Checkout Friction Checklist for Webshops

Surprise costs at the last step

The single largest cause of abandoned checkouts is a cost the customer did not expect: shipping that appears only after the address is entered, a payment surcharge, a small-order fee, or VAT added at the end for a customer who assumed prices included it. Swedish consumer law requires the total price to be clear before the order is placed, and shoppers punish surprises well before any regulator does. Show shipping options and cost in the cart, ideally on the product page, and show the final total on the same screen as the pay button.

Forced account creation

A password field is a question the customer did not come to answer. Requiring an account before paying adds a decision, a form and often a verification email, and every one of those steps loses people. Guest checkout removes all three. You still get the email address and delivery details from the order; offer to save them as an account on the confirmation page, when the customer has nothing to lose by saying yes. For returning customers, a one-tap login through Klarna, Shop Pay or BankID beats a remembered password.

Payment and delivery options

Swedish shoppers have strong habits. Many will not enter card details on a phone but will pay in seconds with Swish. Many expect to be able to pay by invoice after delivery through Klarna or a similar provider. Missing the method a customer wanted is a silent exit; they rarely email to say so.

Form fields and errors

Every field is a small tax on the customer's patience, and every rejected field is a larger one. The fastest way to find problems is to enter a real Swedish address on a phone and note every moment you hesitate.

• Ask only for what the order needs: name, email, phone for delivery notifications, address. No title, no company field for consumers, no fax.
• Use postcode lookup to fill the city, and accept postcodes with or without a space.
• Accept phone numbers in every common format, with or without country code, and never reject a valid number.
• Show errors next to the field, in plain language, without clearing the other fields.
• Set the right keyboard on mobile: numeric for postcode and phone, email keyboard for email.
• Let the browser and Klarna or Shop Pay autofill; do not block it with custom fields.

Speed and trust at checkout

Checkout pages are often the slowest on the site, loaded with payment scripts, tracking tags and fraud tools. Measure them on a phone over mobile data; a step that takes several seconds to respond feels broken, and a customer who taps pay twice and sees an error will not try a third time. Trust signals matter too: the company name and organisation number in the footer, a visible returns policy, secure payment logos and a phone number or chat somewhere in view. An optimisation of conversion and checkout measures and fixes exactly these items, and the price is listed on our pricing page.

When you do not need this: if your checkout is Shopify's or Klarna's hosted flow and you have not customised it, most of this list is already handled and your losses are earlier in the funnel. If you have very few orders, the absolute gain from a better checkout is small and traffic is the priority. If you are unsure where the drop happens, book a short call and we will look at your funnel report together.

Frequently asked questions