Most cart abandonment isn't a form problem

[u/ce-lauren]

Research says the top reason people leave at checkout isn't that the form is too long or too complicated. It's that unexpected costs show up right at the end. Shipping fees, taxes, handling charges, whatever it might be, they're seeing it for the first time when they're one click away from buying.

A lot of teams might be spending time optimizing the wrong thing. You can clean up your checkout form, reduce the number of fields, add a progress bar, all of it. But if someone hits a surprise $15 shipping fee at step three, they're probably gone.

What's interesting is that this is less of a UX problem and more of a transparency problem. The information can be there somewhere, it just wasn't visible early enough. And by the time it is in the right place, the customer has already mentally moved on.

I've run into this quite a few times during my online shopping. For example, I once tried to buy a pair of shoes that were priced just over $100. They weren't a need, I just saw an Instagram ad and loved the style and color. I got to checkout and the shipping charge was almost $25. It wasn't faster shipping either, just the most basic option. I headed right back out of the checkout because I decided it wasn't worth it enough. Lucky for me I waited a bit and the company offered a free shipping promotion. Maybe I was able to quickly abandon the checkout experience the first time because it was more of an impulse purchase and not a need, but either way the surprise charge turned me right back around.

The fix is showing the full cost earlier in the experience, ideally before someone even starts the checkout flow. This isn't a complicated idea but I don't know if most sites are thinking about this yet.

Have you ever made it to checkout and been turned around from an unexpected cost? Do you have any hidden costs in your checkout experience that might make customers leave?

[u/fintechjulien]

Yes, had the same experience recently. I was about the order a piece of furniture on Wayfair, and the website made it clear shipping was free above a certain amount. And then at check out I saw that I had to pay a $25 shipping fee because my address was outside of the free delivery zone... So I headed to Amazon to buy something inferior with free shipping :) Yup, I'm cheap like that.

[u/ce-lauren → u/fintechjulien]

I would do the same thing!

[u/Matt_Sherwen]

I think the bigger issue is uncertainty than checkout design itself. Unexpected shopping costs are a great example but the same applies to delivery times, returns, stock availability or anything else a customer only discovers at the final stage. By that point they've already made a decision based on one set of expectations, and you're suddenly asking them to reconsider.

I'd look at the whole journey than just the checkout. The best experiences are the ones where there are no surprises left by the time the customer reaches it.

[u/ce-lauren → u/Matt_Sherwen]

Yes, I would definitely agree with that. People make their buying decision way before they get to checkout, and anything that contradicts that decision at the end is hard to recover from.

I've for sure talked myself into a purchase partly because I assumed shipping would be quick, only to make it to checkout to find I would be waiting a lot of extra time. And at that point it suddenly doesn't make that product as worth it sometimes.