Why Your Checkout Page Is Losing 70% of Customers (And How to Fix It)

The 70% Problem

The Baymard Institute has tracked cart abandonment rates across 49 different studies over more than a decade. The average? 70.19%. That number has remained stubbornly consistent, year after year, across industries and geographies.

Let that sink in: for every $100 of products users add to their carts, roughly $70 never makes it to a completed purchase. For an e-commerce store doing $1M in annual revenue, that represents approximately $2.3M in lost potential revenue sitting in abandoned carts.

Some abandonment is natural, users browse, compare prices, or save items for later. Baymard estimates that about 58.6% of online shoppers abandon simply because they were "just browsing." But the remaining abandonment is due to friction in the checkout process itself, and that's entirely fixable.

The Top Reasons Users Abandon Checkout

Baymard's research breaks down the specific reasons users abandon after intending to buy:

• Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees): 48%
• Required to create an account: 26%
• Delivery too slow: 23%
• Didn't trust the site with credit card info: 25%
• Too long/complicated checkout process: 22%
• Couldn't see total order cost upfront: 21%
• Website had errors/crashed: 17%
• Return policy not satisfactory: 12%
• Not enough payment methods: 11%
• Credit card was declined: 6%

Notice: most of these are UX and transparency issues, not product issues. Users want to buy. The checkout page is talking them out of it.

Fix 1: Eliminate Surprise Costs

Unexpected costs are the number one reason for abandonment. Users feel deceived when they see a $50 product turn into $67 at checkout after shipping and taxes are added.

What to do:

• Show estimated shipping costs on the product page or cart page, before checkout.
• Include tax estimates based on the user's detected location.
• If you offer free shipping above a threshold, display it prominently: "Free shipping on orders over $50."
• Never introduce new fees at the final step. If there are handling fees, show them early.

Use your funnel analysis to measure the drop-off between "view cart" and "begin checkout." If it's high, surprise costs are likely the cause.

Fix 2: Offer Guest Checkout

Forcing account creation before purchase is the second most common reason for abandonment. Users are here to buy one thing, not to manage another account with another password.

What to do:

• Make guest checkout the primary option, with account creation offered after the purchase is complete: "Want to track your order easily? Create an account with one click."
• If you must require an account, offer social login (Google, Apple) to reduce friction.
• Never force email verification before allowing the purchase. Verify after.

Fix 3: Simplify the Form

The average checkout flow has 23 form elements and 14.88 form fields. Baymard's research shows that most checkouts could be reduced to 7-8 fields. Every field you remove increases completion rates.

What to do:

• Use a single "Full Name" field instead of separate first/last name fields.
• Auto-detect city and state from ZIP code.
• Use a single address line by default, with an optional "Address line 2" link.
• Don't ask for a phone number unless it's genuinely needed for delivery.
• Use heatmap data to identify which form fields cause the most friction, look for fields with disproportionate click counts (indicating confusion or repeated attempts).

Fix 4: Add Trust Signals

25% of users abandon because they don't trust the site with their payment information. Trust is a design problem as much as a security problem.

What to do:

• Display security badges (SSL, payment processor logos, Norton/McAfee seals) near the payment form.
• Add a brief money-back guarantee statement close to the purchase button.
• Show customer reviews or testimonials on the checkout page (even a small widget).
• Use familiar payment processing UIs, Stripe and PayPal have high trust because users recognize them.
• Ensure your site uses HTTPS (this should be obvious in 2026, but surprisingly many checkout subdirectories still have mixed-content issues).

Fix 5: Provide Multiple Payment Options

11% of users abandon because their preferred payment method isn't available. This number is higher for international audiences.

What to do:

• At minimum: credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay.
• For higher-ticket items: buy-now-pay-later options (Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay). These can increase conversion rates by 20-30% for products over $100.
• For international markets: support local payment methods (iDEAL in the Netherlands, Bancontact in Belgium, PIX in Brazil).
• Use your analytics data (segmented by geography) to identify which markets have the highest abandonment rates and research local payment preferences.

Fix 6: Fix Technical Errors

17% of users abandon because of website errors or crashes. On the checkout page, the highest-value page on your site, even a small error rate is devastating.

What to do:

• Set up error tracking specifically for your checkout flow. Monitor for JavaScript errors, failed API calls, and payment processing errors.
• Test your checkout on every major browser and device combination monthly. Payment forms are notorious for cross-browser inconsistencies.
• Add error handling that shows user-friendly messages, not blank screens or cryptic error codes.
• Watch session replays of users who reached checkout but didn't complete it. In Spectry, you can filter replays by users who triggered errors on checkout pages, giving you immediate visibility into technical issues that are costing you sales.

Fix 7: Show Progress and Reduce Perceived Length

22% of users abandon because the process feels too long. Perception matters as much as reality here.

What to do:

• Add a progress bar showing the checkout steps (Cart → Shipping → Payment → Confirmation).
• Consider a single-page checkout rather than a multi-step one. While multi-step checkouts can work well, they often feel longer than they are.
• Pre-fill everything you can, returning customer data, detected shipping addresses, saved payment methods.
• Show the order summary throughout the entire checkout process so users always know what they're buying and the total cost.

Measuring Your Improvements

After implementing changes, here's how to measure whether they're working:

• Cart-to-purchase conversion rate: This is your primary metric. Track it weekly.
• Step-by-step funnel completion: Measure each checkout step individually so you know where improvements are landing.
• Error rate on checkout pages: Monitor JavaScript errors and payment failures.
• Time to complete checkout: A shorter average completion time usually correlates with higher conversion rates.
• Abandonment by device: Mobile checkout often needs separate optimization from desktop.

Don't change everything at once. Prioritize the fixes that address the most common abandonment reasons in your specific data, implement them one at a time, and measure the impact of each change. If you want statistical rigor, A/B test each change before rolling it out fully.

The 70% abandonment rate is an industry average, it doesn't have to be your number. The teams that systematically audit and optimize their checkout flows regularly achieve rates of 50-60%, recapturing thousands of dollars in revenue that would otherwise be lost.