Optimizing the Checkout Process to Reduce Abandoned Carts

Cart abandonment is a major profit-killer for ecommerce brands. On average, 70% of shoppers who add items to their cart leave without completing their purchase. That’s a massive leak in potential revenue.

According to the Baymard Institute, 35.3% of these lost checkouts are recoverable through better design and optimization.

Across the U.S. and EU ecommerce markets, this represents an estimated $260 billion in potential sales recouped. Even a modest 5-10% reduction in cart abandonment can yield substantial revenue gains.

This guide shares proven, actionable tactics that leading DTC brands use to optimize their checkout experience, recover more abandoned carts, and maximize conversions.

Want more insights from what 8 and 9 figure brands are doing to boost retention, LTV, and build sustainable revenue streams? Check out our new podcast and newsletter, The Retention Edge.

7 Actionable Ways to Plug Revenue Leaks in Your Checkout

We’re going to help you build and execute a CRO audit that will stop potential sales leaking out of your funnel due to common issues such as trust, friction and usability.

Of course, a lot of this you’ll want to test for yourself, and analyze what the data says. There are a lot of best practices, but best practices don’t always translate from paper to practice.

So follow this as a guide, but be ready to override if your own data finds better results from a different approach.

Let’s get into it.

1. Prioritize Page Speed

A sluggish checkout experience is conversion suicide. Here’s why:

• A 1-second delay in page load time can lower conversions by 7%.
• 53% of mobile users abandon a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
• Deloitte found that a 0.1-second improvement in mobile site speed led to an 8.4% increase in retail conversions.

We’re used to sites that load instantly. No one’s waiting around for a slow-loading site anymore.

If your site isn’t blazing fast, fix it asap.

• Compress images and scripts, leverage a fast hosting service/CDN.
• Offer express checkout options like Shop Pay, PayPal, and Apple Pay.
• Enable autofill for addresses and payment details.
• Use Google’s Lighthouse to diagnose and fix slowdowns.

2. Minimize Form Fields

Friction = abandonment.

Every additional form field increases drop-off rates. 22% of shoppers cite 'too long/complicated checkout' as their reason for abandoning a purchase.

Baymard Institute's UX benchmarking shows that an optimal checkout flow can be as short as 7–8 form fields. However, the average US checkout flow contains about 15 form fields by default. 

Most sites could remove 20-60% of their form content while still collecting all necessary info.

You really only need:

• Email address (for sending order info & remarketing)
• Shipping address
• Payment details

Auto-fill these wherever you can. Show inline validation errors as they happen vs after submitting the form. The less effort required, the higher the completion rate.

Additionally, express checkout options (and saving returning customers’ info) are essential for providing the most frictionless buying experience possible.

3. Build Instant Trust & Eliminate Doubt

18% of shoppers abandon carts because they "don't trust the site with credit card information."

Overcome this with:

• SSL certificate and "https" in your domain (par for the course today)
• Consistent branding (make sure it doesn’t look like the customer has been taken to another site for their checkout – keep your logo and brand visible)
• Digital wallet payment options (e.g. Shop Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal)

Customers also need to be able to trust that the product they’re getting is the real deal, and not some cheap knockoff.

You can get past these trust issues with:

• Money-back guarantees and free return policies 
• Responsive customer support via live chat or chatbot
• Social proof like customer reviews and real-time purchase notifications (which can lift conversions by up to 15%)

HexClad's checkout is a masterclass in trust signals.

• Reviews & star rating
• Advertises free shipping / money back guarantee / lifetime warranty / 30-day return policy
• Gordon Ramsay's blessing

It's just what you need to make conversions for high-ticket products, like the example above.

You can also follow Divi's example:

Two things to note:

1. The padlock icon and "Secure Checkout" wording is a small touch that makes the shopper feel more comfortable making a payment
2. Shipping protection offered in checkout, helping to overcome the fear that the customer's shipment could get lost and they'll be out $65

Checkout is the moment of truth, where the smallest lack of trust can kill the sale. Do all you can to give your customer 100% trust that you’re going to deliver.

4. Offer Flexible Payment Options

Let shoppers pay how they want, or they won’t pay at all.

Each person has a different preferred payment method. You want to provide enough options to make sure you cover all the bases for your target audience.

Include:

• Credit/debit cards
• Digital wallets (PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay) 
• Buy Now Pay Later (Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna)
• Subscription payments for repeat orders
• Localized options, where applicable, for international markets

The impact of adding a range of flexible payment options can be huge.

According to Stripe, enabling Apple Pay increased checkout conversions up to 250% for some merchants. And adding a BNPL option increased revenue up to 14% in one A/B test, with two-thirds of that being net-new sales.

That’s because it’s not just a desire to pay a certain way – payment options like Apple Pay also address other common CRO issues we discussed above (lack of trust, friction).

