> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.get-ryze.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Checkout friction

> The causes of cart abandonment at checkout — surprise costs, forced accounts, long forms, limited payment options — and how to reduce them.

Checkout is where intent is highest and abandonment is most expensive. A visitor who reaches checkout has decided to buy; anything that stops them is pure loss.

## The main causes, in order

**1. Unexpected costs.** Shipping, taxes, or fees revealed at checkout rather than earlier. Consistently the largest single cause of abandonment.

**2. Forced account creation.** Requiring registration before purchase. Guest checkout should always be available.

**3. Too many steps.** Every additional page loses some proportion of buyers.

**4. Long forms.** Fields that are not strictly required, address forms without autofill, phone numbers demanded without reason.

**5. Limited payment options.** Missing the wallet or method your market expects.

**6. Trust gaps.** No visible returns policy, no contact details, no security indicators at the payment step.

**7. Slow or unstable pages.** Timeouts and layout shift at the payment step lose otherwise-completed purchases.

## Fixes worth making first

* **Show shipping cost early** — on the product page, or a threshold banner ("free delivery over £50")
* **Enable guest checkout**, and offer account creation *after* purchase instead
* **Cut every non-essential field.** Ask yourself what each one is actually used for
* **Enable address autofill and autocomplete attributes**
* **Add the wallets your market uses** — Apple Pay, Google Pay, Shop Pay, and regional methods
* **Show returns and contact information** at the payment step, where doubt peaks

## Measure the funnel, not the total

A single "abandonment rate" tells you nothing actionable. Instrument each step — cart, information, shipping, payment — so you can see where the loss actually occurs.

Requires conversion tracking in [Google Analytics](/integrations/google-analytics). Without it, you are guessing at which step is the problem.

## What you cannot fix at checkout

Some abandonment is not friction:

* Comparison shopping — a normal part of buying
* Saving items for later
* Price sensitivity — a checkout change will not fix an uncompetitive price
* Genuine change of mind

Chasing these to zero is not possible. Recovering some via email is a marketing task, not a CRO one — see [Klaviyo](/integrations/klaviyo).

## Shopify-specific notes

Shopify's checkout is largely fixed outside Plus, which limits how much can be changed. That constrains the work to what *is* controllable: shipping cost presentation, payment methods, cart page design, and the product page decisions that precede checkout.

Do not spend effort trying to modify a checkout you cannot modify.

## Related

* [Product page conversion](/cro/product-page-conversion)
* [CRO store audit](/cro/store-audit)