Getting a shopper to add something to their cart is only half the job. What happens between “add to cart” and “order confirmed” decides whether that interest turns into a completed sale — and it’s also where most online stores quietly lose the most business. Here are the checkout mistakes that come up most often.
Forcing an Account Before Purchase
Requiring a shopper to create an account before they can buy adds friction at the exact moment they’re ready to pay. A guest checkout option, with the choice to create an account afterward, removes an unnecessary barrier without losing the ability to follow up later.
Hiding Shipping Costs Until the Last Step
Nothing ends a checkout faster than a shipping cost that appears for the first time on the final screen. Showing shipping costs — or at least a clear estimate — earlier in the process avoids the sense that the price just changed on the customer.
Too Many Steps Between Cart and Confirmation
Every additional page or form field between “cart” and “order placed” is another place a shopper can lose momentum and abandon the purchase. A checkout that asks only for what’s actually needed to fulfill the order — and asks for it in as few steps as possible — keeps that momentum intact.
A Checkout That Wasn’t Actually Tested on Mobile
A checkout flow that was designed and tested on a desktop screen can behave very differently on a phone — payment fields that are hard to tap, a card scanner that doesn’t trigger properly, or a layout that requires awkward zooming. Since a large share of online shopping now happens on mobile, a checkout that hasn’t been tested there is a checkout that hasn’t really been tested.
Not Making Trust Obvious at the Point of Payment
The moment someone is about to enter payment details is the moment they’re most likely to hesitate. Visible signals — a secure connection, a recognizable payment provider, a clear return policy — reduce that hesitation. Their absence doesn’t necessarily mean a store is untrustworthy, but their presence removes a reason to second-guess the purchase.
No Confirmation That Reassures the Buyer
After payment, a vague or missing confirmation leaves a customer unsure whether the order actually went through. A clear confirmation page and a prompt confirmation email close the loop and reduce the number of “did my order go through?” enquiries that would otherwise land in your inbox.
None of these fixes require rebuilding an entire store from scratch. Most of them are about removing friction at specific points in a flow that already exists — which is exactly the kind of review worth doing before assuming the problem is a lack of traffic rather than a leak in the checkout itself.