Your shop gets 1,000 baskets a month. 380 become orders: 38% of baskets. At an average order of £60, that is £22,800. The other 620 people added something and left.
The traffic is already paid for, so a checkout fix is worth more per pound than most ad spend.
What a better checkout is worth
Take baskets that buy from 38% to 50% (an example, so use your own figures):
That is 32% more sales from the same ad spend, and it lifts every campaign at once. Fix checkout before you scale traffic.
The rule
Find where people leave. Fix the biggest leak first.
Step 1: find the leak
In Shopify or GA4, see where checkout sessions drop: contact details, shipping or payment. A drop at shipping points to cost. A drop at payment points to trust, speed or payment options.
Step 2: remove cost surprises
Shipping shown only at the last step is the most common cause we see. The shopper expected £28 and the payment page says £34.50. Show the full cost on the cart page. With free delivery over a threshold, show the gap: “You’re £12 away from free delivery”.
Step 3: remove effort
- Guest checkout. On Shopify it is a setting. Offer an account after the order, details pre-filled.
- Shop Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay. They remove typing.
- Klarna or Clearpay for items above about £100. Test it.
- Fewer fields. Drop mandatory phone number, company name and a prominent second address line.
Step 4: add trust and speed
A padlock, recognised payment logos and “Free returns within 30 days” near the button add no steps.
Test speed with Google PageSpeed Insights, mobile, 4G. Google rates a page good when its main content loads within 2.5 seconds (Core Web Vitals report). If checkout is slower, fix that next. Common causes: blocking scripts, heavy images, too many checkout apps.
Step 5: win back leavers
A shopper who added to basket is your warmest prospect.
- Abandoned basket emails at 1 hour, 24 hours and 48 hours.
- Meta retargeting of same-day abandoners, showing the product they added.
Later, test a step indicator on custom checkouts and an offer on exit intent.
Fix checkout first, then size the spend that feeds it.
Related reading
- Product page CRO: 12 changes that lift conversion
- How much should you spend on Facebook Ads?
- Klaviyo segmentation for ecommerce
If more traffic keeps hitting the same checkout friction, book a free call and we’ll read it with you. Or see how our CRO team tests and measures fixes.
Quick answers
What is a good checkout conversion rate for ecommerce?
In the shops we see, 60 to 80% of started checkouts end in an order, and 25 to 45% of baskets do. If checkout completion is under 50%, there is almost certainly a fixable cause. Find which step loses the most people first.
What causes high cart abandonment?
The common causes are shipping costs shown late, forced account creation, missing payment options, a slow mobile page and forms that feel long. Fix those first.
Does free shipping reduce cart abandonment?
Often, because shipping cost is a leading reason people leave. Free shipping above a threshold also lifts order value. Test a threshold that most of your orders already reach, so you give away little.
How much revenue can a checkout fix recover?
Going from 38% to 50% of baskets ending in a purchase is 32% more orders from the same traffic. On £500,000 a year that is about £158,000 (an example, not a promise). Work yours out from your own numbers.