Instead of asking the customer to get up, find their credit card, then type their card number into a strange website, they could click “Pay with Apple Pay” and make a payment in just a single click, without handing over their actual payment details to the website.

Google/Apple Pay, PayPal and Shop Pay (for Shopify brands) is a minimum today (as seen in Dr Squatch's checkout):

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Be sure to balance against simplicity. Offering 20+ payment options will become overwhelming, and will be more likely to kill conversions.

But covering the major bases will meaningfully lift conversion rates and recover sales that otherwise wouldn’t happen.

5. Create Urgency & Reduce Decision Fatigue

Remove the “I’ll buy later” mentality.

Often customers abandon carts not due to a concrete obstacle but because they tell themselves they’ll buy it later, or simply get distracted or second-guess the purchase. 

Introducing urgency (a reason to buy now) and minimizing distractions (to keep focus) are powerful techniques to combat those scenarios.

You have someone on the hook – now don’t let them get away.

Use:

• Countdown timers ("Order within 10:00 minutes!")
• Low stock alerts ("Only 2 items left at this price!")
• Special offers ("Use Code 10OFF - Ends at Midnight!")
• Exit intent popups with limited-time discounts
• One-page checkout, removing all unnecessary distractions

Scarcity and urgency compel customers to commit now vs deferring the decision and likely forgetting.

At the same time, focusing the entire page on the purchase keeps the customer’s attention from drifting away.

An Optimizely case study showed removing navigation menus in checkout increased revenue per visitor by 14%.

You might think that encouraging customers to keep shopping for longer will increase AOV, but it’s just as likely that they’ll either become distracted, or start to second-guess the decision.

See Chamberlain Coffee's checkout as an example:

It doesn't lock you in – clicking on the logo takes you back to the home page, in case you really need to add something to your order.

But there's no navigation, no up-sells.

It’s all about getting the customer to finish their purchase as soon as possible – strike while the iron’s hot.

6. Optimize for Mobile-First Buyers

Over 70% of ecommerce sales now happen on mobile. Your checkout must be mobile-native.

As mobile shopping becomes the norm, conversion rates and cart abandonment will get worse.

Why? Because mobile just makes usability and friction problems worse.

That’s why the average mobile conversion rate is half of desktop, and cart abandonment is higher (86% vs 69%).

To make your checkout mobile-friendly, do the following:

• Ensure tap-friendly buttons and adequate space between fields
• Include a sticky "Checkout" button that's always visible
• Eliminate distractions like pop-ups and crowded visuals
• Allow mobile wallet payments for one-tap purchasing

German online supermarket AllyouneedFresh saw a 14% increase in mobile conversion rate, 51% increase in mobile transactions and 21% fewer drop-offs from their order confirmation page after a mobile checkout UX overhaul.

Osmo Salt ticks all the boxes for mobile checkout optimization:

• Clean layout
• Range of payment options (including BNPL)
• Option to save info for easy repeat purchases

Too many brands still don’t realize the importance of building a customer experience catered to mobile shoppers, and the impact this can have on conversions.

7. Save the Sale with Abandoned Cart Follow-Ups

Some carts will be abandoned no matter how tight your checkout process is.

Maybe the doubt was too much, or the card declined, or real life got in the way.

Don’t treat this as the end of the relationship. Follow-up, if you can, in the following ways:

• Abandoned cart emails (39-45% open rates, 10% conversion rates)
• SMS reminders (17-20% recovery rates)
• Push notifications (even higher open and engagement rates than email, perfect for app shoppers)
• Retargeting ads (can reduce abandonment by 6.5% and lift sales almost 20%)

Abandoned cart emails can be extremely simple, and automated to require zero lift; as show by Waterboy's example:

Push notifications are even simpler. See examples from Muscle Republic and Tobi:

Take a multi-pronged approach. Research from Klaviyo found that sending 3 cart recovery emails resulted in nearly 7x more sales than sending just one.

It may also pay to retarget shoppers in multiple channels – email, SMS, push, and if they still don’t convert, add them to a retargeting campaign.

Final Takeaway: Small Fixes = Big Wins

Optimizing your checkout is all about eliminating points of friction, doubt and distraction that cause customers to abandon their purchase. 

By implementing these tactics, you're removing barriers and making it as easy as possible for more shoppers to convert into buyers. Even a small lift – an extra 5 in 100 – can mean major revenue gains.

The key is testing, iterating, and doubling down on what moves the needle for your unique customer base and checkout flow. 

Start optimizing your checkout this week and watch your sales climb. The effort is well worth it.

Next Steps

1. Audit your checkout process today and find friction points.
2. Implement 2-3 of these quick wins this week.
3. Test & iterate: track conversions and keep optimizing.

Start optimizing today, and watch your abandoned carts turn into completed checkouts, while revenue and ROAS go up, and CAC goes down.