Understanding Checkout Friction: Key Barriers to Conversion
Most people tend to think checkout friction is always about technical errors or a shopping cart that just won’t load. But it’s not always that black and white. I’ve watched store owners pour their budgets into site speed while missing the fact that their returns policy is buried six pages deep. They’re shocked when I tell them some customers never reach the ‘pay now’ button because they get caught up scrolling around for clarity on refunds.
Sometimes, these issues don’t feel like friction at all. What feels minor to us - an additional form field here, a longer-than-average wait for a transaction to process - can be major for shoppers. We forget people are busy and easily distracted, with more options than ever for where to spend their money.
If your checkout doesn’t make them feel like they’re making the right call quickly and confidently, they will go somewhere else. It doesn’t help that so many articles out there paint checkout friction as solely a technology problem. Most brands don’t realise that security concerns, lack of transparency about costs, not enough payment options, too many form fields, and forced account creation are all equally big blockers to conversion as slow load times or broken payment gateways.
Even something as simple as not having an autofill option can be enough to make someone turn away from your brand entirely. It seems like sometimes these issues also boil down to lack of understanding about who your customer is and what they expect from you. More or less.
Some people are quite a bit in a hurry and want instant confirmation of everything; others are looking for clear communication about shipping costs and timeframes even if it means reading another pop-up before they make a decision about the product or service itself. It’s important to get into the mind of your customer so you can remove as much friction from their journey as possible. More or less.
It’s sort of complex, but totally worth it if you want conversions at checkout.
Tactic 1: Streamlining the User Interface
When thinking about streamlining the checkout process, people often associate simplicity with a lack of structure. Too often, design teams mistake a simplified checkout journey for a barebones form and button combination. Strikes Me As and, as is the case in most things, the solution tends to lie somewhere in the middle - a streamlined interface that doesn’t come at the cost of a premium shopping experience.
At its core, a cluttered interface is one that adds friction to any sort of customer experience. There are few things quite as frustrating as having to navigate through excess copy and unnecessary form fields as you’re trying to buy something. This is why many luxury brands take on an understated approach to design - including only those elements necessary for customers’ purchases.
But streamlining checkout flows isn’t just about doing less work. Instead, it’s about making users’ decisions easier by providing all relevant information at various stages of their shopping journey. This sort of model lets customers feel informed without being overwhelmed by too much information or distracted by banners, sidebars and pop-ups calling them away from their purchases. An ideal approach towards streamlining user interfaces is striking a balance between efficiency and experience.
A clean layout alone can do wonders for user retention rates but it doesn’t mean much unless it’s paired with thoughtful navigation cues. It’s important to keep in mind that this process is seemingly always iterative - you might not find your ideal flow in your first version or even your third one. With enough testing and user feedback though, it becomes easier for brands to figure out exactly what their audience responds best to and design around that metric instead of arbitrary ones decided on by stakeholders who aren’t actually using these platforms day-to-day.
Tactic 2: Simplifying Payment Options
It’s easy to think ‘the more payment options, the better’. That’s what most brands get wrong. It’s easy to get a bit manic with all the options out there - Apple Pay, Shop Pay, GPay, BNPL, debit cards, credit cards, UPI and so much more.
If you add all of them in one place without visually separating them, you might overwhelm shoppers and make it harder for them to find the one they’re looking for. The reality is that it’s more important for shoppers to be able to instantly spot the payment method they want, than to offer every single one out there. It’s way better for your conversion rates if you offer the two or three most popular payment methods in your market or industry and make them accessible. There’s also a very real accessibility element here.
If you make everyone scroll through options that aren’t relevant to them - it’ll simply slow down their checkout process. Sort of. But this can get a bit tricky.
Sort of. International brands with local stores in different countries have to deal with different laws about payments. In India for example, any payment method a brand offers must be available for all purchases.
