Cart abandonment is the most expensive leak in ecommerce. The average UK ecommerce store loses approximately 70% of customers who add items to their cart but never complete the purchase. That is not a conversion rate problem — it is a revenue haemorrhage that compounds every single day your checkout goes unoptimised.
The frustrating truth is that most cart abandonment is caused by fixable problems in the checkout experience. Customers have already demonstrated buying intent by adding products to their cart. Something between the cart and the confirmation page caused them to leave. If you can identify and fix those friction points, the revenue impact is immediate and substantial.
Over years of optimising Shopify stores, we have identified the seven most common checkout mistakes that drive abandonment. These are not edge cases. They are problems that affect the majority of ecommerce stores, and they have proven solutions.
The scale of the problem
Before examining specific mistakes, it is worth understanding the scale. Research consistently shows that approximately 69-72% of ecommerce carts are abandoned. For a store generating £100,000 per month in revenue, that means roughly £230,000-£250,000 worth of products were added to carts but never purchased.
Even recovering 5% of those abandoned carts would add £11,500-£12,500 in monthly revenue. That is revenue from customers who have already found your store, browsed your products, and decided they want to buy. The only thing standing between you and that revenue is your checkout experience.
Not all abandonment is preventable. Some visitors are just browsing, comparing prices, or saving items for later. But a significant portion is caused by specific friction points in the checkout process that are entirely within your control. The seven mistakes below fall firmly in the fixable category.
Mistake 1: Forcing account creation
Requiring visitors to create an account before they can complete a purchase is the checkout equivalent of asking someone for their life story before they can pay for a coffee. It adds friction at the exact moment when friction is most costly. The data is clear: forced account creation causes 24% of cart abandonments according to Baymard Institute research.
Many brands force account creation because they want customer data for marketing purposes. This is understandable but counterproductive. The customers who abandon because of forced registration never buy, so you get neither the sale nor the data. You have optimised for data collection at the expense of revenue — a poor trade.
The fix: Always offer guest checkout. You can still collect the customer's email address (which you need for order confirmation anyway) and offer optional account creation after the purchase is complete. Shopify's default checkout supports guest checkout — if yours does not, check your checkout settings immediately. Post-purchase account creation converts well because the customer has already committed and has a genuine reason to create an account: order tracking and reorder convenience.
Mistake 2: Hidden costs at checkout
Nothing kills a purchase faster than unexpected costs appearing at checkout. When a customer sees a product priced at £29.99 and arrives at checkout to find the total is £38.98 after shipping and handling fees, they feel deceived — even if the charges are entirely legitimate. This feeling of deception triggers an emotional response that overrides the rational desire for the product.
This is consistently the number one reason cited by consumers for abandoning their cart. It is also entirely preventable with straightforward changes to how and when you communicate costs.
The fix: Be transparent about all costs from the earliest possible point. Show shipping costs on product pages, or at minimum in the cart before the customer enters checkout. If you have a free shipping threshold, display it prominently throughout the shopping experience — on product pages, in the cart, and in the header. Consider whether absorbing shipping costs into your product prices and offering "free shipping" is commercially viable. It often increases overall conversion by more than the margin it costs.
Display the complete order total, including VAT, as early as possible in the checkout flow. No customer should ever be surprised by the final number. Transparency builds trust; surprises destroy it.
Mistake 3: Too many form fields
Every additional form field in your checkout is a small barrier to completion. Individually, each field seems harmless. Collectively, they create a checkout process that feels like filling in a tax return. Baymard Institute research shows that the average checkout contains 14.88 form fields — roughly twice the number actually needed to process an order.
Each unnecessary field increases the cognitive load on the customer and the time required to complete the purchase. On mobile, where typing is slower and screens are smaller, the impact is amplified. Every extra field you ask for is a moment where the customer might decide it is not worth the effort.
The fix: Reduce your checkout to the minimum required fields. You need: email, shipping name, shipping address (with auto-complete), and payment details. That is it. Do not ask for phone number unless it is genuinely required for delivery. Do not ask for company name for B2C orders. Do not ask for a separate billing address unless the customer indicates it differs from shipping. Use address auto-complete (Google Places API) to reduce the number of fields customers have to type. On Shopify, the one-page checkout and Shop Pay dramatically reduce form friction.
Mistake 4: Limited payment options
In 2026, UK consumers expect to pay the way they want to pay. If your checkout only offers credit card payment, you are excluding customers who prefer PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or buy-now-pay-later options like Klarna and Clearpay. Each missing payment option represents a percentage of customers who will not complete their purchase.
The exact percentage varies by demographic and product category, but the cumulative effect of limited payment options is significant. Younger demographics are particularly likely to abandon if buy-now-pay-later is not available. Mobile shoppers are more likely to convert with Apple Pay or Google Pay because these methods eliminate form filling entirely.
