The Impact Of Checkout Design On Sales

I've worked with SFCC brands pulling in 9 figures a year. And many leaked revenue at the same exact place. Checkout. Let's be honest: You can have the perfect product. A smooth PLP. A stunning PDP. But if your checkout makes customers hesitate (even for a second) they're gone. And they don't come back. Here's what I've learned the best brands do differently when optimizing checkout in Salesforce Commerce Cloud - without sacrificing UX. 1. Don't just reduce friction. Eliminate it. Customers abandon for simple reasons: • Promo codes that don't work • Forms that ask for info twice • Shipping costs that show up too late Top brands build flows that assume urgency: • Pre-filled fields from session data • Real-time validation with inline feedback • Shipping transparency up front A slow or unclear step isn't "just UX." It's lost revenue. 2. Offer fewer payment methods than you think - but make them obvious More isn't always better. Confusion creates delay. Delay kills conversion. What works: • Credit/debit (always) • Apple Pay / Google Pay • PayPal / Shop Pay • Affirm / Klarna (only if AOV supports it) Smart brands prioritize based on data. They test placement, auto-detect device types, and default to what converts fastest. 3. Mobile isn't secondary - it's everything The biggest brands I've worked with design for tap-first, scroll-second. That means: • Full-width input fields • Large tap targets with spacing • One-column flow • Sticky CTA at the bottom of the screen If your checkout feels like a spreadsheet on mobile, you're already losing. 4. Use Business Manager like a growth engine, not just a CMS I've seen many teams hard-code checkout logic. Top teams know better. They use: • A/B tests for live checkout experiments • Real-time rules that adapt without redeploys SFCC is powerful - if you treat it like a tool, not a template. Your checkout is the last conversation your brand has with your customer. If that conversation feels clunky, confusing, or exhausting - you won't get a second one. Want to grow revenue without spending more on ads? Fix the one place that silently kills conversions: Checkout. What did I miss?

Building your checkout flow is like crafting a sales conversation. Every element either moves customers closer to purchase or creates friction that drives them away. Most DTC brands obsess over ad creative but underestimate checkout design. Here's the truth: A well-designed checkout can lift revenue more than your best-performing ad. 3 critical areas to master: 🥵 Cognitive Load → Every question, field, or decision point in checkout adds mental friction. Your job? Remove unnecessary thinking. If a customer has to calculate free shipping thresholds or wonder about the order’s arrival day, that’s friction. 👍 Trust Signals → First-time buyers need different reassurance than repeat customers. Your checkout should adapt. New customers might need reviews and press features. Loyal customers want their status acknowledged and rewarded. 💎 Value Perception → Shipping costs hit differently at various price points. A $7 shipping fee on a $30 order feels expensive. The same fee on a $100 order? Barely noticeable. The problem is even when brands know these principles, they struggle to implement and test them effectively. That's where smart checkout optimization comes in. At Obvi, we've been methodically testing these elements. Our latest focus is reducing cognitive load around free shipping thresholds (FSTs)... Using PrettyDamnQuick with Avi Moskowitz, we tested adding a simple note showing exactly how much more a user needed for free shipping. No complicated math for customers. No uncertainty about what the threshold is or how to reach it... The results after 25 days →  • +$0.78 more revenue per customer (meaning the messaging IS pushing people to add more to their cart) • Better conversion rates • Higher average order values across the board This nicely illustrates why checkout optimization matters. One small friction point removed = real revenue impact.

I analyzed 150+ ecommerce checkouts this year including luxury giants Garmin, Michael Kors, and Tiffany. What’s shocking is that even billion-dollar brands are bleeding revenue at checkout through amateur mistakes. The forcing account creation before purchase is the #1 killer. My data shows brands offering guest checkout with optional account creation at confirmation seeing 25% higher completion rates without fail. Other costly checkout errors destroying your revenue: • Hiding order summaries (customers abandon when they can't verify purchases) • Cluttering pages with navigation bars (each unnecessary element drives drop-offs) • Using unconventional form fields (cognitive friction kills sales) • Lacking progress indicators (uncertainty breeds abandonment) The best checkout experience provides absolute clarity about where customers are in the process, eliminating hesitation and creating the confidence needed to complete the purchase. Remember: Every second your customer spends thinking is a second they might leave forever.

