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E-Commerce Checkout Usability
69% of all e-commerce visitors abandon their shopping cart. Why?
A part of Baymard Premium access
This checkout study provides you with 7 years worth of checkout user testing and research, condensed into 134 usability guidelines.
Full access to the Checkout Usability study includes 17 reports with 134 actionable checkout guidelines, and a benchmark database with 15,900 UX performance scores and 11,000 categorized checkout best-practice implementation examples.
(Beyond including full access to this Checkout Usability research study, the Baymard Premium access also include 6 additional studies (Homepage & Category Navigation, E-Commerce Search, Product Lists & Filtering, Product Details Pages, Mobile E-Commerce, and Account & Self-Service) with a total of 700+ guidelines covered in 69 e-commerce UX research reports)
This research-based and pragmatic toolset will help you achieve the best possible checkout flow, user experience, and conversion rate.
“Baymard produces some of the most relevant and actionable user experience research available. They really understand the needs of UX and Product Management professionals, and their deep experience in the eCommerce field allows them to offer sophisticated, nuanced insights.”
17 Reports with 134 Guidelines to Increase Checkout Conversion by 35.26%
This original usability study focuses on how users behave during a checkout flow, where they get stuck, and why they abandon their purchase.
The findings presented in these 17 reports (720-page in total), are based on two rounds of large-scale qualitative testing of e-commerce checkout processes, along with an additional large-scale eye-tracking test, and quantitative research with 6,000+ participants. Despite testing the checkout flows from 25 leading e-commerce sites, the test subjects encountered more than 2,700 usability issues in the process of going from the shopping cart to completing their order.
In fact, the combined test data documents that the average site can increase its conversion rate by 35.26% solely through better checkout design. And these figures are based on the testing of checkout processes from leading e-commerce sites, such as Walmart, Amazon, Wayfair, Crate & Barrel, ASOS, etc.
In these 17 reports, we have distilled all 2,700+ usability issues encountered by the test subjects into 134 checkout user experience guidelines, and prioritized them by UX impact – providing you with concise design guidelines that will help you improve the performance of your checkout process.
What you’ll get in the 17 Checkout Usability reports
“I can not tell you how much help your benchmark studies have been for our company, e-commerce and UX teams. We have used and continue to use these reports for baseline benchmarks as we build test protocols or eye tracking scripts etc. in lab.”
Topics Covered in the 17 Checkout Reports
17 × Cart & Checkout Topics
See All 17 Topics
Cart & Checkout
Checkout Types
Cart & Checkout
Checkout Types
3 Guidelines, 25 Pages
The UX benefits and inherent usability pitfalls of a multistep checkout flow, accordion checkouts, and one-step checkouts.
Cart & Checkout
Shopping Cart & “Added to Cart” Behavior
Cart & Checkout
Shopping Cart & “Added to Cart” Behavior
11 Guidelines, 67 Pages
The shopping cart page, incl. cart design, quantity and save features, the page response when users add products to the cart on the product page (drop-down cart, etc.).
Cart & Checkout
Account Selection & Creation
Cart & Checkout
Account Selection & Creation
9 Guidelines, 49 Pages
Checkout flows for signed in users, users creating an account, or checking out as a guest, incl. account-selection designs and communication,‘Delayed Account Creation’, social media accounts, password rules.
Cart & Checkout
Customer & Address Information
Cart & Checkout
Customer & Address Information
12 Guidelines, 69 Pages
How to handle the form fields for all personal user data, incl. privacy concerns, shipping addresses, billing addresses, international addresses, phone fields, address auto-detection techniques, etc.
Cart & Checkout
Gifting Flow & Features
Cart & Checkout
Gifting Flow & Features
5 Guidelines, 25 Pages
How the checkout flow and fields need to change when users gift-mark items, where and how users should be able to gift-mark items, and how the actual gifting features needs to be presented to avoid issues.
Cart & Checkout
Shipping & Store Pickup
Cart & Checkout
Shipping & Store Pickup
11 Guidelines, 67 Pages
Shipping and store pickup, incl. the shipping method UI, shipping descriptions, order cut-off times, ‘Free Shipping’ tiers, how omni-channel sites best integrate ‘Store Pickup’ and ‘Store Availability’, and more.
Cart & Checkout
Payment Flow & Methods (Incl. Third-Party)
Cart & Checkout
Payment Flow & Methods (Incl. Third-Party)
8 Guidelines, 39 Pages
The payment methods interface, how to integrate and display an array of different third-party payment methods, the gift card redemption flow, and more.
Cart & Checkout
Credit Card Form
Cart & Checkout
Credit Card Form
10 Guidelines, 50 Pages
How to cause as few abandonments as possible, incl. the credit card field design, card validation logic and formatting, expiration date, security code, and cardholder name inputs, field sequence, card icons, and card type selection.
