You spent money to get someone to your website.
They found the product and liked the price. They clicked the button that says checkout.
And then they left.
Getting that person there was the hardest part of the job. You paid for the ad and the click. They were ready to hand over money, and something on the last few screens talked them out of it.
Most businesses respond to weak sales by buying more traffic, which is the expensive answer. If your checkout leaks, every extra dollar of ad spend pours more water into a bucket with a hole in it.
So before you raise the ad budget, fix the checkout. The usual culprits are extra fields, surprise costs, forced accounts, missing payment options and a clumsy mobile experience. You can find every one of them in an hour, and fix most without spending another cent on media.
Why checkout is the most valuable fix you can make
Improve one ad and you help the people who see that ad. Improve your checkout and you help every buyer from every channel, including the ones who never saw an ad.
It compounds, too. A checkout that converts better makes every campaign more profitable, which lets you afford more reach, which sends more people through that same improved checkout.
It is usually cheaper as well. Most checkout fixes are a setting, a line of copy or a field you delete, with no new creative to shoot and no ongoing media cost.
Before you buy more traffic, stop losing the customers you already paid for.
The maths of a leaky checkout
These numbers are made up, so swap in your own.
Say you run a Newcastle outdoor gear store spending $5,000 a month on ads. That brings 200 people to checkout each month. Of those, 60 complete a purchase, with an average order of $150. That is $9,000 in sales.
Option one: buy more traffic. Double the ad budget to $10,000. If everything scales evenly, which it rarely does, you get 400 people to checkout and 120 purchases. That is $18,000 in sales, for an extra $5,000 in spend every single month.
Option two: fix the checkout. Keep the budget at $5,000. Remove the leaks so that 80 of the same 200 people complete instead of 60. Sales rise to $12,000 with no extra monthly spend, because the fix is paid for once.
The two stack. Once the checkout converts better, every dollar of traffic you add later is worth more, so the checkout comes first.
The five leaks
When Baymard Institute asked shoppers why they abandoned a checkout, 40% blamed extra costs like shipping and fees. Another 18% left because the site wanted them to create an account, 17% because the process was too long or complicated, and 9% because there were not enough payment methods.
1. Too many form fields
Every field is a small decision and a small chance to quit. Company name. Second address line. The phone number you never call. Date of birth, for no reason. Then a separate billing address that matches delivery almost every time.
Baymard's benchmark puts the average US checkout at 14.88 form fields, and says a good one can get by with seven or eight.
Ask only for what you need to deliver and get paid. Default billing to match delivery, and use address autocomplete. Then have your developer set the autocomplete attribute on each field so the browser can fill in stored details.
2. Surprise costs
Shipping and handling fees that appear on the final screen feel like a bait and switch, even when they are fair. Trust drops right when you are asking for a card number.
Show delivery costs early, on the product page or as a clear free shipping threshold. If there are fees, name them before checkout starts. A price that stays the same from cart to confirmation beats a lower price that keeps growing.
Delivery dates work the same way. If it will take two weeks, say so up front. Buyers can handle honest information, but they will not forgive finding out after they have typed in their card details.
3. Account walls
Forcing someone to create an account before they can pay is asking for commitment before the first date. Plenty of buyers just want the thing.
Put guest checkout first, where nobody can miss it. Invite buyers to save their details as an account after the purchase is complete, when it takes one click and saves them time on the next order.
If you do need an account for repeat orders or subscriptions, create it for them from the details they already entered, and send a simple link to set a password afterwards.
4. Missing payment options
If a buyer reaches the payment step and their preferred method is missing, some of them will not bother digging out a card. Digital wallets let people pay in a couple of taps with details already stored, which matters most on a phone.
Offer the major cards plus the wallets your customers use. If you sell higher priced items, consider whether an instalment option suits your market.
5. A checkout built for desktop
Plenty of your buyers are on a phone, one handed, on a patchy connection. Tiny tap targets, the wrong keyboard for a number field, and pages that reload and wipe what they typed all cost you sales without anyone complaining.
Design your checkout for the phone first and the desktop second.
Use large buttons, the number keypad for card and phone fields, and a progress indicator so buyers know how many steps are left. Keep the order total visible without scrolling back up.
Speed is part of this, because a checkout page that hangs on 4G feels broken even when it is working. If your whole site drags, a slow website is a silent business killer explains where the time goes and how to win it back.
The quieter leaks most audits miss
Once the big five are fixed, these smaller ones are worth a look.
- Distractions on the checkout page. Full navigation menus, pop ups and "you might also like" rows give a ready buyer a reason to wander off.
