A good checkout flow asks for as little as possible and puts express payment buttons first. It shows trust signals right next to the pay button and is honest about shipping costs before anyone reaches the final step. Most buyers who leave at checkout do it over surprise costs, slow delivery, trust worries or a form that feels too long, so those are the parts to fix and test first.
This guide follows the flow in order, from the form fields to the Shopify plan limits. It uses real results from our checkout A/B test database. A lot of the advice you read about checkout pages is wrong for at least some stores, so we show the tests that lost as well as the ones that won.
Steps and fields: ask for less
Baymard Institute's research has the clearest numbers on this. The average US checkout has 23.48 form elements, and 14.88 of them are form fields. Baymard says an ideal checkout needs only 12-14 elements, or 7-8 fields.
The same study lists why shoppers abandon checkout (not counting people who were just browsing). 18% left because the site wanted them to create an account, and 17% said the process was too long or complicated. If you want to see how your store compares, see our cart abandonment rate benchmarks.
Fields you can usually cut
- Forced account creation. Let people check out as a guest. Offer an account after the order, on the thank-you page.
- Company name. Most direct-to-consumer stores can hide it or make it optional.
- Address line 2. Make it optional, or tuck it behind a link.
- Phone number. Ask for it only if your carrier needs it, and say why you're asking.
- Separate billing address. Default to "same as shipping."
On Shopify, you can set most of these on any plan. The checkout form options let you require only a last name, and you can set company name, address line 2 and shipping phone number to "Don't include," "Optional" or "Required."
Fewer steps is not always better
A shorter path sounds like an easy win, but our data says to test it first. Dave Diederen skipped the cart and sent shoppers straight to checkout, and conversion rate dropped 10.23%. The cart is where many shoppers check their order, see the free-shipping progress and pick up an upsell. Taking it away removed a step people actually wanted.
So treat field count and step count differently. Cutting fields that nobody needs is low risk. Removing whole steps changes how people shop, so A/B test it before you roll it out.
Express checkout and wallets
Express buttons let returning shoppers skip the form entirely, because the wallet already has their address and card saved. Shopify supports Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay and PayPal as accelerated checkout buttons. They show in an Express Checkout section at the top of checkout and can also go on product pages.
Baymard found that 9% of shoppers who abandoned did so because there weren't enough payment methods. That number is smaller than the shipping-cost and trust numbers, but it's an easy fix, since most wallets are a settings toggle.
What our tests show
- Milos added Shop Pay, PayPal and Apple Pay buttons under the product page buy box and saw +9.26% revenue per visitor (+$11,970/month).
- Dave Diederen showed card and other payment method icons under the express checkout buttons and got +7.81% revenue per visitor. The icons tell shoppers who don't use a wallet that cards work too.
- Dave Diederen also enabled Shop Pay's buy now, pay later option on one store, and conversion rate moved from below 1% to above 1%.
Express buttons don't win everywhere, though. Oliver Kenyon removed the Shop Pay Buy Now button from a product page and added payment icons under Add to Cart, and that store made an estimated $44,562/month more. On some product pages, an extra button competes with Add to Cart, pulls attention away from the main action and skips the cart, where upsells live.
A sensible default is to always show express buttons at the top of checkout, then test whether they also belong on the product page. Our payment icons and express checkout page collects every related test.
@oliverkenyon
@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen
@CROguy_@DaveDiederenTrust near the pay button
In Baymard's survey, 19% of shoppers who abandoned said they didn't trust the site with their card details, and 13% didn't like the returns policy. The last screen before payment is where those doubts come up, so it's where reassurance works best.
This is one of the most consistent areas in our database:
- Dave Diederen added three USPs (guarantee, orders shipped, delivery speed) below the Pay Now button and saw +9.90% conversion rate.
- Dave Diederen also showed customer reviews on the checkout page for +17.96% conversion rate.
- A "30-day money-back guarantee" line under the checkout button was worth an estimated +£68,640/month in another Dave Diederen test.
- Milos added an image in checkout showing social proof, the return policy and financing, which brought in an estimated +$55,000/month.
- Peter Christensen added a customer trust count and three USPs with icons. Checkout conversion went from 69% to 76%, though that test was still running when it was reported.
