Checkout friction is its own problem
Cart abandonment gets the attention, but plenty of shoppers who genuinely intend to buy are lost after they press "checkout". That is a different failure with different fixes. Cart abandonment is mostly about intent, price shock and comparison shopping; checkout abandonment is about effort: forms, forced accounts, missing payment methods and unexplained errors. This article is about the second problem.
The goal is simple to state. Let a returning shopper pay in seconds with a wallet they already trust, and let a new shopper finish as a guest with the fewest possible keystrokes. Everything below serves one of those two journeys.
Which express payment options to offer
In the UK, four options cover the overwhelming majority of wallet users: Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and, on Shopify stores, Shop Pay. Stripe's Link fills a similar role for stores built on Stripe, remembering card and address details across every Link-enabled site.
- Apple Pay: essential for iPhone-heavy audiences. It only appears in Safari and on Apple devices, so desktop Chrome users will never see it; coverage gaps are normal and expected.
- Google Pay: the Android and Chrome counterpart. Together with Apple Pay it covers most mobile traffic.
- PayPal: still the wallet many UK shoppers trust most with unfamiliar brands; its buyer protection reassures first-time customers.
- Shop Pay and Link: network effects in action. If the shopper has bought from any store using them, their details are already saved for yours.
Buy-now-pay-later buttons such as Klarna and Clearpay are payment choices rather than express checkout, but the same placement logic below applies if you offer them.
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Where wallet buttons belong
Three placements matter, and they are not interchangeable. On the product page, a dynamic express button beneath add-to-basket suits low-consideration, single-item purchases; it lets an impulse buyer skip the cart entirely. In the cart, express buttons catch shoppers who already know what they want. At the top of checkout, they should sit above the guest form, separated by a clear "or continue below" divider.
Two mistakes to avoid. Do not stack five wallet buttons with equal visual weight; device detection handles much of this automatically (Apple Pay only renders where it is supported), but where you can prioritise, lead with the wallet your analytics show your audience actually uses. And never push express options below the fold on mobile, where most UK ecommerce traffic now sits.
Design guest-first, earn the account later
Forcing registration before payment is the most reliable way to lose a motivated buyer. Make guest checkout the default path, visually primary, with sign-in offered quietly for returning customers. The order confirmation page is the right moment to invite account creation: one click, password optional, because you already hold the email address and order details.
Passwordless approaches remove the objection entirely. A magic-link login, or simply recognising the email address and offering a one-time code, gives returning guests account-level convenience without a password to forget. Shop Pay and Link achieve much of this for you, keeping the shopper's details without your store ever owning the credential.
Addresses, fields and thumbs
UK shoppers expect postcode-first address lookup, and typing a full address on a phone is where many checkouts die. Loqate, getAddress.io and Ideal Postcodes offer UK autocomplete built on Royal Mail's Postcode Address File; Google Places autocomplete works too but tends to be weaker on flats and new-build addresses. Whichever you choose, always leave a manual-entry fallback visible.
- Set autocomplete attributes on every field so browsers can fill names, addresses and cards natively.
- Use numeric input modes for card and phone fields and the email keyboard for email, so mobile keyboards match the task.
- Cut every field you cannot justify: company name, second address line by default, and "how did you hear about us" all have a measurable cost.
- Show errors inline, next to the field, at the moment of the mistake, not as a red banner after submission.
- Keep the phone-number field if couriers need it, but say why: "for delivery updates only".
Key Takeaway
Treat checkout as its own optimisation project, separate from cart abandonment. Offer Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and Shop Pay or Link, place express buttons on the product page, cart and above the checkout form, and make guest checkout the unmistakable default. Add UK postcode-first address lookup, correct mobile keyboards and inline errors. Then instrument the form field by field, because the biggest wins usually hide in one broken field or a payment-decline problem, not the colour of the pay button.
Measure the funnel field by field
You cannot fix what you cannot see, and GA4's default reports only show checkout steps at best. The detail lives at field level. Purpose-built form analytics such as Zuko record which field is abandoned most often, which produces repeated errors and how long each takes to complete, without capturing what the customer actually typed.
Instrument three things as a minimum: a funnel from checkout start to payment success, error events with the field name and message attached, and payment declines by reason code from your payment provider. A checkout losing shoppers at the card field may have a decline problem rather than a design problem, and the fixes could not be more different. If you would like a structured checkout audit, our team runs exactly this kind of field-level analysis.