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Discover 24 best checkout practices and optimisation tips to boost your e-commerce conversions. From reducing form friction to real-time validations, transform your checkout into a seamless, sales-driving experience.
Your checkout page is the break-or-make point for your business. Get it right and you increase the chances of people buying from you by leaps. Get it wrong, and you’re a part of the 70.19% of buyers who abandon websites on the checkout page.
That’s because every extra click or unnecessary field can send your users straight to your competitors.
Fret not! In this article, we’ll talk about the 24 best checkout practices that can transform your checkout process from a frustrating questionnaire to a conversion engine.
Let’s begin.
What is Checkout?
Checkout is the final step in the customer journey when customers confirm and pay for the purchase on an e-commerce store.
Simply, it’s the stage where your users review their cart, enter their shipping address, and payment details to place their order. So having set good checkout practices will not only help you but will help your customer have a smooth checkout experience.
Source: Flipkart’s Checkout Page
Why Checkout Practices Matter More Than You Think
If customers simply linger in your store but do not check out, you’re not making any money. Therefore, the importance of a good checkout experience cannot be undermined.
Some of the most common reasons users might not complete the checkout are slow page times, unexpected costs, and overly complex forms.
However, according to a Baymard institute report only about 2% of websites have a “good” checkout practices and experiences. According to it, the average site has 32 unique improvements to make, with the potential to boost conversion rates by up to 35% through better UX.
Thus, ensuring not just a checkout page but a seamless one becomes all the more critical. This is especially true for online stores where users cannot be assisted face-to-face.
24 Best Checkout Practices for Maximum Conversions
We present some of the most important actions you can take to take your checkout practices from “Heck, another long form” to “Wow, that was a breeze”.
Offer Guest Checkout by Default
Picture this: You walk into a grocery store, and just before you’re about to pay, the cashier asks for your email and phone number. Pretty annoying, right? This is precisely what “Sign up to complete your purchase” feels like.
Statistically, 19% of customers abandon their carts when forced to register right before a purchase. This could translate to a very high loss of revenue, especially if your average order size is large.
The solution is to resort to guest checkout by default. Guest checkout means customers can buy something without creating an account or logging in.
Source: Nike’s Checkout Page
For example, you can easily check out on Nike without ever logging in.
If not already enabled, it’s important to allow guest checkout on your site. You just need to ask for info like phone number and email address, and justify them with solid reasons. The two most valid reasons that you can use are: order verification and fraud prevention.
Minimise Required Form Fields
You don’t want your checkout page to look like a tax form. The reason is simple: the more required fields in your checkout form, the more opportunities your leads have to say “NO!”
Some common unnecessary required fields you might be using are separate boxes for first name and last name, creating passwords before purchase, or asking for the company name if you’re, for example, a shoe business.
Each of the above fields does three things: slows down checkout, increases frustration, and kills conversions.
The solution is straightforward: audit your checkout practices and check the form thoroughly for any extra fields. You can improve your checkout page by periodically running an A/B test.
Allow Free Text in Contact Fields
Which one is correct: “(123) 457-2354” or “1234572354”? Well, the answer is both! Customers hate reformatting data. So, stop playing the format police and allow free text in contact fields. Plus, it’s 2025, it’s time to let your system handle such tasks.
To optimise free text during checkout, you can use smart input parsing to naturally clean formatting issues. Moreover, you can auto-format as users type. For example, auto-add hyphens in credit cards. You can also provide visual hints and placeholder examples like “Phone (e.g., 123-434-7878)”, “Date (e.g., DD/DD/YYYY)”.
Need inspiration? Did you know Zepto, an Indian e-commerce grocery delivery app, drastically reduced its cart abandonment rates with this method despite having tough competitors like Swiggy, Instamart and Blinkit dominating the Indian grocery market? Here’s their case study.