Cart & Checkout
Order Review
Cart & Checkout
Order Review
5 Guidelines, 40 Pages
How to properly design the final ‘Review’ step before a user completes an order, including ‘Place Order’ button placement, and necessary review data, along with the editing flow for those users who need to change data.
Cart & Checkout
Order Confirmation & E-Mail
Cart & Checkout
Order Confirmation & E-Mail
4 Guidelines, 25 Pages
The implementation of post-purchase confirmations, incl. the information and actions needed on the order confirmation page and order confirmation email.
Cart & Checkout
Form & Page Design
Cart & Checkout
Form & Page Design
10 Guidelines, 48 Pages
How to design and position the cart link in the site wide header and primary button throughout the checkout, minimizing form intimidation, avoiding multi-column layouts, using ‘Enclosed Checkout’ designs, etc.
Cart & Checkout
User Interactions & Distractions
Cart & Checkout
User Interactions & Distractions
10 Guidelines, 37 Pages
How to implement load indicators, when to provide feedback on user actions, where to avoid ‘Apply’ buttons, embedding content from third-parties, and much more on interactive components.
Cart & Checkout
Cross-Sells
Cart & Checkout
Cross-Sells
4 Guidelines, 19 Pages
How to thoughtfully incorporate cross-sells into a checkout flow, including the use of active vs. passive cross-selling, adapting cross-sells to user context, and pitfalls of specific placements and wording.
Cart & Checkout
Validation Errors & Data Persistence
Cart & Checkout
Validation Errors & Data Persistence
10 Guidelines, 56 Pages
Error recovery and address validation experiences, incl. how to improve users’ ability to locate, understand, and resolve errors, and more.
Cart & Checkout
Field Labels & Microcopy
Cart & Checkout
Field Labels & Microcopy
7 Guidelines, 39 Pages
How to mark optional and required fields, appropriate label positions, inline labels, optimizing microcopy and descriptions, and marking of optional and required fields.
Cart & Checkout
Field Design & Features
Cart & Checkout
Field Design & Features
8 Guidelines, 48 Pages
The proper selection and assembly of form elements, inputs, and selections, incl. choosing the right type of interface, field masking and character restrictions, and more.
Cart & Checkout
Default Values & Autocompletion
Cart & Checkout
Default Values & Autocompletion
8 Guidelines, 41 Pages
Intelligent form features such as making inferred selections, prefilling form fields, browser auto-fills, and personalization of the checkout flow — smart form field features that improve checkout UX substantially.
“The Baymard reports have proven to be an invaluable resource for us. Comprehensive, pragmatic and actionable. We have redesigned our checkout process and made changes to our category pages based on usability guidelines in the reports.”
Benchmark: Is your checkout better than Apple’s or Walmart’s?
Based on the findings of this checkout research study we’ve benchmarked the checkout processes of 60 top grossing US and European e-commerce sites. This provides you with the most comprehensive e-commerce checkout database in the world with 800+ manually reviewed checkout steps, and 11,000+ categorized implementation examples of the 134 checkout usability guidelines.
When you purchase the checkout usability study you get full access to this benchmark database.
Furthermore the benchmark database include tools that allow you to review your own (or your clients’) checkout process and see how it stacks up against the competition.
What you’ll get in the Checkout Usability benchmark
“Excellent tool – looking forward to using it with our other sites and prototypes as they’re developed.”
Get your 17 checkout reports and benchmark with Baymard Premium
Get instant access to the 17 checkout UX reports (along with 64 other e-commerce UX research reports) and the full checkout benchmark database with Baymard Premium access.
Refund policy: We stand by our research and offer you a full 14 days “no questions asked” refund. If you’re not satisfied, simply e-mail us at christian@baymard.com for a full refund.
Baymard Institute’s research is used by:
“Intelligent, consumer-focused insights that are clear and actionable. The team in the room really loved the way the Baymard Institute highlighted the optimizations in the various user experience elements (copy, layout, design, calls-to-action…), from the perspective of consumer struggles. Baymard’s Usability research really complements our other existing research tools.”
“Baymard has been a great resource in helping us improve the customer experience. We are continually applying these best practices to our sites.”
“Damn. The reports that the @Baymard folks do cost money, but they're worth it.”
“Thanks again for the great work on our checkout project. Our whole group found it incredibly insightful. We’re applying the suggestions you provided to our new checkout design which launches at the end of the month! One of my colleagues was also interested in your group’s competitive expertise with regard to responsive web and native apps.”
“I can confirm that the list was fully implemented. Every time we put up a change we either A/B test or we watch it very closely to determine that it's doing better and not the opposite. So I can confirm that these fixes have improved our checkout. Thanks for everything.”