The fix: Offer at minimum: credit/debit card (via Shopify Payments), PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. For products over £50, strongly consider adding a buy-now-pay-later option like Klarna or Clearpay. Shop Pay on Shopify is one of the highest-converting accelerated checkout options available, and it is free for Shopify merchants. Each additional payment option you add reduces the number of customers who cannot or will not pay through your available methods.
Mistake 5: No trust signals at checkout
Checkout is the moment of highest anxiety in the customer journey. The visitor is about to hand over their payment details and personal information to a website they may have only discovered minutes ago. Any doubt about the legitimacy or security of your store is amplified tenfold at this stage.
Many store owners assume that the checkout itself communicates security. It does not, especially for first-time customers who have no existing relationship with your brand. The absence of explicit trust signals creates a vacuum that anxiety fills.
The fix: Include trust signals throughout the checkout: SSL certificate indicators, payment provider logos (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal), "Secure Checkout" messaging, and your returns policy summary. On Shopify, the checkout inherently includes SSL and payment security, but you can reinforce trust by adding your returns guarantee, customer service contact information, and any relevant trust badges or certifications. A simple "30-day returns" or "Free returns" message near the payment button can measurably reduce abandonment.
Mistake 6: Poor mobile checkout
More than 60% of ecommerce traffic comes from mobile, but mobile conversion rates remain significantly lower than desktop. The checkout experience is where most of the conversion gap exists. Tiny form fields, difficult-to-tap buttons, auto-correct changing address entries, and keyboards covering the screen all contribute to mobile checkout friction.
The problem is often invisible to store owners who test their checkout on desktop computers in their office. Your customers are checking out on phones during their commute, on slow WiFi in cafes, and on older devices with smaller screens and less processing power. What works on your MacBook may be unusable on a three-year-old Android phone.
The fix: Test your checkout on real mobile devices — both iPhone and Android. Ensure form fields are large enough to tap accurately (minimum 44px touch targets). Use the correct keyboard types for each field (numeric for phone numbers, email for email addresses). Enable auto-fill and address auto-complete. Shop Pay and Apple Pay are particularly powerful on mobile because they eliminate most form filling entirely. See our guide to optimising mobile checkout on Shopify.
Mistake 7: No order summary visibility
At checkout, customers want to verify what they are buying, how much they are paying, and when they will receive it. If the order summary is hidden, collapsed by default, or difficult to review, customers feel uncertain about their purchase — and uncertainty leads to abandonment.
This is especially problematic on mobile, where screen space is limited and designers sometimes hide the order summary behind an expandable panel to save space. The intention is good (reduce visual clutter), but the effect is bad (reduce customer confidence).
The fix: Keep the order summary visible throughout the checkout process. Show product images, names, quantities, individual prices, subtotal, shipping cost, tax, and total. On mobile, where screen space is limited, use a collapsible order summary that is expanded by default on the first step. The summary should show at minimum the total price and number of items at all times. Never hide the total cost behind a click.
A systematic approach to reducing abandonment
Fixing these seven mistakes will reduce your cart abandonment rate, but checkout optimisation should be an ongoing process, not a one-time project. Here is a systematic approach:
- Measure your current abandonment rate. Use Google Analytics 4 to track the checkout funnel and identify exactly where customers drop off. If 40% of customers drop off when shipping costs appear, that is your number one priority.
- Fix the biggest friction points first. Not all mistakes are equally costly. Start with the one that affects the most customers and the most revenue.
- Implement abandoned cart recovery. Set up Klaviyo abandoned cart flows to recover customers who leave during checkout. A well-optimised abandoned cart email sequence can recover 5-15% of abandoned carts. That is significant revenue from a single automated flow.
- Test and iterate. Use A/B testing to validate checkout changes before rolling them out to all customers. What works in theory does not always work in practice.
- Monitor continuously. Checkout performance should be reviewed monthly. Small changes in abandonment rate have large revenue implications when applied to every customer, every day.
For more on reducing cart abandonment specifically, see our detailed guide to reducing cart abandonment on Shopify.
Cart abandonment will never reach zero. Some customers are genuinely just browsing, comparing prices, or not ready to commit. But the difference between a 70% abandonment rate and a 60% abandonment rate, on a store doing £100k per month, is roughly £33,000 in additional monthly revenue. That is worth paying serious attention to.
Your checkout is the last step between a visitor and a customer. Every unnecessary field, every hidden cost, every missing payment option, and every missing trust signal is a reason for that visitor to leave without buying. Remove those reasons, and the revenue follows.
If you want help identifying and fixing the specific checkout issues on your store, start a conversation with us. We will audit your checkout flow and give you a prioritised list of changes that will reduce abandonment and increase revenue.