Source: Zepto’s Homepage
Validate Each Field in Real-Time
Nothing frustrates shoppers more than typing their entire details just to see ‘Invalid’ after hitting submit. Do you know why? Post-submission errors not only increase abandonment by 67%, but your customers might never return to your website.
The fix? Showing red/green feedback while the users are typing, API-Powered validation for detecting typos like “gamil.com” instead of “gmail.com”, and auto-correction to fix spelling errors silently work really well.
In addition, you can create a checklist or progress bar to gamify the whole experience. Doing so also helps users verify how many steps are left for the final order placement.
Source: Uniqlo’s Login Page with real-time info verification
Capture the Email First
Early email collection is one of the best ways to recover abandoned carts, an essential strategy when nearly 70% of online carts are left behind. With a single touchpoint, you can re-engage shoppers who might otherwise disappear for good.
More importantly, it fuels a revenue-driving channel. According to sources, email marketing contributes to over 25% of total sales for many e-commerce brands. That’s not just bringing up your retention—it’s bringing you more money.
When you ask for the email immediately, you’re setting yourself up to follow up, re-engage, and gently nudge those window-shoppers back to checkout.
Validate Emails Instantly
Capturing an email is only half the battle. If it’s invalid or mistyped, your follow-up efforts fall flat. Real-time validation ensures the email is deliverable by checking format, domain existence, and server responses.
It also helps avoid costly errors like gmial.com or yhoo.com, which can silently undermine campaign performance.
With instant validation, you’re not just fetching an email; you’re making sure it actually works. These kind of checkout practices ensure no typos, no fake addresses, no dead ends. Just clean, reliable data you can actually use.
Keep Contact Fields in a Natural Order
Forget your customer, even your brain would freeze for 3 seconds if you were to fill in your postcode before your street name, wouldn’t it? It’s like putting on shoes before your socks!
The good news? This issue is the easiest to fix. All you need to do is use simple logic, not complicated math. The logic that you need to apply is a mental map concerning the countries you serve.
For example, in the UK, people usually enter their house number, then street, city, and lastly the postcode. In contrast, in Japan, a different structure dominates: postal code, then prefecture, city, and finally street.
Apart from following the local norms, it is wise to use tools like Google Places API to predict addresses. This practice will help save your users from typing fatigue.
Source: John Lewis Checkout Page
Validate Against Official Postal Sources
Ever received a notification saying “Delivered” for a package that never arrived? Well, chances are your address wasn’t accurate enough. This is where validating against official postal sources comes into picture.
Let’s come straight to the point. For UK addresses, use Royal Mail PAF. On the other hand, for Global addresses, use Loqate. They cover 245 countries and even take care of quirky formats like the Canadian postal codes.
One more tip- be flexible! Accept both formats of postcodes like “SW1B 1BB” and “SW1B1BB”. However, standardize behind the scenes.
Use Descriptive Error Messages
Just stating “Invalid Input” is not cool. You need to tell your leads where exactly they are going wrong. For example, you must tell buyers “Postal code is 6 digits” and not simply “Try Again!”
You can also leverage API hints like “This postcode doesn’t match your street address.”
One classic real-world example is Havaianas, a Brazilian footwear brand. Havaianas made a language mistake in its checkout process. They were using “Order Summary” in their checkout page, which the users were interpreting as “Order Complete,” leading to incomplete orders. By changing the language to “Order Not Yet Complete” and “Continue to Place Order!”, they reduced their cart abandonment rates by 10%!
Prompt and Guide During Validation
Have you ever had GPS rerouting when you take a wrong turn? Yeah, it’s pretty frustrating, but hey? It helps, though! Validation should do the same thing for your customers—guide them in the best way without any scolding.
Some ways to politely correct your audience are to suggest corrections like “Do you mean “Street 7, Gare Du Nord?” and allow opt-outs such as “Use as entered.”
By doing so, your customer will feel less lost and empowered to checkout on their own.
