Shopify Checkout Optimisation: 9 Changes That Reduce Abandonment
70% of Shopify carts are abandoned at checkout. Here are 9 specific changes that reduce abandonment and recover revenue from visitors who were ready to buy.
The average cart abandonment rate across ecommerce sits at around 70%. For every 10 people who add something to their cart, 7 leave without buying.
On Shopify, checkout abandonment is one of the highest-leverage conversion problems to solve because it affects visitors who have already decided they want your product. They are not dropping off because your marketing is wrong or your product is not compelling. They are dropping off because something in the checkout experience stopped them, and most of those things are fixable.
Here are 9 specific changes that reduce Shopify checkout abandonment and the reasoning behind each one.
1. Remove forced account creation
Requiring customers to create an account before checking out is the single most common cause of checkout abandonment across Shopify stores.
Visitors who were about to complete a $60 purchase are now being asked to create a password, remember it, and verify an email address. They did not come to your store to make an account. They came to buy something. A meaningful percentage of them leave rather than go through the process.
The fix: Enable guest checkout in your Shopify settings under Checkout, then Customer accounts, then set accounts to optional. You can still invite customers to create an account after their purchase is complete. At that point they are happy buyers rather than frustrated prospects.
2. Show total cost before checkout
The most commonly stated reason for cart abandonment across multiple industry surveys is unexpected costs at checkout. Most often this is a shipping cost that was not visible earlier in the shopping experience.
When a visitor reaches checkout and sees a shipping fee they were not expecting, a significant portion abandon and do not come back.
The fix: Show shipping costs or free shipping thresholds on the product page, in the cart, and at the top of checkout. If you offer free shipping over a threshold, make that threshold visible and persistent, not just in the footer. Consider showing an estimated total including shipping in the cart before checkout begins.
3. Add accelerated checkout options
On mobile, where 70% to 80% of your traffic arrives, typing a full credit card number, billing address, and shipping details is friction-heavy. One-tap payment options eliminate almost all of that friction.
Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay let returning customers complete a purchase in one or two taps without entering any payment details. Shop Pay specifically has strong data: Shopify reports it converts at a significantly higher rate than standard card checkout.
The fix: Enable Shop Pay in your Shopify settings. Enable Apple Pay and Google Pay through your Shopify Payments configuration. These payment methods appear prominently at the top of the checkout flow for customers who have them configured.
4. Minimise form fields
Every additional field a customer has to fill in at checkout is an opportunity to abandon. Most Shopify checkouts ask for more information than they actually need.
Review your checkout form fields. Is the phone number field required? Are you asking for a company name in a DTC context? Are you showing both billing and shipping address fields by default even when they are the same for most customers?
The fix: In Shopify settings, remove optional fields you do not actually need. Make as many fields as possible optional rather than required. Default the billing address to match the shipping address with a checkbox that customers can uncheck if needed.
5. Show trust signals throughout checkout
Visitors who make it to checkout are closer to buying than they have ever been, but they are also at the point where they are being asked to hand over payment details to a brand they may have discovered recently.
Trust signals at checkout reduce the hesitation that causes last-minute abandonment. The question running in the background is: is this site actually legitimate and should I give them my card number?
The fix: Add trust signals to your cart page and within the checkout flow where your Shopify plan allows. These include security badges, your return and refund policy displayed prominently, a money-back guarantee if you have one, and customer service contact information showing that a real human is available.
6. Make your return policy obvious
One of the most common unspoken objections at checkout is wondering what happens if the product does not work out. Visitors who are not sure about your return policy are more likely to abandon rather than risk being stuck with something they cannot return.
The fix: Put your return policy in clear, simple language and surface it in the cart and at checkout, not buried in the footer. Free returns within 30 days, no questions asked removes an objection in plain terms. A vague reference to the returns policy in small grey text does not.
7. Reduce checkout steps where possible
Shopify's default checkout is typically a single-page or two-step flow, which is already reasonably streamlined. The abandonment problem usually comes from additional customisations, such as upsell steps, required opt-ins, and additional questions, that add steps between add-to-cart and order confirmed.
Review every additional step or screen in your checkout flow and ask whether it is necessary before purchase or whether it could happen after.
Post-purchase is almost always a better time for cross-sell and upsell offers, subscription upgrade prompts, survey questions, account creation invitations, and email opt-in confirmation. Anything that delays the purchase moment without being essential to completing it belongs after the purchase, not before.
8. Set up an abandoned checkout email sequence
Some checkout abandonment is recoverable. Visitors who started checkout and entered their email address before abandoning can be reached with a follow-up sequence.
A three-email abandoned checkout sequence performs consistently across most DTC categories.
Email 1 sent one hour after abandonment: Simple reminder showing the cart contents and making it easy to complete the purchase, with no discount. Many people abandoned because of a distraction, not a genuine objection.
Email 2 sent 24 hours after abandonment: Address the most common objection for your product category. For health and wellness this might be reassurance about the science or ingredients. For apparel it might be the return policy. Still no discount.
Email 3 sent 72 hours after abandonment: If you are willing to offer an incentive, this is where to use it. A 10% discount or free shipping. Do not start with this because you will train customers to abandon in order to receive a discount.
This sequence is available through Klaviyo, which integrates directly with Shopify.
9. Fix mobile checkout on real devices
This is the most overlooked checkout fix and the most impactful. Testing your checkout on a desktop browser, including the mobile preview, is not the same as testing it on an actual phone.
On real devices, common issues include payment fields that trigger the wrong keyboard type, autocomplete that does not work correctly with your form fields, touch targets that are too small to tap accurately, fields that are obscured by the phone's keyboard when active, and slow loading on slower mobile connections.
The fix: Test your entire checkout flow on at least three real devices: an iPhone, an Android, and a tablet. Look for places where the experience is frustrating or where typing is difficult. Use Google PageSpeed Insights on the mobile setting to check load performance specifically at the checkout stage.
The highest-ROI checkout improvement for most stores
If you are going to do one thing from this list, do number 2: show total cost before checkout. The gap between wanting to buy and actually completing the purchase is most often a cost surprise, and that is one of the easiest surprises to remove.
Beyond that, the right next step depends on what your data shows. Session recordings of checkout abandonment reveal things that a checklist cannot: the specific moment visitors give up, the specific element they are confused by, the specific objection they cannot answer.
If you want to understand exactly where your checkout is losing revenue based on real data from your actual visitors, our Revenue Leak Audit covers your full funnel including cart and checkout analysis in 5 to 7 days.
Ready to talk about your Shopify project?
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