If you run an online store, you already know the frustrating part: people add products to the cart and then leave. Before spending more on ads to bring in more visitors, it is worth fixing the leaks in the bucket you already have.

This is a checklist-style guide to the biggest current pain points, ordered roughly by how much they usually matter. I will use research rather than opinion wherever I can.

How big is the problem?

The Baymard Institute combines dozens of studies on this. Its cart abandonment page (last updated 22 September 2025) puts the average documented abandonment rate at 70.22%, calculated from 50 studies.

Two caveats are worth keeping in mind:

  • Some of those people were never going to buy. In Baymard's survey of US shoppers, 42% said they abandoned because they were just browsing or not ready to buy.
  • The rest is where the opportunity lies. Baymard estimates that large e-commerce sites could gain a 35.26% increase in conversion rate through better checkout design, and that about $260 billion in lost orders could be recovered across combined US and EU sales of $738 billion.

Those are industry-wide estimates, not a promise for your store. But they point in a clear direction: checkout design is a revenue lever, not a cosmetic detail.

Why shoppers leave, in order

Excluding the "just browsing" group, Baymard lists these reasons among US shoppers who abandoned a cart:

  • Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees): 40%
  • Delivery too slow: 20%
  • Did not trust the site with card details: 19%
  • Required account creation: 18%
  • Checkout too long or complicated: 17%
  • Website errors or crashes: 17%
  • Unsatisfactory return policy: 13%
  • Total order cost not visible up front: 12%
  • Credit card declined: 10%
  • Not enough payment methods: 9%

Notice how many of these are decisions you control, not problems with the shopper.

Fix 1: Make the total cost clear early

Unexpected costs are the leading reason in that list, and "total order cost not visible up front" is a separate 12%. The checklist:

  • Show shipping cost, or a clear estimate, on the product or cart page, not only at the final step.
  • Include taxes and fees in the displayed total wherever your market allows.
  • If shipping is expensive, say why and show a free-shipping threshold if you have one.
  • Show delivery time next to cost. Slow delivery is the second biggest reason at 20%.
  • State the returns policy in plain words near the buy button. It is a reason for 13%.

Fix 2: Reduce friction in checkout

  • Offer guest checkout. Forced account creation costs sales (18%). You can invite them to create an account after payment.
  • Remove fields you do not truly need. 17% of shoppers cited a checkout that was too long or complicated.
  • Use address autofill and the right keyboard type on mobile for phone and card fields.
  • Keep an order summary visible throughout checkout.
  • Make error messages specific and keep what the shopper already typed.

Fix 3: Payment options and trust

Card declines (10%) and missing payment methods (9%) are smaller than shipping costs, but they hit shoppers who were ready to pay, which is the most painful kind of loss.

  • Offer the payment methods your actual customers use in your market: cards plus at least one wallet or local method.
  • Check how your payment provider reports declines, and whether failed attempts are retried or offer a clear next step.
  • Show trust cues where card details are entered: recognisable payment logos, a clear company name and contact details, and visible policies. 19% of shoppers cited distrust of the site with card information.
  • Do not rely on trust badges to compensate for a site that looks unfinished.

Fix 4: Mobile speed and stability

Website errors or crashes drive 17% of abandonment, and slow pages create the same effect more quietly. Google's Core Web Vitals give you measurable targets, assessed at the 75th percentile of page loads and separately for mobile and desktop:

  • Largest Contentful Paint (loading): 2.5 seconds or less
  • Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness): 200 milliseconds or less
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability): 0.1 or less

What to look at first:

  1. Test your product, cart and checkout pages on a mid-range phone on a normal connection, not only on your office Wi-Fi.
  2. Compress and properly size product images.
  3. Audit third-party scripts: chat widgets, review widgets, tracking tags and popups. Remove any you cannot justify.
  4. Check that buttons do not jump around as the page loads. Layout shift on a "Pay now" button is expensive.

Fix 5: Bots and fraud

Not all of your traffic is human. The Thales 2026 Bad Bot Report says automated traffic was more than 53% of all web traffic in 2025, up from 51% the year before, and that 27% of bot attacks targeted APIs. The report describes bots querying pricing and availability systems and exploiting promotional systems, which are things stores expose.

For a small store, sensible defences are modest:

  • Put rate limiting and bot filtering in front of login, checkout and coupon endpoints.
  • Use a low-friction challenge on forms instead of making every real customer solve puzzles.
  • Review orders for patterns such as many small test payments, which can signal card testing.
  • Keep platform, plugins and PHP up to date, since abandoned code is what automated attacks look for.

Fix 6: Know what your platform really costs

Fees rarely show up in one place. Add up, for one real month:

  • The platform subscription and any transaction fee on top of the payment provider's fee
  • Paid apps or plugins, and their renewal dates
  • Hosting and maintenance, if you self-host
  • Developer time spent on updates and integration fixes

If a plugin does something important like shipping rates or tax, ask what happens if its maker disappears. If you are paying for many overlapping tools, a simpler setup may be cheaper and faster.

Where to start

Do not try to fix everything. A reasonable order:

  1. Place a test order on your own phone, as a stranger would. Note every point of friction.
  2. Fix cost visibility and guest checkout.
  3. Measure Core Web Vitals on product and checkout pages.
  4. Review payment options and decline handling.
  5. Add basic bot protection and monitor.

Make one change at a time and track conversion, so you know what worked.

Where I can help

If you want a second pair of eyes on your store, the free Digital Business Audit is a good starting point. And if your sales process has outgrown plugins, my business systems page outlines custom options.

Sources