Always Re-Verify Returning Customer Data
Life changes, and so can your audience’s physical address. So, confirm their addresses whenever they re-order after a significant amount of time. You must also confirm their mobile number, email, and payment mode. All of these things can also change.
You can re-verify your customer data using a pre-payment check like “Are you in the right place? Please confirm”. To verify contact details, you can use “We will text a code to *****12345, need to update?”
This way, your transportation costs and marketing efforts would also never go to waste. You would be up to date with where your customers live and how to connect with them effectively.
Source: Sézane’s Homepage
Use a One-Page Checkout Flow
People today have a goldfish attention span. Notice for yourself: would you want to see an Instagram reel if it doesn’t catch your interest within the first 3 seconds? You won’t, right? The same is the case with your checkout page.
Some steps that you can implement to make your checkout single-page are: condensing all information (address, billing, payment) together and adding a sticky payment button.
Here we are not just talking arbitrarily, but with facts. A Shopify store managed by Digismoothie’s single-page checkout outperformed its two-page counterpart by 7.8% in conversion rates.
So, your solution is straightforward; fit everything on one page! You can also use accordions or tabs like “Shipping” and “Payment” to fake simplicity.
Ensure Mobile-First Optimization
Unfortunately, a horror stat for you– 85.65% of mobile users abandon their carts. Well, mobile users account for half of the total e-commerce transactions! So, if you mess it up with your mobile optimisation, you know how it will turn out.
Some important fixes that you need to implement at any cost are bigger buttons, at minimum 48X48px, and sticky checkout bars following thumb-scrolling, like ASOS’s 20% conversion lift.
Some more points that you can consider are:
- Place key actions (payment, CTA) within thumb’s reach.
- Ensure input fields auto-focus/zoom when tapped.
- Compress images and lazy-load non-critical elements.
- Use auto-detect for card types and real-time validation.
A pro tip: Use heatmaps to analyse what your users focus on the most. You may be giving all the right information, but that information is below the fold, and is therefore not visible to them.
Add Visual Progress Indicators
This is similar to what we talked about before in Fix 4: gamify the whole experience. When you use progress bars, shoppers bail out less often. Progress bars reduce task completion anxiety and make people want to move ahead.
To develop a progress bar system using phrases like “Step 1 out of 3” with a chunky colored bar matching your company’s colour palette is a great start. Furthermore, you can also add cheeky bonuses like “
Almost there, your product is waiting!” to boost their motivation.
Offer Multiple Payment Options
Offering just one payment mode? That’s a big No! You have to understand that not everybody prefers the same payment method. Also, offering one payment mode basically means handing your customers to your competitors.
You need to be flexible enough to receive payments, i.e., you need to have netbanking, Credit/Debit Card, BNPL services at all costs.
Apart from this, local heroes matter too, especially if you’re a local business in a host nation. Some common examples of local payment modes are UPI for India, iDeal for the Netherlands and Bizum for Spain.
The ASOS checkout page below shows multiple payment options for users, such as PayPal, debit, and credit cards. They have also written, “We accept: VISA, Mastercard, etc.” to show their flexibility.
Source: ASOS’s Checkout Page
Provide Smart Autofill & Validation
It’s rightly said that to err is human. However, your checkout page shouldn’t follow the same behaviour. Your customers won’t wait even a second after their frustration kicks in.
Therefore, it is critical to provide smart autofill and validation in your textboxes. Autofill makes checkout easier and faster. Furthermore, it helps users fill in their payment and shipping details without errors.
Along with providing smart autofill, you can also offer a drop-down, as it reduces the chances of typing errors.
Display Trust Signals
In business, trust needs actions, not just verbal cues. The reality is–-building trust boosts conversion rates by 42%.
In simple words, trust signals are proof that your store is safe and legitimate. Trust signals can help nervous buyers be confident before hitting the “Pay Now” button.
Some trust signals you can use are security badges, SSL certificates, and recognisable payment logos like VISA, Mastercard, etc., near the checkout button.
