How a Faster Checkout Process Drives E-commerce Growth

A shopper can find your product, accept the price, and still walk away at the payment screen, and the reason is rarely the product itself. Forcing people to sign up drives 19 percent of abandoned carts, and a checkout that runs too long or feels too hard drives another 18 percent. This means more than a third of lost orders come down to the last few screens rather than anything the shopper thought about the item in their cart.

That is the gap a faster checkout process closes. It removes unnecessary steps, fields, and delays between a shopper's decision to buy and the finished order. Even small improvements at this stage can affect how many purchases make it across the line.

Want to know more? Read on as we cover:

• What slows down the checkout process

• Where faster checkout creates value

• Ways to speed up your checkout process

• How to measure checkout performance

By the end of this article, you will know what slows checkout down, how to make it faster, and how to find the problem worth fixing first.

What slows down the checkout process

Forced account creation is one clear source of checkout friction, but it is far from the only one. Even without a sign-up requirement, shoppers can run into extra work that makes checkout feel longer or harder than it should, such as:

• Too many form fields.

• Asking shoppers to enter the same information more than once.

• Too few payment options.

• Extra fees shown late in the process.

• Slow-loading pages.

• Errors that are hard to understand or fix.

Stripe also lists long checkout flows, limited payment choices, and slow or buggy pages among the problems that can get in the way of a completed purchase.

Together, these issues show that checkout speed depends on more than loading time. It also depends on how much typing, deciding, and fixing a shopper has to do before they can pay.

Where faster checkout creates value

Once checkout becomes easier to complete, the benefits show up in several ways:

• More shoppers finish buying. Fewer people drop out after they have already decided to place an order.

• More sales from the visitors you already have. The store can increase completed orders without needing more people to visit the site.

• Buying on a phone becomes easier. Less typing and faster payment options can make checkout simpler on smaller screens.

In one checkout case study, Buy It Direct cut average checkout time by 26%, while checkout conversion was 28% higher for transactions using its faster checkout option.

Ways to speed up your checkout process

Once you know what is slowing shoppers down, the next step is to remove as much extra work as possible. Here is how to go about it.

Remove steps shoppers do not need

Start with guest checkout, which lets shoppers place an order without creating an account first. They can enter their shipping and payment details, complete the purchase, and decide whether to make an account afterward. Google recommends making guest checkout the default instead of forcing sign-up before payment.

Review every field, as well. If you do not need a company name, second phone number, or other detail to process or deliver the order, remove it. Fewer fields mean less typing and fewer chances for shoppers to get stuck.

Make forms faster to complete

Set up checkout fields to support browser autofill. A shopper's browser can then recognize fields for their name, address, and card details and fill them with saved information, cutting down the amount they need to type.

Set the checkout form to flag errors as shoppers enter information. For example, if a card number is invalid or a required field is left blank, the form should show the problem right away so the shopper can fix it before moving on.

Simplify payment options

Give shoppers more than one practical way to pay. Along with credit and debit cards, consider digital wallets such as Apple Pay or Google Pay, which let shoppers use payment details already saved on their device instead of entering card information by hand.

You can also offer an express checkout, which uses saved payment and shipping details to move returning shoppers through checkout faster. For example, Shop Pay can remember a shopper's email, payment method, and shipping and billing information, so those details can be filled in automatically on a future purchase.

Choose options based on what your customers actually use. Adding more payment methods only helps if they make checkout easier for the people buying from your store.

Prevent last-minute delays

Do not wait until the final payment step to show shipping fees, taxes, duties, or other charges. Give shoppers a clear order total as early as possible, and update it as they choose their shipping method or enter the information needed to calculate taxes.

If the exact amount cannot be shown yet, tell shoppers what still needs to be calculated. Shopify recommends showing costs upfront so shoppers are not surprised by a higher total just before they pay.

You can also show free-shipping requirements earlier in the journey. For example, if shoppers need to spend $75 to qualify, make that clear in the cart instead of waiting until checkout.

How to measure checkout performance

After making changes, check whether checkout is actually getting easier to complete. Start with a few numbers that show both the result and where problems may still remain.

• Checkout completion rate. This checkout metric shows how many shoppers who start checkout go on to complete their purchase. If the rate rises after you make a change, the checkout process may be easier to finish.

• Drop-off by step. Look at how many shoppers leave during shipping, payment, or final review. Tracking checkout drop-off by step can help you find the part of the process causing the most trouble.

• Mobile versus desktop results. Compare completion and abandonment rates by device. If mobile shoppers leave much more often, the mobile checkout may still need work.

Focus on the biggest gap first. If most shoppers leave during payment, for example, review that step before changing parts of checkout that are already working.

Final thoughts

Checkout is one of the last chances an e-commerce store has to turn interest into a sale. By this point, shoppers have already chosen a product and moved close to buying, so unnecessary steps, confusing forms, or payment problems can undo much of the work that brought them there.

Start by reviewing your current checkout and finding where shoppers leave most often. Fix that problem first, measure what changes, and keep improving the process so more shoppers can complete their orders with less effort.