Why checkout design directly determines revenue
The checkout flow is the single highest-leverage page on an e-commerce store, because every visitor who reaches it has already decided to buy any friction at this final stage directly converts a near-certain sale into a lost one, making checkout optimisation often more impactful per visitor than improvements anywhere else on the site.
The friction points that cause the most abandonment
Surprise costs at the final step
A customer who has mentally committed to a total price, only to see shipping charges, taxes, or fees appear for the first time at the final checkout screen, frequently abandons rather than accepting the unexpected increase even when the actual amount is reasonable, the surprise itself damages trust in the transaction.
The fix: Display shipping costs as early as possible on the product page or cart page, not held back until the final step. If free shipping above a threshold is offered, communicate the remaining amount needed clearly to encourage basket-building rather than abandonment.
Forced account creation
Requiring a customer to create a full account, with password and email verification, before they can complete a purchase adds meaningful friction at exactly the moment urgency and decisiveness matter most.
The fix: Offer guest checkout as the clear, default path. Account creation can be offered as an optional, lower-friction choice after the purchase is complete (often with the order confirmation naturally prompting account creation for tracking purposes).
Too many required form fields
Every additional required field particularly ones that feel unnecessary for completing a purchase adds a moment of hesitation or effort that some percentage of customers will not push through.
The fix: Request only genuinely necessary information for fulfilment: name, address, contact, and payment details. Anything beyond this should be optional or removed.
Limited or unclear payment options
A checkout that does not clearly offer the payment methods a customer expects and trusts particularly UPI and, where relevant to the category, COD pushes customers toward abandonment rather than switching to an unfamiliar or less-trusted payment method.
The fix: Prominently display all available payment options, with UPI typically positioned first given its current dominance in Indian digital payment preference.
Slow checkout page load
A checkout page that loads slowly, particularly on mobile, tests the patience of a customer who has already invested time browsing and selecting products abandonment at this stage represents a particularly costly loss given the investment already made.
The fix: Apply the same page speed principles covered in page speed and its effect on conversions, with particular attention to the checkout page specifically, since it often carries additional scripts (payment gateway integrations, fraud checks) that can slow load time if not optimised.
The recovery layer: what to do once abandonment has already happened
Even a well-optimised checkout will not eliminate abandonment entirely a recovery sequence (covered in depth in the Marketing Automation & Email Workflows pillar's abandoned-cart emails that recover revenue, and via WhatsApp in abandoned cart recovery over WhatsApp) recovers a meaningful percentage of these lost sales after the fact.
Frequently asked questions
Industry-wide, checkout abandonment commonly runs 65 80%, meaning only 20 35% of customers who begin checkout actually complete it; a well-optimised checkout that addresses the friction points above can meaningfully outperform this benchmark.
Both can work well if executed cleanly a single page reduces perceived steps but can feel dense if not well-organised; a multi-step flow can feel more manageable if each step is clearly labelled and progress is visible, but adds more discrete moments where a customer could abandon. Testing both for your specific audience is more reliable than assuming one is universally better.
Generally not at the level relevant to most Indian e-commerce checkouts offering UPI, cards, and COD where relevant covers the realistic range of customer preference without approaching genuine choice overload, which tends to be more of a concern in product selection than payment method selection.