Cart Abandonment Was Killing Sales. Here’s how we cut it by 37% in 28 days. After 1 month of deep CRO testing across 3 brands, Here are 4 checkout tweaks I wish we did sooner: 1. Eliminate decision fatigue upfront Most abandoned carts start before checkout even begins. • Consolidate product variants • Pre-select popular choices • Remove surprise fees before final step 🧠 Clarity wins more than cleverness. 2. Shortened the checkout flow Every extra field = more friction. We cut it to 2 pages: Page 1: Shipping + email Page 2: Payment + order review → Result: 11% boost in completed checkouts 3. Added real-time shipping transparency Static “Shipping calculated at checkout” killed trust. We integrated dynamic rates + estimated delivery dates. Conversions jumped, especially for first-time buyers. 4. Used urgency without being pushy No fake countdown timers. Just: “Orders ship by 2PM today” “Only 4 left at this price” (live inventory) → Result: +7% conversion lift The most underrated? ➡️ Dynamic shipping transparency. Trust = the missing lever most brands ignore. What’s working now: • Mobile-first design (80%+ of checkouts are mobile) • Post-purchase upsells, not pre-checkout clutter • 1-click checkout integrations like Shop Pay, or PayPal Save this post if you’re: • An ecommerce brand with 100+ monthly orders • A DTC founder struggling with abandoned carts • Scaling paid ads but leaking sales at checkout What’s your #1 checkout leak right now? 👇

Your Checkout Isn’t Broken—But It’s Costing You Sales  Most businesses focus on getting people to the checkout page. But here’s the real question: What happens once they get there? I’ve seen brands lose millions in revenue because their checkout process wasn’t designed for how people actually buy.  Here’s what makes the biggest difference (and no, it’s not just “removing extra fields”):  ✅ Pre-fill what you can. If your customers have already entered their email and shipping details earlier in the journey, don’t make them do it again. The more typing required, the higher the drop-off.  ✅ Let people pay the way they want. No PayPal? No Apple Pay? No BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later)? If customers don’t see their preferred payment option, many will just abandon the cart. One extra payment method can mean a double-digit conversion lift. ✅ Show upfront pricing—no surprises. Customers hate last-minute shipping costs or hidden fees. If they see an unexpected total at checkout, they’ll leave. Be transparent from the start.  ✅ Reassure, don’t just assume trust. Even well-known brands benefit from trust signals. Adding "100% secure checkout," "Money-back guarantees," or even customer reviews near the final purchase button can tip hesitant buyers over the edge. I’ve seen brands increase checkout conversions by 15% or more just by implementing these small but high-impact changes.  So before investing more in traffic, fix what happens after people decide to buy. 👉 What’s the biggest mistake you see in checkout pages?

Between 2019-2021 I lost $206,000 on my eCommerce website because of 3 crucial mistakes. The main red flag was glaring, yet as someone inexperienced in eCommerce, I didn’t know what “normal” was…. A 28% checkout completion rate. I know… rough. Ultimately when I made the major fixes, this moved to 59%. More than doubled off three changes. So what were my blockers? 1) First, we had a large international audience, and for a janky website (not even on Shopify but a bespoke solution at the time), not having the ability to pay via Paypal or alternative means to a credit card was a huge blocker. We saw via Hotjar recordings folks scrolling, looking for alternatives to adding a CC, and then bouncing. We moved to Shopify and added additional ways to pay. 2) Next, our checkout form was too long. We saw tons of partial completes in Hotjar. When we changed to just the bare essential fields (email, name, address, country), conversions improved overnight. 3) Finally, folks don’t like to pay for shipping. We would charge $4 on a $20 game to ship. But when we charged $24 for that same game and made shipping free (in the US/CA), conversions immediately went up. A smaller but potentially impactful change was removing testimonial quotes on the checkout page. A lot of companies are losing huge sums on homepages, check-out pages, register pages, and pricing pages because they are missing obvious best practices in their industry. That is a major problem we are trying to fix at DoWhatWorks. We want to help brands start from a point of data. And this doesn’t mean just copying competitors' designs. That’s not the takeaway. What it does mean is if 95% of competitors include alternative ways to checkout besides just credit card as an eCommerce brand, that might be a good thing to look into. I am excited to see online testing go through the same revolution that paid advertising did around 2018-19 when big data really started to help guide advertisers and we saw less and less manual targeting (and rough guessing), and more having the algorithms optimize for folks. The future is coming and it’s going to be an amazing thing for brands on the cutting edge of using data to drive better decision-making