- A discount code box that sends people hunting. A prominent empty code field tells buyers a deal exists somewhere. Some leave to search for it and never return. Collapse it behind a link.
- Missing trust signals. A buyer about to enter card details wants reassurance. Clear returns information and a recognisable payment provider help more than a row of generic badges.
- No recovery for abandoned carts. If someone leaves after entering their email, a short, helpful reminder can bring them back. It will not cure the friction, but it catches some of what the fixes miss.
The one hour checkout audit
Use your own phone, on mobile data with the office wifi switched off, in a private browser window, so you arrive as a stranger to your own website.
- Buy something. Complete a real purchase from product page to confirmation, then refund it. Count every screen and every field.
- Note every surprise. Any cost or step you did not expect goes on the list.
- Delete fields. For each field, ask what breaks if you remove it. If the answer is nothing, remove it.
- Find guest checkout. If it is missing, or buried below a login form, move it to the top.
- Break it on purpose. Enter a wrong card number or postcode. Check that the error is clear and sits next to the field, and that everything else you typed survives.
- Check your analytics. In Google Analytics 4, the Checkout journey report shows an abandonment rate under each step, from begin checkout through to purchase. Fix the step with the worst one before anything else.
- Surface the reassurance. Your returns policy and delivery times belong near the payment button, where a nervous buyer will see them.
- Watch a real person. Ask someone outside the business to buy something while you say nothing. Every pause is a leak.
How to prioritise and measure the fixes
The audit will hand you a list. Do not try to fix it all at once, or you will not know what worked.
- Record your baseline. Note your current checkout completion rate, meaning completed purchases divided by people who started checkout, plus the drop off at each step. Use a few weeks of data. One day tells you nothing.
- Start at the biggest drop. The step that loses the most people gets fixed first, whatever it is.
- Batch the quick wins. Removing fields and showing shipping earlier are small, low risk changes.
- Test the bigger changes separately. A new payment provider, a one page checkout or a platform change each deserve their own before and after comparison.
- Watch completion as well as revenue. Revenue swings with traffic and season. Completion rate tells you whether the checkout itself improved.
If the audit turns up problems baked into the platform itself, that is often the hidden bill described in the real cost of a cheap website. Sometimes another plugin will not fix it and you need a checkout built properly, which is the kind of job our web development team takes on.
What good looks like
A good checkout gets out of the way. A buyer should be able to go from cart to confirmation on a phone, with one thumb, without a single surprise.
- Total cost, including delivery, visible before checkout starts.
- Guest checkout offered first, with an account option after purchase.
- Only the fields needed to deliver and get paid, with autofill working.
- The payment methods your customers use, including wallets.
- Clear errors next to the field, with nothing wiped when a mistake is made.
- Returns and delivery details within sight of the pay button.
A checkout can only convert the people your product and landing pages send it. The anatomy of a landing page that prints money covers that half of the journey.
Fix the bucket first
Nobody wins a creative award for removing a phone number field. But a handful of small checkout fixes can be worth more than a new campaign, because they improve the result of every campaign you already run.
Repeat the audit every few months, and every time a plugin or payment provider changes. Checkouts break quietly, and nobody emails to tell you.
Tonight, pull out your phone and try to buy from your own website as if you had never seen it before.
Whatever annoys you annoys your customers. Fix the first thing on the list this week, and check your checkout numbers before you touch the ad budget again.
Frequently asked questions
Why do customers abandon checkout?
In Baymard Institute's checkout research, the biggest reason by a wide margin is extra costs like shipping and fees, named by 40% of shoppers who abandoned. Being asked to create an account (18%) and a checkout that is too long or complicated (17%) come next, with too few payment methods at 9%. Test your own checkout on a phone to see which apply.
Should I offer guest checkout on my online store?
Yes, in almost every case. Forcing account creation before payment asks for commitment before the buyer has received anything. Offer guest checkout clearly and first, then invite buyers to save their details after purchase with one click. If you need accounts for subscriptions or repeat orders, create them automatically from the details already entered.
How do I find where people drop out of my checkout?
Use your analytics to view the checkout as a series of steps, from begin checkout through to purchase, and see how many people move from each step to the next. The step with the biggest drop is your first fix. Back it up by watching someone outside the business try to buy, since every pause they make points to friction.
Is it better to fix my checkout or spend more on ads?
Fix the checkout first. More ad spend sends more people into the same leaks, so you pay again for every buyer you lose. A checkout fix is usually a one time cost that improves results from every channel. Once the checkout converts well, extra ad spend works harder.