Cart abandonment is the most direct measure of lost revenue in e-commerce, and the checkout is where most of it happens. The average cart abandonment rate across e-commerce sits above 70 percent. Even a modest improvement in checkout completion rate produces a meaningful uplift in revenue from the same volume of traffic.
Magento Open Source provides a capable and flexible checkout by default, but the default configuration is rarely optimal for any specific business. The highest-converting Magento checkouts are ones that have been deliberately configured and in some cases customised to reduce friction at every step.
Why Checkouts Fail
Checkout abandonment happens for a predictable set of reasons. Unexpected costs at the point of payment (shipping charges not visible earlier in the journey, taxes, or handling fees) are the most common cause. Forced account creation before purchase is another persistent friction point. Lengthy or complex forms, limited payment options, and a lack of trust signals at the moment of payment all contribute.
Understanding which of these factors is driving abandonment on a specific store requires data. Session recordings, funnel analysis, and exit intent data each highlight different failure points. Fixing the checkout without this data risks optimising the wrong things.
Guest Checkout
Magento’s default checkout includes guest checkout, but some implementations disable it or make it harder to find than the account creation path. Enabling prominent, frictionless guest checkout consistently reduces abandonment. Customers who check out as guests can be invited to create an account after the order is placed, which maintains the opportunity to build a registered customer base without creating the friction of forced registration.
Reducing Form Fields
The default Magento checkout asks for more information than most orders actually require. Each additional field is a point of friction. A billing address that defaults to matching the shipping address eliminates an entire section for the majority of customers. Removing fields that are not operationally necessary, such as fax numbers, company names for B2C stores, or redundant address lines, reduces the time and effort required to complete a purchase.
For B2B stores, the calculus is different. Company name, purchase order reference, and VAT number may be genuinely required. The principle is the same, though: collect only what the business needs, and make the form as fast to complete as possible for the customer’s specific context.
Payment Methods
Payment method coverage has a direct effect on completion rates. A customer whose preferred payment method is not available will abandon. For UK stores, this means covering the major card networks, PayPal, and increasingly the buy-now-pay-later options that a significant proportion of shoppers now expect. Apple Pay and Google Pay reduce friction for mobile customers by eliminating manual card entry.
Magento’s payment extension ecosystem is extensive. Stripe, Braintree, Klarna, Clearpay, and most major UK payment providers have Magento integrations. The configuration and testing of payment methods requires care: a misconfigured payment method that silently fails at the point of transaction is a severe source of lost revenue.
Mobile Checkout
More than half of UK e-commerce traffic now arrives on mobile devices, and mobile checkout completion rates lag desktop completion rates on most stores. The gap is not inevitable: it reflects checkout experiences that were designed for desktop and adapted poorly for mobile rather than designed for mobile from the outset.
On a Hyva-based Magento store, mobile checkout performance improves substantially because the theme’s architecture is optimised for small screens and touch interaction. On a Luma-based store, mobile checkout improvements require more targeted work but are still achievable through careful template and CSS optimisation.
One-Page Versus Multi-Step Checkout
Magento’s default checkout is a two-step process. One-page checkout extensions compress the entire checkout into a single scrollable page. The conversion impact varies by store: for some it produces a measurable uplift, for others the difference is negligible. The decision is worth testing rather than assuming.
Post-Optimisation: Measuring the Impact
Checkout optimisation changes should be implemented incrementally and measured properly. A/B testing is the most rigorous approach, but even sequential before-and-after measurement of completion rates provides useful signal. Changes that produce no measurable improvement should be reverted; those that do improve completion rates should be retained and built on.
Accentika has optimised Magento checkouts for UK retailers across a range of sectors, including custom checkout flows for B2B and trade customers. Read more about Magento development or contact the team to discuss checkout improvements for your store.
