Recent data indicates that global cart abandonment rates hover around 70%, signalling how important it is for businesses to improve their checkout experiences – a key final step of the online shopping process.

Checkout optimisation includes adapting to consumer behaviour shifts, and recognising and reducing friction in transactions. A holistic approach, rooted in data and customer feedback, can create an optimised checkout that boosts conversions while fostering trust and loyalty among shoppers.

What's in this article?

• What is checkout optimisation?
  
• Why checkout optimisation matters for businesses
  
• 13 checkout optimisation tips
  
• How to measure checkout optimisation success
  
• How Stripe can help
  

What is checkout optimisation?

Checkout optimisation is the process of refining the online checkout experience to reduce friction, minimise cart abandonment, and increase conversion rates. It involves improving elements of the checkout process to ensure shoppers are able to complete their transactions easily and efficiently.

The scope for potential refinement is significant: addressing documented friction points can lift conversion rates by as much as 35.26% for a large-scale e-commerce site, with the average site still having 39 potential areas for improvement.

Much of that refinement now has to happen on a small screen, as mobile devices drove 56.4% of online transactions during the 2025 holiday season (up from 54.5% in 2024), the first full year mobile has accounted for the majority of online spend.

Why checkout optimisation matters for businesses

Checkout optimisation is an important part of running a successful business. Here's why:

• It directly affects conversion rates
  The checkout process is the final step leading to a confirmed sale. The smoother and simpler this process is, the more likely a potential buyer will convert into a paying customer. When customers encounter challenges or complications, they often opt out, abandoning their intended purchases.

• Cart abandonment is costly
  Attracting potential new customers to your sales channels often involves significant spend on marketing and advertising. When a potential customer decides to abandon their cart, it signifies a wasted effort in bringing that customer to the website, representing both lost revenue and an inefficient return on investment. Cart abandonment is often driven by friction at checkout. Common causes include unexpected costs (such as shipping fees or taxes revealed only at the final step), being forced to create an account before completing a purchase, a checkout process with too many steps or form fields, a limited selection of payment methods, and concerns about the security of payment information. Identifying and addressing these pain points is often where checkout optimisation efforts deliver the most immediate impact.

• Customer loyalty is at stake
  A straightforward, hassle-free checkout experience can encourage repeat business by establishing trust between a business and its customers. However, the opposite is also true. A single negative experience, especially during checkout, can drive potential loyal customers towards competitors.

• It impacts brand perception
  While a customer's perception of a brand is affected by multiple facets of their online shopping journey, from product selection to customer service, the checkout process has a significant impact. An easy transaction process can reinforce the perception of professionalism and reliability, while a complicated process can tarnish the image of even the most reputable brand.

• It provides a feedback loop for improvements
  Monitoring and analysing customer checkout behaviour can generate useful insights. By understanding customer preferences and pain points, businesses can continue to refine their strategies. Checkout data can guide decisions related to payment methods, user interface refinements, product offerings, and more.

When done well, checkout optimisation can improve a business’s overall conversion and reputation, but a sub-par checkout experience can undermine other efforts to acquire and convert customers.

13 checkout optimisation tips

Businesses must prioritise and invest in refining their checkout systems. Here's a closer look at how to effectively build high-converting checkout pages by reducing friction and increasing shopper trust:

1. Reduce the number of steps

Each step in the checkout process represents a potential drop-off point. While some steps might seem important for data collection or upselling, they can deter purchases. Reducing steps can mean merging similar stages, asking only key questions, or employing a one-click checkout process. By keeping the process short, the likelihood of cart abandonment will decrease and conversion rates will typically improve. Over-complicating the checkout process can lead to fatigue, confusion, or reconsideration – all of which are detrimental to sales.

2. Offer a guest checkout option

Although customer account creation can facilitate loyalty scheme membership or easier returns, mandating it at checkout can reduce conversion. By offering a guest checkout option, businesses can support those wanting a quick purchase without commitment. Businesses can instead offer account creation post-purchase, once the primary conversion is secured.

3. Optimise for mobile

Many customers choose to conduct transactions online using their mobile devices. Designing a checkout process for mobile means more than just fitting it to a smaller screen. It requires rethinking the design and functionality, in addition to ensuring that buttons are easily clickable, forms are navigable, and load times are short. A poor mobile checkout experience can deter a sale and discourage a customer from returning.

4. Optimise page load times

Customers often have limited patience when shopping online. Page-load delays can result in a significant percentage of potential customers giving up on the purchase. A 2025 analysis of over 500 million visits to more than 1,300 top e-commerce sites found that shaving just one second off page load time increases mobile conversions by 3%, a meaningful lift given that most e-commerce traffic now comes from mobile. Additionally, fast load times indicate a well-structured website and often lead to better search engine rankings.

