Reduce friction on the path to checkout
The path into checkout is full of small frustrations that quietly compound into lost sales.
In short
- The average checkout has 11.3 fields and needs 8. Three of them are friction you can delete (Baymard).
- Optional guest checkout instead of forced registration was worth +45% sales / +$300M a year in the classic case.
- When autofill works, abandonment drops 75%, so a mislabelled field that blocks it costs you silently.
Fix built & tested
One unmistakable 'Checkout' action, redundant step removed.
A shopper who reaches your cart has already done the hard part: they want the thing. What stops them now is rarely the price. It's a forced account, a field that asks for the same info twice, a "Continue" button that doesn't say where it goes. Baymard's checkout testing puts the average flow at 11.3 form fields when only 8 are actually needed, so most stores are making people fill in three boxes that earn nothing.
What's the problem?
Shoppers make it close to buying, then stall on the way into checkout. It's not one big thing. It's a pile-up of small frustrations you can't easily see.
Why does this happen?
- The cart-to-checkout step has unclear buttons or extra clicks.
- Unexpected fields, costs, or login walls appear at the wrong moment.
- Mobile shoppers hit fiddly inputs and give up.
- Forced registration is the quiet killer. The famous case is a major retailer that swapped a mandatory 'Register' step for a 'Continue' button with optional guest checkout, and sales jumped 45%, worth $300 million in the fi…
- Autofill breaks more often than merchants realize. Mislabelled inputs, a custom 'address line' field, or a card form that fights the browser all stop autofill cold. When it works, Chrome saw a 75% drop in checkout aband…
- The card form itself leaks conversion. An older card-only integration leaves money on the table versus a modern wallet-aware setup. Stripe's matched-cohort study found stores that moved to its Payment Element earned 10.…
- Mobile is where the small stuff compounds. Form completion runs lower on phones than desktop (51.4% vs 56.9% across 20.1 million sessions) because every fiddly tap, every keyboard that pops the wrong layout, every too…
What does the research show?
Independent researchFigures below are from independent studies, not StorePilot data. They're why this problem is worth testing on your own store.
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The average ecommerce checkout asks for 11.3 form fields when only 8 are needed to complete the purchase, roughly 3 fields of pure friction.
Baymard Institute ↗ -
Replacing a forced 'Register' step with a 'Continue' button plus optional guest checkout lifted one retailer's sales 45%, an extra $300 million in the first year (the '$300 Million Button').
User Interface Engineering / Jared Spool (Center Centre) ↗ -
When users autofilled their details, Chrome saw checkout abandonment drop 75% and form-completion time fall 35%; in Shopify's own testing, guest checkouts using autofill converted 45% higher.
Shopify, via Google (Chrome blog) ↗ -
Across 20.1 million checkout sessions only 54.4% completed, and completion was lower on mobile (51.4%) than desktop (56.9%), so the friction gap is widest on phones.
Zuko Analytics (formerly Formisimo) ↗ -
Baymard's checkout usability research finds the average large ecommerce site can raise its conversion rate by about 35% through checkout design alone, with 32 distinct improvements available on a typical flow.
Baymard Institute, E-Commerce Checkout Usability research ↗
How does StorePilot AI fix it?
- StorePilot maps the journey into checkout and flags the steps where shoppers stall or rage-click.
- It tests reductions in friction on the cart and pre-checkout surfaces (theme-safe, reversible).
- It measures checkout-start and completion to confirm the fixes help.
How do you fix it, step by step?
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Count your fields, then cut
Walk your own cart-to-checkout flow and tally every input. Baymard's benchmark is 8 fields; anything past that (company name, second phone, separate address-line-2 you never use) is a candidate to drop or make optional.
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Make the primary action say where it goes
Replace ambiguous 'Continue' or 'Proceed' labels in the cart with a single unmistakable 'Checkout' button. One primary action per surface, so kill any redundant interstitial step between the cart and the real checkout.
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Put express pay at the top
Move Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay buttons above the form, not below it. Stripe data shows surfacing Apple Pay alone lifted conversion 22.3% among eligible checkouts, and these wallets skip the form entirely.
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Fix what blocks autofill
Use standard field names and autocomplete attributes so the browser can fill name, address, and card in one tap. A custom-labelled address field that defeats autofill quietly raises abandonment on every mobile visit.
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Pull guest checkout forward
Don't let 'create an account' read like a requirement. Lead with guest checkout and offer account creation after the order, the way the $300M button did: registration as a reward, not a toll.
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Watch where the stall happens, then test one fix
Instrument the cart and pre-checkout surfaces (StorePilot does this from behaviour: rage clicks, dead clicks, drop-off) so you know which step leaks. Then run one theme-safe, reversible change at a time and measure checkout-start and completion, not just clicks.
An illustrative example
Demo data- What StorePilot detects
- A cluster of rage clicks on an ambiguous 'Continue' button in the cart precedes a drop in checkout starts.
- The fix it builds & tests
- Make the primary cart action a single, unmistakable 'Checkout' button and remove a redundant step.
- The projected outcome
- Example projection: more checkout starts from the cart. (Illustrative demo figure.)
Key takeaways
- The average checkout has 11.3 fields and needs 8. Three of them are friction you can delete (Baymard).
- Optional guest checkout instead of forced registration was worth +45% sales / +$300M a year in the classic case.
- When autofill works, abandonment drops 75%, so a mislabelled field that blocks it costs you silently.
- Mobile completes checkout at 51.4% vs 56.9% on desktop, so fix phone friction first; that's where 70% of traffic lives.
This guide is part of the StorePilot cart abandonment playbook. If this is costing you sales, look at Find and fix rage clicks before they cost you sales and Stop the discount-code box from leaking sales next.
