Mobile Checkout Optimisation — A 14-Point Teardown

Shopify’s checkout is good. It’s not the highest-converting on the internet. The gap between default Shopify and high-converting Shopify is a stack of small frictions, each of which you can fix in an afternoon. Most stores fix two or three. Compounding 14 of them is where revenue moves.

This is the audit list we run on every redesign engagement.

Above the cart

1. Cart access from anywhere. A sticky cart icon in the bottom-right is now baseline. Buyers should never have to scroll up to find it.

2. PDP-to-cart should be one tap. The “Add to cart” button should slide-in confirm on the same page, not bounce to a cart page. Cart-page bounces cost you 5–10% of mobile carts.

3. Quantity adjustment without keyboard. +/− buttons, not a number input. iOS opens the numeric keyboard and that interrupts the flow.

Cart page

4. Shipping calculator on the cart page. Don’t make the buyer reach checkout to learn shipping cost. Either show it on cart or commit to free shipping above a threshold and surface the threshold inline.

5. Trust signals on the cart, not just the PDP. Return policy in plain English, security mention without clipart, payment options preview.

6. Discount field should not be the most visible thing. Buyers who didn’t have a discount in mind go to Google to find one. Either hide the field below a “have a code?” toggle or commit to having no codes.

Checkout flow

7. Shop Pay enabled and prominent. Shop Pay buyers convert at 1.7x the rate of standard checkout. It should be the first option, not buried.

8. Apple Pay / Google Pay before form fields. If the buyer can pay in two taps, give them that path before asking them to fill anything in.

9. Email field type=email. This triggers the email keyboard on iOS. Default Shopify gets this right but custom checkouts often get it wrong.

10. Address autocomplete enabled. Shopify’s checkout supports it. Confirm it’s actually firing — sometimes browser extensions or aggressive content security policies block it.

Form friction

11. One-page checkout, not multi-step (when possible). Shopify’s default is now one-page. If you’re on legacy Checkout.liquid, upgrade. The conversion difference is measurable.

12. Error states inline, not at submit. Validate fields on blur, not on submit. Buyers who hit submit and see a sea of red errors disproportionately bounce.

13. Card field placeholder text in human language. “MM/YY” is fine. “Enter expiry date in month/year format” is over-explaining and pushes the field down.

Post-purchase

14. Order confirmation as a relationship moment. This is the moment your buyer is most engaged with your brand all year. Don’t waste it on a default “thank you” page. Include shipping clarity, a referral hook if relevant, and one “what happens next” message.

How to audit yours

Pull up your phone, open private browsing (so saved data doesn’t help), and complete a checkout on your store with a fake order. Note every moment of friction. The first 5 you write down are usually 80% of the fix.

If you want a second pair of eyes on your checkout, send us your URL. The free audit covers mobile UX — including this list, applied to your actual store.