That’s it. Even if you implement a few of the above things, it’s enough to gather adequate trust.
Multi-Language & Currency Support
If you’re an international business or even a business with a broader presence, you can’t afford to display just the currency and language of your headquarters nation. This discourages your users as they don’t feel much integrated into your value system.
As a result, it is essential to allow dynamic currency switching, such as from $ to ₹, and multi-language support. Understandably, making your system compatible for every language in the world might not be possible.
However, you can care for widely used languages like French, English, or German. Mind you, you can’t just rely on Google Translate, as it misses out on many socio-cultural factors that you can effectively leverage.
Real Time Support
Real-time support is necessary at all steps, from choosing the right product to finally making the payment. Think about how much it would hurt a business if a hot lead leaves the checkout page due to a payment error.
You surely don’t want to be that business that replicates this. So, ensure your customer support team is always present to help your users navigate any hurdles that might arise.
Some popular ways that you can adopt are: live chat boxes that actually work. You must not rely on an AI that says “Hi, we’ll get back to you in 3 days!”.
Source: Zara’s Checkout Page
Personalise the Checkout
It’s time to personalise. We are not living in 1990, when any product sold on its own. Personalising means offering tailor-made suggestions to your users. You can do this by customising your offerings based on different customer segments.
Yes, this is true even for your checkout process as well. A company that personalises their checkout page very well is Sephora. They recommend you add on products based on your past search and preferences.
Source: Sephora’s Checkout Page
Offer Shipping Options With Transparent Costs
Nothing kills mood faster than a $17 delivery fee at the last step. Honestly, the delivery fee causes more people to quit than the price of your product.
Therefore, you should always be upfront about your pricing. Some ways to ensure this are asking the address sooner to calculate the delivery fee ASAP, offering tiers like “Free delivery and returns” and “Order in 2 hours for weekend delivery.”
Source: Adidas’s Checkout Page
Auto-Complete Form Fields Based on PIN Code
Many users might find typing out the whole address boring. Therefore, it’s best to give them the option to auto-fill their address. You can simply ask them to fill out their PIN and make suggestions thereafter.
For example, if a user enters 75016 as a PIN, the form automatically fills South of Paris in the city textbox. You can use Google Places API and Loqate to implement this.
Avoid Pop-Ups During Checkout
Pop-ups are a good way to capture leads. However, they can do more harm than good at the checkout- they ruin the natural progression of the process. They are even more problematic for mobile users.
Therefore, it’s best to avoid them. However, if you still want to use them, do so very strategically. The three best checkout pop-ups are exit-intent pop-ups, discount pop-ups, and recommendations pop-ups.
Use Buttons Over Hyperlinks
This fix is primarily for the mobile checkout page. Adding links over texts in mobile view is difficult for users to navigate. Nobody has the patience to click on a word multiple times just to spend money.
This is where buttons come in handy. Use large and clear buttons for actions like “Pay Now” and “Apply Coupon.” Moreover, make sure there is enough contrast between the background, the button, and the text inside the button to prompt the user’s reaction.
Source: Bodyshop’s Checkout Page with clear contrast-based buttons
3 Bonus Tips For Best Checkout Practices
- Prioritise mobile checkouts as they have the highest abandonment rates. You can have large tap targets, use compressed images, and enable lazy loading. Furthermore, you can use a mobile-optimised payment gateway.
- A/B test your efforts from time to time for better results. It is always wise to test one element at a time to know the real results. For example, you can test the effectiveness of a colour change for 2 months and then some other element for the next 2 months.
- Use progressive disclosure to reveal fields as required. For implementing this, you can hide some fields, like business names. You can also break checkout into pages like shipping, payment, and review.
So, there you have it folks!
The smallest friction points in your checkout can cost you big.
But now you’ve got 24 best checkout practices to turn those hurdles into high-converting moments. Remember, the best checkout practices are the ones that customers don’t even notice; because it just flows.
So start optimizing today and make every cart count.
