Shopping Cart and Checkout

In the final step, when a visitor adds an item to the shopping cart and wants to complete the purchase, you can lose the most customers. On average, about 70% of carts are abandoned before purchase (Baymard Institute, average of 50 studies).

How to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment?

When you use analytical tools (GA4, Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar or similar) to track visitor statistics, you will undoubtedly notice many exits from the shopping cart page. By analyzing the pages visited, you can quickly identify where the purchase process stops, or at which step or page you lose the most customers. Once you find the cause of the issue, analyze individual elements and improve them.

Some of the most common factors for shopping cart abandonment include complicated ordering steps, shipping costs, issues with the functionality or display of input fields, and other purchase restrictions.

To achieve the most optimal purchases, pay attention to the following points:

• Minimize the number of steps in the purchase process,
• Remove distracting and unnecessary elements,
• Build trust in your online store and the purchase process,
• Offer various payment and delivery methods, and
• Implement cart abandonment email notifications.

Number of Steps in the Purchase Process

The more steps there are from the moment a visitor adds an item to the cart and becomes a customer to the thank-you page, the less likely a successful purchase will be. Too many steps can discourage visitors who are in a hurry, as too many steps can delay their purchase or confuse them on how to complete it successfully. Therefore, ensure a minimal number of steps. Personally, I always place the checkout on a single page on online stores and provide an option for guest checkout. This means you offer fields for non-registered purchase, and for customers who wish to create a user account, you provide that option as well. Do not ask for the email address before the customer sees the cart: it needlessly reduces the number of purchases. Collect it at checkout, where the customer needs it anyway to confirm the order.

Updated 2026. The customer must see the total price including delivery and VAT already in the cart, not only at payment. Express payment with a wallet (Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal), address autofill and clear field error messages also help. Boxes for extra services (insurance, faster delivery) must not be pre-ticked, as the customer must explicitly confirm any additional payment. Do not use fake countdown timers or fake low-stock messages ("Only 2 left!") if they are not true: in the EU this is an unfair commercial practice.

Remove Unnecessary Elements

With the shopping cart, you often differentiate between mandatory and optional data for completing a purchase. Mandatory steps are necessary for order processing and shipping items to the customer's address. Optional steps are mainly for collecting various information that can serve you for customer analysis or for various marketing purposes. In certain cases, these can also be elements that are necessary for some customers but not for others. You can adapt these so that specific fields are visible to one visitor and hidden to another. As an example, we can highlight the entry of regions, which is not mandatory in every country but is essential for successful delivery in neighboring Austria and Italy.

The shopping cart also allows the use of coupons, which triggers thoughts in customers that they could save more during their purchase. You can easily solve this by adding a question like "How to get a discount coupon?" next to the coupon input button. In a pop-up window, customers will find the answer, and they won't leave the shopping cart to search for discounts online.

Credibility of the Online Store and Purchase

Often, there is an issue because merchants believe that visitors are experienced internet users and know when a purchase link is secure. Unfortunately, the credibility of the online store can become a significant problem. If visitors don't trust the site, they won't make a purchase on it. In my past experiences with online stores, I've had cases where visitors, due to uncertainty and unfamiliarity with the website, called the company's headquarters phone number to verify if the company truly exists and operates.

You can enhance credibility by presenting purchase security to customers, specifying warranty periods for ordered items, and clearly providing basic company information where customers will be ordering items.

A secure connection (HTTPS) is taken for granted today: browsers mark a site without it as unsafe or warn before the visit. Genuine reviews, clear return terms, visible company information and familiar payment methods add further credibility.

Offer Various Payment and Delivery Methods

The payment method and delivery costs are two crucial elements that you should consider during the planning of your online store, as certain payment and delivery methods can incur additional costs for the company, especially for your customers. This is especially important for delivery costs, which can deter customers from making a purchase, particularly for lower-priced items. The best way to set appropriate delivery costs is to check the delivery costs of your competitors. Then, set your own costs and test them in various variations. This way, you'll gain direct insights into how delivery costs affect purchases and which ones yield the best results. However, keep in mind that delivery costs vary by country.

Payment methods can also vary by country. In some countries cash on delivery is still very common, in others almost unknown, so check which methods customers in your target country use. Preferred payment methods differ from country to country, so check which methods the buyers in your target markets actually use. Therefore, ensure that you offer payment methods that are most common in each country.

Implement Cart Abandonment Notifications

Despite your efforts to simplify the purchase as much as possible, visitors still abandon their shopping carts. To address this, you can use email notifications about abandoned shopping carts. The reasons for incomplete purchases can vary, but that doesn't mean the visitor can't return to the site. Therefore, abandoned cart notifications are a practical trick you can try at different intervals. Sending email about an abandoned cart is legally sensitive: a message with an offer is marketing and as a rule requires prior consent. The exception for existing customers hardly applies, because no sale took place. More in Online store legislation in the EU.

AuthorAnže Voh

My name is Anže, I am a certified Magento solution expert and the maker of several award-winning online stores. I am the architect of all Degriz projects.

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