Baymard Institute – E-Commerce Checkout Usability

Report: 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 this 718-page report, 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 this report, 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.

134 actionable design guidelines divided into 18 categories.

400+ user quotes illustrating what customers think when they abandon their purchase.

1,300+ screenshots illustrating concrete design and usability issues – and solutions to them.

9 case studies of real life examples illustrating what works and what doesn’t.

718 print-optimized pages exploring the customer’s checkout experience.

Benchmark: Is your checkout better than Apple’s or Walmart’s?

What you’ll get in the Checkout Usability benchmark