How to design the cart and checkout so customers do not leave

A cart and checkout that do not put customers off have four things in common: a short form, the option to buy without creating an account, a delivery cost visible before the customer goes to payment, and clear error messages instead of a general “correct the form data”. Each of these can be checked on your own store in a few minutes.

These are not our guesses. Years of research by the Baymard Institute, an independent firm that studies online stores, consistently show the same reasons for cart abandonment: at the top are unexpected extra costs, and high on the list are also forced account creation and a checkout process that is too long or too complicated.

A short form

Every extra field is another chance for the customer to give up. To send an order, the following are usually enough: first and last name, delivery address, e-mail and phone number (couriers and parcel lockers use it for shipment notifications). Optional fields should really be marked as optional, and those nobody reads should simply be removed.

Shopping without creating an account

A forced account before the first purchase is one of the most frequently cited reasons for cart abandonment — a customer who wants to buy once does not want to invent another password. An account should be offered only after the order is placed, as a convenient option for the future, not as a condition. Both WooCommerce and PrestaShop have guest orders built in — you just need to check that the option is switched on in the settings.

A delivery cost visible early

An unexpected delivery cost shown only on the last screen, just before payment, is the most common reason for abandoned carts in the research mentioned above. Showing the delivery cost (or the free delivery threshold) already on the cart page — before the customer starts filling in details — builds trust and reduces drop-offs at the last step.

Clear error messages

A message “correct the form data” without saying which field is wrong forces the customer to guess. The error should appear right next to the field it concerns and say plainly what to do — for example “Enter the postcode in the format 00-000”, not just “Error”. The same is required by web accessibility rules (WCAG): an error must be described in text and, where possible, come with a suggestion for the correction. A form must also not clear the entered data after an error.

Local details that are easy to forget

• Parcel lockers and pickup points. Choosing a parcel locker from a map should work comfortably on a phone and should not require typing a home address if it is not needed.
• Fast payments. Customers in Poland are used to BLIK (a mobile payment system) and instant bank transfers. Their absence from the list of payment methods is an unnecessary reason to give up.
• A company invoice. Show the tax number (NIP in Poland) and company name fields only after the customer ticks “I want an invoice for a company”. An individual customer should not see them at all.

A 10-minute test: buy something in your own store

Take a phone, open the store in a private window (not logged in) and place an order for the cheapest product. Note three things: how many fields you had to fill in, on which screen you first saw the delivery cost, and what happened when you deliberately entered a wrong postcode. Finally, check that the confirmation e-mail arrived and did not land in spam. If any answer surprised you, it will surprise customers too.

Planning a new store or a rebuild of the current one? See Online store.