Keep trust copy specific. "Free returns within 30 days" and "Ships tomorrow from Ohio" answer real questions. A row of generic security badges answers nobody's. See our trust badges page for the tests behind that.
A warning about countdown timers
Urgency at checkout gives mixed results. Dave Diederen ran the same idea twice: one countdown timer test gave +3.16% revenue per visitor and another gave -7.1%. Kasper Dolk removed a checkout countdown timer and saw +25.61% conversion rate and +26.18% revenue per visitor. If you add a timer, test it on your own traffic and stop it early if it starts losing.
@DaveDiederen@CROguy_@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen
@peterac_
@kasper_dolkShipping options and costs
Surprise costs are the biggest checkout killer. In Baymard's data, 40% of abandoners said extra costs were too high, 20% said delivery was too slow and 12% couldn't see the total cost up front. Show the shipping cost, or the free-shipping rule, before checkout, and keep the number the same when the shopper gets there.
Hidden add-ons hurt too. Dave Diederen hid a pre-ticked shipping protection checkbox in the cart, and conversion rate went up 6.39%. Charges people didn't ask for make the whole flow look less honest.
Free shipping is not automatically the winner
The shipping price itself is worth testing, and the results often go against the usual advice:
- Dave Diederen tested flat $2, $5 and $7 shipping fees against free shipping. The $5 fee won, with an estimated +$59,894/month in revenue.
- On another store, a $9.49 shipping fee beat the control by +43.81% revenue per visitor.
- Removing the free-shipping threshold and charging shipping on every order gave +9.17% revenue per visitor in one test and +7.90% in another.
- Raising the free-shipping threshold to $165 gave +6.27% profit per visitor.
The common thread is clarity. Shoppers accepted a fair, visible fee. What hurts is a cost that shows up late. Our shipping messaging page has more on how to word delivery dates and fees.
@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederenShopify checkout limits: Plus vs standard plans
On Shopify, how much of this you can change depends on your plan. Shopify hosts the checkout, and the old checkout.liquid file stopped working for the information, shipping and payment pages on August 13, 2024. Customization now goes through checkout extensibility.
| What you want to change | Basic, Grow, Advanced | Shopify Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Logo, colors, fonts | Yes, in the checkout editor | Yes, plus the Checkout and Accounts Configuration API |
| One-page or three-page layout | Yes, one-page is the default | Yes |
| Form fields (company, address line 2, phone) | Yes | Yes |
| Express checkout buttons | Yes | Yes |
| App blocks on information, shipping and payment steps (trust badges, reviews, upsells) | No | Yes |
| Thank-you and order status page blocks | Yes | Yes |
The key line is in Shopify's developer docs: checkout UI extensions for the information, shipping and payment steps are available only to stores on a Shopify Plus plan. Shopify's help center also says some checkout apps that change those pages work only on Plus. On every plan, one-page checkout is the default layout.
As of November 2026, Shopify Plus starts at $2,300/month, compared with $39 to $399/month for the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans billed monthly. That's a big jump to make only for checkout blocks, so most smaller stores should get the most out of what they can already change first.
What Plus stores have tested
Kasper Dolk has run several Plus checkout tests. Adding trust and urgency elements to a Plus checkout added an estimated $33,435. A checkbox upsell in the Plus checkout had a 50% take rate for fashion clients. In another case, the client reports checkout blocks with store USPs, reviews and an upsell added over $400K extra revenue a month. These are reported results from the stores, not independent audits.
If you're not on Plus
Put the reassurance where you can still control it: the cart. Dave Diederen added payment icons directly below the cart's checkout button for +7.37% conversion rate. Oliver Kenyon's cart drawer test, which added a dispatch, returns and payment block under the checkout button, gave +23.8% revenue per visitor. For more ideas you can use on any plan, see our Shopify CRO guide.
Putting it together
A sensible order of work:
- Cut unneeded fields and turn on guest checkout.
- Turn on the express wallets your customers use, with card icons underneath.
- Show the shipping cost and delivery date before checkout, and remove pre-ticked add-ons.
- Add specific trust copy (guarantee, returns, delivery speed) by the checkout or pay button.
- Test bigger changes, like skipping the cart, shipping prices or timers, before you roll them out.
Our checkout checklist turns this into a step-by-step audit.