Why People Abandon Checkout Even When They’re Ready to Buy

It’s a rainy Monday evening, and someone is browsing a website, all cozy and comfy on their couch. They find a pair of headphones they’ve been looking for a while, and immediately add them to the cart. They’re already happy because of their purchase, and they can’t wait to use their new headphones. And then, right at the very last moment, when they’re about to tap ‘Place Order’, they close the tab and don’t buy anything.

This happens ALL the time, and not just with e-commerce. Hotels experience it, as do software descriptions. It’s totally normal for someone to browse and then leave.

But once they have already picked what they want, added it to the cart, filled out their information, and then they decide to leave?

That’s just plain weird.

Where Checkout Starts to Fall Apart

When someone abandons checkout, it looks random, but it isn’t.

There are those who simply change their mind, but they’re the minority. Most users hit a friction point and leave because of that. To you, those points might seem tiny, but once you’ve had to deal with several of them in the span of 2 minutes, they’re too annoying to be worth it.

Prices That Change at the Last Moment

If you want to lose a sale, the best way to do it is to have the price change at the very last step. This happens a lot with shipping costs and taxes, or those service fees that nobody really knows what they’re for.

The moment the potential buyer sees a number that’s higher than it was a second ago, they’re done with you.

You seem sketchy, and nobody wants to buy from a sketchy store.

Payment Options That Don’t Match Expectations

By the time a potential buyer is on the payment screen, they already know how they want to pay. PayPal, Klarna, credit card, everyone has an option they prefer. If that option isn’t there, the buyer will hesitate. It’s the same thing that happens when a card fails because of a daily limit the user knew nothing about, or when a payment gets blocked for fraud protection.

The buyer already spent time on finding the product and filling out their personal info, so if they’re blocked at the very end, it feels like they’ve hit a wall, and they’ll probably give up.

Delays That Break the Flow

A slow checkout feels 10 times slower than it is because of when it happens.

Once they’re at checkout, the user wants to be done, so every extra second they have to spend tests their patience.

The biggest issues here are things like one-time passwords that take 40 seconds to arrive and bank approval screens that spin for way too long. Sometimes, even verification steps that seem reasonable are too much of a delay.

The buyer loses momentum and starts to question if they even need the thing they tried to buy.

Why People Give Up After They Decide to Buy

Now that you know what happens, let’s see what goes on through users’ heads when they decide to abandon checkout.

The moment someone decides to buy something; their patience gets down to almost 0. They’re not thinking whether they should buy it or not; they just want to be done with it and move on.

So, when someone decides not to buy after all, there's no doubt that’s causing that, but friction.

If they’re already okay with the price they saw, and then they get to check out and find out they have to pay more, then they feel like they’re losing money. A delay or an error message makes them suspicious of the site, and they get nervous about giving their credit card info.

At this point, timing matters more than before because buyers will tolerate delays while they’re browsing, but when they’re ready to pay?

No way.

If you want to reduce checkout abandonment (and who doesn’t?), you should know that it has nothing to do with design and everything to do with operations.

You can change the colors of some buttons or maybe cut down on the number of form files; that’ll help a little. But it still won’t make people stay and finish the order. What you want to focus on is getting the approval rates up, so cards aren’t rejected for no reason.

Also, you’ll want to route payments through the most reliable connections for each customer and speed up verification. Nobody wants to sit there and wait until verification is done, 5 minutes after it has started. Modern merchant payment tools can automatically handle all this, as they specialize in these types of high-risk and difficult industries and transactions; so, think about an option like that.

When that works the way it should, buyers never see any friction at all.

Conclusion

As you can see, checkout abandonment isn’t this huge issue that will make your life hell. It’s caused by a bunch of tiny problems that can all be handled relatively easily.

So, as counterintuitive as it sounds, stop trying to push more people into checkout and concentrate on making checkout as smooth as possible for the users who have already decided to buy.

Fix the prices, delays, and payments, so there’s no drama at the finish line.