Cart abandonment gets blamed on price more often than the data actually supports. In our experience auditing checkout flows, the more common culprits are friction points that have nothing to do with what you're charging.
Forced account creation
Requiring a customer to create an account before checking out is one of the single biggest, most fixable sources of abandonment. A guest checkout option — with an account offered afterward, not required upfront — consistently performs better.
Shipping costs revealed too late
It's not that shipping costs money that upsets people — it's finding out at the very last step, after they've already invested time filling out a form. Showing shipping estimates earlier in the process, even roughly, reduces the "surprise cost" abandonment moment.
Too many form fields
Every extra field on a checkout form is a small additional reason to give up, especially on mobile. Address autocomplete, saved payment details, and trimming optional fields down to what you actually need all measurably help.
Limited or confusing payment options
If a customer's preferred payment method (a specific wallet, a specific card network, or a local payment option relevant to your market) isn't supported, that's a hard stop, not a minor friction point. Knowing your actual customer base's preferred payment methods matters more than supporting every option in existence.
What we actually test
Every store we build gets tested through a genuine end-to-end purchase — add to cart, checkout, real payment, confirmation — specifically to catch these friction points before real customers do, rather than assuming the build is fine because it looks right.