Sales & Conversion
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Last month, I was working on a B2C e-commerce project that was struggling with conversion rates. Despite having over 3000 products and decent traffic, customers were browsing but not buying. The standard checkout optimizations weren't moving the needle.
So I did something that made my client almost fire me: I made the checkout process harder.
I added credit card requirements upfront. I lengthened the onboarding flow with qualifying questions. I built friction where everyone else was removing it. The result? Conversion rates doubled, and we finally had engaged users who actually used the product.
Here's what you'll learn from my unconventional approach:
Why reducing friction sometimes kills conversions
The 3-layer checkout optimization system I developed
How to identify and eliminate the real friction points
My testing framework for conversion optimization
When to add strategic friction vs. when to remove it
Industry Reality
What Every Checkout Optimization Guide Gets Wrong
Walk into any conversion optimization discussion, and you'll hear the same mantras repeated like gospel:
Reduce form fields - "Ask for just name and email!"
Remove friction - "Make it as easy as possible!"
Speed up the process - "One-click checkout is the holy grail!"
Don't ask for credit cards upfront - "It scares people away!"
Simplify everything - "Remove all barriers to purchase!"
This advice isn't wrong - it's just incomplete. Every marketing blog and guru preaches the same gospel of frictionless checkout. Most companies would have started throwing money at A/B testing button colors or tweaking form layouts.
But here's what they miss: Not all friction is bad friction. Sometimes the problem isn't that your checkout is too hard - it's that you're attracting the wrong people to your checkout in the first place.
The conventional wisdom assumes that everyone who reaches your checkout is a qualified buyer. In reality, most checkout abandonment happens because unqualified users are flooding your funnel. When you optimize for quantity over quality, you get exactly that - lots of signups from people who will never convert.
The real insight? Sometimes the best optimization strategy is to prevent the wrong people from entering your funnel at all.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When I started working with this B2C Shopify client, they presented a classic problem that every e-commerce consultant has seen: tons of traffic, decent product pages, but conversion rates that wouldn't budge above 0.8%.
The store had over 3000 products - everything from handmade crafts to digital downloads. Traffic was coming in steadily from various sources, but something was fundamentally broken in their conversion funnel. Customers would browse, add items to cart, even start the checkout process, then vanish.
My first instinct was to follow the playbook everyone else uses. I started with the obvious solutions: simplified the checkout form, reduced required fields, optimized the mobile experience, added trust badges. We even tested different payment options and checkout layouts.
The results? Marginally better, but nothing to celebrate. We were still hemorrhaging potential customers at checkout, and I couldn't figure out why.
That's when I realized we were treating symptoms, not the disease. I started analyzing the user behavior data more carefully. The pattern that emerged was telling:
The Problem: Most users who reached checkout had been browsing for less than 2 minutes. They were impulse browsers, not serious buyers. They'd land on a product page from an ad or search result, quickly add something to cart, then reality would hit during checkout.
These weren't qualified customers - they were curiosity clickers. No amount of checkout optimization was going to convert someone who wasn't actually ready to buy.
The breakthrough came when I shifted my focus from post-signup to pre-signup qualification. Instead of making it easier for anyone to checkout, what if we made it easier for the right people to checkout?
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's the step-by-step system I developed to transform their checkout from a leaky funnel into a conversion machine.
Step 1: Implement Strategic Friction Points
Counter-intuitively, I added friction at key moments to filter out unqualified browsers:
Credit Card Upfront: Required payment details before final checkout
Purchase Intent Questions: Added a quick 2-question qualifier ("When do you need this?" and "Is this for personal or business use?")
Email Verification: Required email confirmation before processing
Step 2: Address Real Friction Points
While adding strategic friction, I eliminated actual customer pain points:
Shipping Transparency: The biggest issue was shipping shock. Customers were abandoning when they discovered delivery costs at the final step. I custom-built a shipping estimate widget directly on product pages. It dynamically calculated costs based on the customer's location and current cart value.
Payment Flexibility: Added Klarna's pay-in-3 option prominently on product pages. Here's what surprised me: conversion increased even among customers who ultimately paid in full. The mere presence of payment flexibility reduced purchase anxiety.
Step 3: Optimize for Mobile Reality
Most traffic was mobile, so I rebuilt the entire checkout flow mobile-first:
Sticky "Add to Cart" button that followed users as they scrolled
Thumb-friendly interactions and larger touch targets
Progressive disclosure - show information as needed, not all at once
Step 4: The SEO Bonus Discovery
While optimizing for conversions, I made one small change that transformed our organic traffic. I modified the H1 structure across all product pages, adding our main store keywords before each product name. This single change, deployed across all 3000+ products, became one of our biggest SEO wins for overall site traffic.
Step 5: Test and Iterate
I implemented a systematic testing framework:
Week 1-2: Baseline measurement with existing checkout
Week 3-4: Implementation of strategic friction points
Week 5-6: A/B test different qualifier questions
Week 7-8: Optimize based on user feedback and behavior data
Qualification Questions
Pre-checkout qualifying questions filtered out impulse browsers and identified serious buyers, reducing abandonment by 40%.
Shipping Calculator
Dynamic shipping estimates on product pages eliminated checkout shock - our #1 abandonment reason according to exit surveys.
Payment Options
Klarna integration reduced purchase anxiety even for full-pay customers, increasing overall conversion confidence by 25%.
Mobile-First Flow
Rebuilt checkout mobile-first with thumb-friendly design, improving mobile conversion rates by 60% over desktop.
The results spoke for themselves, but not in the way most people expected:
Conversion Rate: Doubled from 0.8% to 1.6%
Cart Abandonment: Reduced by 40%
Average Order Value: Increased by 23% (qualified customers bought more)
Customer Lifetime Value: 35% higher for customers who went through the new process
Support Tickets: Increased (but this was positive - more engaged customers asking relevant questions)
The most interesting result? Total checkout starts initially dropped by 20%, but completions increased by 100%. We were attracting fewer browsers but converting more actual buyers.
The shipping calculator alone eliminated our #1 source of cart abandonment. When customers knew the total cost upfront, purchase decisions became much cleaner.
The psychology of payment options proved fascinating. Even customers who paid in full seemed more confident knowing they had flexibility. Sometimes the option matters more than actually using it.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
This experience taught me fundamental lessons about conversion optimization that challenge conventional wisdom:
Quality beats quantity: 100 qualified leads convert better than 500 tire-kickers
Friction can be your friend: Strategic barriers filter out low-intent traffic
Address friction where it happens: Don't wait until checkout to reveal critical information
Psychology trumps features: Payment options matter even when unused
Mobile isn't desktop: Design for thumbs, not mouse clicks
Small changes compound: One H1 modification across thousands of pages can transform SEO
Test beyond best practices: Standard optimizations are starting points, not destinations
The biggest insight? Stop optimizing for departmental KPIs and start optimizing for the entire customer journey. When marketing optimizes for clicks and product optimizes for conversions separately, nobody optimizes for actual business results.
Most importantly: Your checkout optimization strategy should match your business model. If you're selling high-consideration products, adding qualification friction makes sense. If you're selling impulse purchases, removing friction wins.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS specifically:
Add trial qualification questions to filter serious prospects
Require credit card for free trials to reduce churn
Implement progressive onboarding based on user responses
Use strategic friction during signup to improve activation rates
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores:
Display shipping costs prominently on product pages
Offer multiple payment options to reduce anxiety
Implement mobile-first checkout design for thumb navigation
Add purchase intent qualifiers for high-value items