5. Ensure easy error handling

When mistakes occur, how they’re handled can affect conversion. If a customer encounters an error during checkout, it’s important to guide them toward a resolution without making them feel at fault. This involves highlighting the error and offering clear instructions for correction, without requiring them to restart the checkout process.

6. Offer save-for-later options

Many customers spend time considering purchases before committing. By allowing them to save their cart or wish list items, businesses cater to this shopping habit by enabling customers to return later and complete their purchase.

7. Provide transparent pricing

Studies have shown that trust is an important factor in sales. Hidden fees – whether they're for shipping, taxes, or service charges – can erode that trust. By offering a transparent, detailed breakdown of all costs early in the checkout, businesses convey honesty. This approach reduces the risk of cart abandonment at the final payment stage.

8. Insert trust signals

Customers are increasingly concerned about data breaches and cyber threats. Implementing trust signals through badges, testimonials, or clear links to privacy policies can assure customers that their data and financial information will be handled with care. Establishing this trust will help convince customers to provide sensitive personal information.

9. Reassure about privacy

Data privacy is top of mind for many customers today. Provide clear, transparent messaging about how user data is used and stored. This goes beyond basic compliance with laws such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) – it's about building a relationship of trust with customers.

10. Include multiple payment options

Payment preferences can vary based on region, age, or personal choice. By providing multiple options, businesses accommodate a wider range of customers. And certain payment options, such as some buy now, pay later (BNPL) plans, now offer instalment payments without interest, which can be a deciding factor for customers making more significant purchases. Offering a diverse range of trusted payment methods means removing another potential barrier to purchase.

11. Implement clear calls to action

Clear, concise calls to action (CTAs) guide customers intuitively through the checkout process. Strong, compelling language paired with intuitive design ensures customers understand their next steps, preventing them from getting lost or frustrated during checkout.

12. Incorporate progress indicators

Cognitive science suggests that people like to complete tasks. Progress indicators take advantage of this by visually representing the start, middle, and end of the checkout journey. By visually guiding shoppers through the stages, businesses can reduce feelings of uncertainty and promote task completion, encouraging shoppers to make a purchase.

13. Avoid mandatory upsells

Upselling can be a powerful tool when used judiciously. However, forced upsells, especially when they interfere with the primary purchase, can frustrate customers. Offering optional, relevant upsells is a more balanced approach, showcasing additional value without obstructing the main purchase pathway.

Businesses should cultivate a strategic and empathetic approach to checkout optimisation. While the details of checkout optimisation may vary for each business, every business must look at the checkout experience from the customer perspective, understand any existing pain points, and continually refine the process.

Learn more about how Stripe can help businesses build and maintain a strong checkout experience.

How to measure checkout optimisation success

Conversion rate tells you that customers are dropping off, but not where or why. A few additional metrics fill that gap:

• Track step-level completion rates: Break checkout into individual stages, such as shipping, payment, review, and confirmation, and track completion at each one, rather than treating checkout as a single pass/fail event.

• Identify specific drop-off points: Look for places where abandonment spikes, such as right after shipping costs appear, or at account creation, to pinpoint specific friction.

• Run A/B tests on individual changes: Isolate the impact of individual changes, such as a new CTA, a reordered field, or a trust badge, before rolling them out broadly.

• Monitor time-to-complete and error rates: Rising completion times or frequent form errors often signal friction before it shows up in abandonment numbers.

• Segment by device and channel: Measuring mobile and desktop separately can surface issues, such as a mobile-specific bug, that get masked in aggregate data.

How Stripe Checkout can help

Stripe Checkout is a fully customisable prebuilt payment form that makes it easy for you to accept payments on your website or application.

Checkout can help you:

• Increase conversion: Checkout's mobile-optimised design and one-click checkout flow make it simple for customers to input and reuse their payment information.

• Reduce development time: Embed Checkout directly into your site, or direct customers to a Stripe-hosted page, with just a few lines of code.

• Improve security: Checkout handles sensitive card data, simplifying PCI compliance.

• Expand globally: Localise pricing in 100+ currencies with Adaptive Pricing, which supports 30+ languages and dynamically displays the payment methods most likely to improve conversion.

• Use advanced features: Integrate Checkout with other Stripe products, such as Billing for subscriptions, Radar for fraud prevention and more.

• Maintain control: Fully customise the checkout experience, including saving payment methods and setting up post-purchase actions.

Learn more about how Checkout can optimise your payment flow, or get started today.