic quality, so compare your rate with your own history rather than a generic benchmark, and focus on steady improvement.
Should I offer guest checkout?
In most cases yes. Forcing account creation is one of the most common reasons shoppers abandon checkout. You can offer account creation after the order is placed.
Do more payment options really help?
Often, yes, particularly in India where customers have strong preferences between UPI, cards, net banking and wallets. Offer the methods your customers actually use.
How do I test checkout changes safely?
Change one thing at a time, measure before and after, and use A/B testing where your traffic is large enough. Always test on mobile as well as desktop.
Want a checkout audit?
We regularly audit existing checkout flows and find concrete, low-effort fixes — usually a handful of specific changes rather than a full rebuild, with the biggest wins prioritized first so you see impact quickly.