Sales & Conversion
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
OK so here's the thing that drives every ecommerce owner crazy: you've got traffic, people are adding items to cart, they're going through your checkout... and then boom. They disappear right before hitting that final payment button.
I was working with this ecommerce client who had over 3,000 products and decent traffic, but their conversion rate was bleeding out. Not because their products were bad - they had great stuff. The problem was their checkout process was like asking someone to fill out a tax form just to buy a t-shirt.
You know what's funny? Most people think the solution is to make checkout "frictionless." Remove fields, simplify everything, make it one-click. But sometimes - and this is going to sound crazy - the best solution is actually adding more friction, not less.
Here's what you'll learn from my real experiments with payment completion:
Why "shipping shock" kills more sales than high prices
How payment flexibility psychology works (even when people don't use it)
The counter-intuitive approach to form optimization
When transparent friction actually increases conversions
Real metrics from checkout optimization experiments
This isn't theory from some marketing blog. This is what actually happened when I stopped following "best practices" and started testing what really works.
Psychology
What every checkout expert will tell you
Ask any conversion optimization expert about payment abandonment and you'll hear the same advice over and over:
Reduce friction at all costs. Minimize form fields. Remove unnecessary steps. Make everything one-click. Add trust badges. Use progress bars. The whole industry is obsessed with making checkout as smooth as possible.
Here's what the conventional wisdom looks like:
Minimize form fields - Only ask for essential information
Guest checkout - Don't force account creation
Hide costs - Show shipping and taxes at the last possible moment
Progress indicators - Show customers how close they are to completion
Multiple payment options - Accept everything from PayPal to Apple Pay
And you know what? This advice isn't wrong. It works for a lot of businesses. The problem is that everyone is doing the exact same thing, which means you're competing in a red ocean of identical checkout experiences.
The real issue is that most "frictionless" checkouts are actually creating hidden friction. When someone gets to your payment page and suddenly discovers $15 shipping costs they didn't know about, that's not frictionless - that's a betrayal of trust.
Here's where the conventional wisdom falls short: it treats all friction as bad, when sometimes strategic friction can actually increase trust and conversions. The goal isn't to eliminate friction - it's to put the right friction in the right places.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
So I'm working with this ecommerce client who's selling physical products - over 3,000 different items in their catalog. Good traffic, people were browsing, adding to cart, but then... crickets at checkout.
The numbers were brutal. Cart abandonment was sitting at about 85%, which sounds terrible but is actually pretty normal for ecommerce. The real problem was what was happening at the payment step specifically. People would go through the entire checkout process, enter their shipping info, pick their delivery method, and then abandon right at the payment screen.
My first instinct was to follow the playbook everyone uses. I started with the classic optimizations - simplified the form, added trust badges, included security icons. We A/B tested different button colors (yeah, I know, but we had to try). The improvements were marginal at best.
Then I started digging into user behavior with session recordings and exit surveys. Two patterns emerged that completely changed my approach:
Pattern 1: Shipping Shock
People were abandoning when they discovered delivery costs. Even though shipping was calculated correctly, seeing it for the first time at checkout felt like a surprise fee. The transparency we thought we were providing was actually creating distrust.
Pattern 2: Price Hesitation
The products weren't cheap - we're talking $100-300 items. Even customers who could afford it were having that moment of "do I really need this right now?" at the payment screen. They needed a psychological bridge to make the purchase feel less risky.
That's when I realized we were solving the wrong problem. We weren't dealing with a checkout optimization issue - we were dealing with a trust and psychology issue that started way before the payment page.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Instead of trying to hide friction, I decided to expose it strategically. This goes against everything you read about checkout optimization, but here's exactly what I implemented:
Solution 1: Transparent Shipping Calculator
I custom-built a shipping estimate widget directly on the product page. Not hidden in the cart, not revealed at checkout - right there next to the "Add to Cart" button. The widget dynamically calculated costs based on the customer's location and current cart value. If the cart was empty, it used the current product price as baseline.
This meant people knew exactly what they'd pay for shipping before they even started the checkout process. No surprises, no hidden costs, no trust violations.
Solution 2: Strategic Payment Flexibility
I integrated Klarna's pay-in-3 option prominently on product pages and throughout checkout. But here's what surprised me: conversion increased even among customers who ultimately paid in full. The mere presence of payment flexibility reduced purchase anxiety, even when people didn't use it.
It's like having a safety net - you feel more confident walking the tightrope even if you never fall.
Solution 3: The SEO Bonus
While optimizing for conversions, I made one small SEO tweak 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 3,000+ products, became one of our biggest SEO wins for overall site traffic.
The beauty of this approach was that it addressed the real psychological barriers instead of just surface-level conversion tactics. We weren't just making checkout easier - we were making the entire purchase decision feel safer and more transparent.
Most importantly, these changes created a compound effect. Better SEO brought more traffic, transparent pricing built more trust, and payment flexibility reduced anxiety. Each element reinforced the others.
Trust Building
Making costs visible upfront eliminates surprise abandonment and builds credibility throughout the customer journey.
Psychology Leverage
Payment options reduce anxiety even when unused - the safety net effect is more powerful than actual usage.
SEO Integration
Small technical changes during CRO work can create massive organic traffic wins when applied at scale.
Compound Effects
Strategic friction creates trust that improves all conversion metrics, not just payment completion.
The results validated that transparency and strategic friction could outperform "frictionless" optimization:
Conversion Impact:
Payment completion rates improved significantly once we eliminated shipping shock. But the bigger win was that the changes affected the entire funnel - people were more likely to add items to cart when they could see total costs upfront.
Customer Behavior Changes:
Session recordings showed people were actually spending more time on product pages (good engagement) but less time in checkout (reduced hesitation). The transparent pricing made decisions faster and more confident.
Unexpected SEO Win:
The H1 keyword modification across 3,000+ products created a massive boost in organic visibility. Sometimes conversion optimization and SEO work hand-in-hand in ways you don't expect.
Payment Flexibility Psychology:
The most interesting result was seeing how Klarna affected behavior. Many customers who qualified for payment plans still chose to pay in full, but the option being there reduced their purchasing anxiety. It's proof that psychology matters more than mechanics in ecommerce.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here's what this experience taught me about payment completion:
Transparency beats "frictionless" - Hiding costs until checkout creates more friction than showing them upfront
Options reduce anxiety - Having payment flexibility available is more important than actually using it
Trust compounds - When people trust your pricing, they trust your brand, which improves all metrics
Technical changes have unexpected benefits - CRO work can create SEO wins when done thoughtfully
Psychology over mechanics - Understanding why people hesitate is more valuable than optimizing how they checkout
Product page optimization matters - Payment completion starts way before the payment page
Strategic friction works - The right friction in the right place can increase conversions
The biggest lesson? Stop thinking about checkout optimization in isolation. Payment completion is the result of trust built throughout the entire customer journey, starting from the first page they visit.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies dealing with subscription payment abandonment:
Show total pricing (including any setup fees) on your pricing page
Offer trial extensions or payment flexibility for annual plans
Use transparent billing practices - no hidden fees
Address security concerns prominently in checkout
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores struggling with payment abandonment:
Add shipping calculators to product pages, not just checkout
Include payment flexibility options (BNPL) to reduce purchase anxiety
Test transparent pricing vs. "free shipping" psychological approaches
Use technical CRO changes to improve SEO simultaneously