7 Checkout Friction Points Killing Your Conversion Rate
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When clients ask us to fix cart abandonment, the answer is rarely a single dramatic redesign. It's usually a handful of specific friction points, each losing a percentage of shoppers, that add up to a much bigger number.
The most common offenders
Forced account creation, hidden shipping costs revealed only at the final step, and too many form fields are the three friction points we find most consistently across client audits.
- Forced account creation before checkout
- Shipping costs revealed only at the final step
- More form fields than the order actually requires
- No visible security or trust signals near payment
- No guest checkout option
- Unclear error messages on failed form validation
- No progress indicator on multi-step checkout
Fixing them is usually low-risk, high-reward
Unlike a full redesign, checkout friction fixes are typically small, testable changes - enabling guest checkout, showing shipping costs earlier, trimming form fields - that can be A/B tested with real confidence.
Measure the right thing
Track abandonment by specific checkout step, not just an overall cart abandonment rate - that's what actually tells you where to focus first.
Frequently Asked Questions
Industry averages sit around 70%, but the useful benchmark is your own trend over time and step-by-step data, not a generic external number.
A/B test where you have enough traffic to reach significance within a reasonable time; for lower-traffic stores, sequential before/after testing with a longer window is more practical.
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Glad it was useful, Jamie - happy to go deeper on that if you want to book a call.
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Really useful breakdown - the point about the most common offenders matches exactly what we ran into last quarter.