E-commerce Redesign
Why do people abandon checkout, and how do you stop it?
- Product Designer
- 2023
The Problem
Cart abandonment was 78%. Not bugs or crashes—just friction. Required account creation. Shipping costs revealed at the last step. No way to edit quantities without going back. Every small friction compounded.
Context
Mature e-commerce company, 10-year-old codebase. Timeline: 4 months. Team: 2 engineers (backend-heavy), PM, me. Constraint: zero new backend endpoints to avoid deployment risk. Success = drop abandonment to <65%.
Key Learning
User testing revealed the biggest surprise: people weren't abandoning because of cost, but because they felt *stuck*—unsure if the order was right, confused about shipping, couldn't go back to change anything. Build trust, not fewer fields.
What We Did
Redesigned checkout as a wizard, not a form. Clear progress indicator. At every step: confirm what was in the cart, show shipping options in real-time (no surprises), let people edit inline. Added trust signals (security badges, real-time stock counts). Removed account requirement (guest checkout default). Guest users could save their order for later by email, not account.
Outcome
Abandonment dropped to 62% in 4 months. Revenue per checkout went up 18% (fewer people racing through). AOV stayed flat, but conversion rose enough to add $2.8M annual revenue.
What's Next
We tested paid ads showing 'finish your cart'—huge opportunity we left on the table. Also, personalizing product recommendations at each step could have reduced buyer's remorse. The email save feature was underused; SMS reminder would have been better.