In Europe, all online stores are required to offer at least one entirely interest-free option in addition to credit cards and wallets. This complexity means you may have to offer a few extra options - but even then, group them. While it might seem like simplifying payment options means offering fewer methods at first glance - the reality is that simplifying payment options means offering only the ones most relevant to your shoppers and making it easy for them to pick what they want at a glance.
Tactic 3: Enhancing Mobile Optimization
Almost every single ecommerce brand today claims they're mobile-optimised. If that were the case, we'd see far fewer abandoned shopping carts or customers giving up entirely and shopping elsewhere. The thing is, most brands treat mobile-optimisation as a mere task to tick off.
They resize a few images, minimise their forms and remove navigational clutter — that's usually it. But that's not really what customers want from a smooth checkout experience. Most mobile shoppers don't have the time or patience to deal with endless scrolling, squinting at tiny fonts or wading through pages of distracting offers on limited screen real estate.
That's why designing for context is critical — one of the only ways to make a store truly mobile-ready. Think about how often people move between their phones and desktop screens when they're browsing or buying online — too many restrictions on one channel can become confusing. Creating a memorable experience here means offering custom navigation systems and product layouts that reflect user behaviour on phones. It also helps to remove extra pop-ups, banners and links to instantly capture attention on checkout screens (and keep it.
) There's no magic recipe for this but keeping only the essentials above the fold appears to be quite effective here. There are other elements worth thinking about too — like using SMS notifications, passwordless logins or allowing face/fingerprint authentication. Sometimes it might seem like these may not work for everyone but it's all about creating moments where each customer feels like you designed your store just for them by allowing them as much control as possible over how they shop and pay.
Tactic 4: Offering Guest Checkout
There's this huge myth that offering guest checkout is some sort of optional thing. The number of brands getting it wrong would be laughable if it wasn't so worrying. I Assume the truth is, many new and smaller businesses think it's best to skip guest checkout because they want to build their email lists quickly. But they're shooting themselves in the foot by doing this.
Think about it - nearly 1 in 4 customers will abandon their cart if they're forced to create an account before buying something. Sort of. That's a huge chunk of business lost simply because you don't have a guest checkout option. It's understandable though, since forgoing user account signups means potentially losing valuable customer data.
That's scary, especially for businesses that depend on that information to retain customers. But it's not just about your convenience. Guest checkout makes things infinitely easier for the customer because it allows them to focus on completing their transaction.
Whether they're first-time buyers or haven't yet decided if your brand is for them, offering a guest checkout shows people that you value their time. It’s understandable that losing the opportunity to get information from customers can feel hard to swallow. But bear in mind that you can always build out alternatives as part of your wider marketing strategy, like prompt users after their purchase or use order confirmation emails to encourage user signups at a later stage.
Letting your customers check out as guests might seem like you're missing out on valuable data right now but it's also one of the most effective ways to ensure they even finish making a purchase in the first place.
Measuring Success: Analyzing Checkout Performance Metrics
The way I see it, if you ask me, the biggest mistake that people make with checkout analytics is looking at the top line numbers. Many people are quick to look at how many users reached the checkout page.
What they forget to account for are the unique visitors and returning customers. Some might also make this mistake because of how these platforms report metrics, so it’s not entirely their fault. The checkout process is where you see your overall ROI –– revenue over investment. For B2C eCommerce, it’s easy to get distracted by the number of signups and add-to-carts or how much traffic a landing page drove to your site.
But if you’re in the B2B eCommerce space, you’ll know that there are several other factors that also come into play for success, such as how often invoices and purchase orders are raised. There’s a lot of information out there about measuring your checkout performance but it all boils down to two things: checking for successful completions, and watching out for abandonment rates.
Some like using Google Analytics while others prefer their store’s native tracking tools. Whatever you use, make sure you track all the touchpoints for where a user drops off so you can occasionally identify the areas of friction.
Looking beyond conversions and checkout completions, look at the purchases made by customers who have completed their checkouts on their first session vs those who return after abandoning or leaving their carts behind. This information shows how often a user has returned before making a purchase or how long it takes them before completing their purchase successfully.