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Checkout

| Article: 3 min read | Store pages

Checkout is the sequence of steps from the cart to purchase confirmation: contact details, delivery, payment, order review. This is exactly where an online store loses shoppers who have already decided to buy.

In plain words

The shopper has picked a product and is ready to pay. From here everything depends on the form: how many fields to fill in, whether registration is required, whether the final total with delivery is visible, whether the usual payment method is there. Every extra barrier at this stage costs the store orders, not just views.

Checkout usually consists of the cart, a "guest or account" choice, the shopper's details, delivery, payment and an order review. For Ukraine the typical steps are choosing a city and a Nova Poshta branch or parcel locker, and choosing between card and cash on delivery.

What the research shows

Baymard Institute assessed checkout usability on 344 leading US and EU sites against more than 110 guidelines. 65% of sites have "mediocre" or worse checkout usability, and only 2% have "good" (Baymard). Baymard believes a large store can raise conversion by up to 35% through better checkout design (Baymard).

What Baymard recommends in its practical guide (Baymard):

  • Make guest checkout the most prominent option. 18% of surveyed US adults abandoned an order within three months because they had to create an account. 62% of sites do not make guest checkout the most prominent option.
  • Keep fields to a minimum. On average a checkout has 19.9 form elements; an optimized one can have 12. It helps to default "billing address = shipping address" and use a single "Full name" field.
  • Show all costs in the cart. 40% abandoned checkout because of unexpected extra costs, and 12% did not see the total before they started.
  • Familiar payment methods. 9% could not find the payment method they wanted. Baymard advises offering at least one third-party option (for example, a digital wallet) and not hiding fees.
  • Clear errors. 98% of sites give no specific messages ("The postal code is too short"). After an error the data, especially card details, should stay in place.
  • Progress matches the real steps. Completed steps can be reopened.

Baymard does not fix a number of steps: it matters more that the flow is linear and clear.

How different sources see it

Nielsen Norman Group gives similar advice on registration: do not require it up front, finish the first purchase first and only then offer an account (NN/g). There is no disagreement in principle, only the method differs: Baymard measures shares of sites and shoppers on large samples, while NN/g relies on qualitative tests with users.

The "19.9 elements" figure refers to American and European sites. A Ukrainian checkout with autosuggest for the city and Nova Poshta branch may have a different set of fields, so compare yourself with your own previous versions.

Illustrative example

The numbers are illustrative. A store has 10,000 sessions a month that start checkout, 3,000 orders and an average order of 1,500 UAH. Checkout conversion is 30%. If simplifying the form raises it to 33%, the store gets 300 extra orders, that is, 450,000 UAH of revenue a month. Verify such changes with an A/B test.

Common mistakes

  • Requiring registration before payment.
  • Showing the delivery cost only at the last step.
  • Asking for extra data (date of birth, a second address) that is not needed to fulfill the order.
  • Clearing the form after an error.
  • Not testing checkout on real phones: see mobile version.

FAQ

What is checkout in an online store? The process of placing an order from the cart to confirmation: shopper details, delivery, payment.

How many steps should a checkout have? Baymard does not give an exact number. It matters more that the steps are clear and the fields are kept to a minimum (an optimized version has about 12 form elements).

Is checkout without registration needed? Yes, Baymard advises making guest checkout the most prominent option, because a mandatory account makes some shoppers leave.

Why do shoppers leave at checkout? Most often because of unexpected extra costs, a mandatory account, a long process, or a missing payment method (Baymard). More: cart abandonment.

Sources

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