Seven reasons customers abandon your checkout — and how to fix each one

Someone who reaches checkout has already decided they want it. Everything that happens after that point is you losing a sale you had won. It is worth fixing before you spend anything on attracting more traffic.

1. Surprise costs

Delivery fees revealed at the last step are the single biggest cause of abandonment anywhere. Show them early, or build them into the price and say delivery is included.

2. You force them to create an account

Nobody wants a login to buy one thing. Guest checkout should always be available; you can invite them to make an account afterwards.

3. Too many fields

Every field loses people. Ask only what you need to fulfil the order. Company name, second address line, title — cut them.

4. Their payment method isn't there

Bank transfer, card and mobile money are all normal here and preferences differ sharply by person. If you only accept one, you are declining everyone else's business.

5. It doesn't look safe

A generic account number in a DM does not read as safe. A proper checkout on a proper domain does. This is a large, invisible tax on informal selling.

6. It's broken on a phone

Most of your buyers are on a phone, often on a poor connection. Test your own checkout on mobile data, not office wifi. If it takes eight seconds to load, that is the problem.

7. They weren't ready

Some people genuinely aren't. If you captured an email, a single reminder recovers a meaningful share of them.

Fix these before buying traffic

Doubling checkout conversion is the same as doubling your ad spend, and it is free. On SalesGit most of this is the default — guest checkout, local payment methods, mobile-first pages — because these are not the things a seller should have to engineer.