Why Are Customers Abandoning Your Magento 2 Checkout? 11 Fixes That Improve Conversions
by Rahul Basu
October 29,2026
Here's a familiar picture. The analytics say people are adding products to their baskets. The finance report says orders aren't keeping pace. Something happens in between, and on Magento 2 stores it very often happens on the checkout page.
First, a reality check. Baymard Institute puts the average online cart abandonment rate at about 70.19%. Don't panic at that number. Plenty of baskets were never going to become orders: people park items to compare prices, save them for later, or just want to see what delivery costs. Checkout abandonment is a different animal. That's the shopper who clicked through to pay and then walked away, and it's the loss you can actually do something about. The causes fall into two piles. One is what people can see, like an awkward form or a surprise charge. The other is what they can only feel, like a page that hangs or a payment that fails. Below are 11 fixes for Magento 2 checkout optimisation, and they cover both.
One thing to keep straight. Cart abandonment starts at the basket; checkout abandonment starts when the shopper clicks through to pay. They need different fixes. Mix them up and you end up redesigning a product page to solve a payment problem.
Why Are Customers Abandoning Magento 2 Checkout?
Nobody leaves a checkout for one dramatic reason. Baymard's findings, as Contentsquare summarises them, circle around the same handful: costs that show up late (shipping, tax, fees), being made to create an account, a process that feels long or confusing, slow delivery, doubts about handing over card details, and a payment method that isn't there. Magento stores can add a few of their own. A checkout that takes ages to respond. A payment step that times out. A discount code that should work and doesn't. An extension that started misbehaving the day after an update. So before you touch a single setting, work out which of these you actually have. This table is a starting point.| What you see | Likely cause in Magento | How to check |
| Drop-off right after the shipping step | Delivery cost or dates shown too late | Compare exits at the shipping step with and without a visible estimate |
| Drop-off on the first checkout screen | Forced registration or long forms | Review the guest checkout setting and count the required fields |
| “Place order” hangs or is slow | Gateway timeouts, heavy extensions, order processing load | Look at server response times and payment logs |
| Paid orders missing, or duplicates | Webhook or retry problems | Match gateway records against Magento orders |
| Mobile completion far below desktop | Form layout, keyboard types, missing wallets | Split the funnel by device |
| Errors after a release | Extension conflict or custom code | Compare error logs with release dates |
11 Magento 2 Checkout Improvements That Can Increase Completed Orders
1. Enable Guest Checkout Instead of Forcing Account Creation
Magento lets guests check out by default, so if your shoppers are being forced to register, somebody changed the setting. Adobe explains where it lives: Stores > Settings > Configuration > Sales > Checkout > Checkout Options, then Allow Guest Checkout. Leave it on. Want customer accounts anyway? Ask once the order is placed. By then the shopper has what they came for, and a password box feels like a favour, not a toll gate.2. Remove Unnecessary Checkout Fields
Open your own checkout and count the fields. Then ask of each one: do we really need this to ship the order? A second address line, a company name on a consumer sale and a phone number nobody ever rings are the usual suspects. Check that autofill works, validate as people type, and write error messages that say what's wrong. Fewer screens isn't the goal. Less effort is. One long page can be harder work than three short ones.3. Display Shipping Charges and Delivery Dates Before Payment
Few things empty a basket faster than a delivery charge that appears on the last step. Show the cost early, in the cart or even on the product page, and put an estimated delivery date next to each shipping method. If a method only covers certain regions, say so before someone has typed in their whole address.4. Improve Magento 2 Checkout Loading Speed
A slow checkout feels like a broken one, and shoppers behave accordingly. The usual culprits are slow API responses, database bottlenecks and extensions that add queries or scripts to every step. Adobe's high-throughput order processing guide lists three options worth a look. Asynchronous order placement queues orders and checks stock afterwards. It's off by default and only works with some payment methods, among them Check/Money Order, Cash on Delivery, Braintree and PayPal Payflow Pro. Deferred total calculation, also off by default, holds back full totals until later in the flow. And you can switch off the inventory check on cart load, which helps checkout steps move faster, though stock is still checked when the order is placed. The guide covers Adobe Commerce on cloud and on-premises, so check your edition first, and try everything on staging. Queued orders change how your payment, stock and ERP processes behave, and you'd rather find that out there than on a busy Saturday.5. Offer Payment Methods Customers Actually Use
Look at what your customers pay with everywhere else: cards, PayPal and, in some European markets, bank transfer or invoice. Apple Pay and Google Pay save a lot of thumb-typing on phones, but whether you can offer them depends on your region, your payment provider and how things are configured. Ask your provider before you promise anything on the page.6. Optimise Checkout for Mobile Shoppers
Test on an actual phone, not a resized browser window. Does the phone number field bring up the number pad? Does the email field show the @ key? Can a thumb hit every button? Can shoppers reach the order summary without scrolling forever? If mobile completion sits well below desktop, this is the first place to look.7. Fix Coupon Code Errors and Pricing Confusion
A coupon field that rejects a valid code sends people off to search for another one, and plenty never come back. Run your live promotions all the way through. Check that totals don't jump when tax, shipping or discounts kick in. Make the messages useful: “this code expired on 30 September” tells a shopper something, “invalid code” doesn't.8. Prevent Payment Failures and Duplicate Orders
Gateway timeouts, declines and webhook hiccups all leave you with the same person: a shopper who isn't sure whether they've paid. Some click again and you get a duplicate order. Some just leave. Build retries so the same attempt can't create two orders, show a clear message after a decline, and compare gateway records with Magento orders on a regular basis. The gaps between the two are where lost sales hide.9. Review Third-Party Extensions Affecting Checkout
Each extension that touches checkout can add scripts, requests and the chance of a clash. List what's installed. Remove what nobody uses. When conversion dips, check which extensions were updated just before it did. Test every update on staging, and if something breaks, switch extensions off one at a time until it stops.10. Build Trust Through Clear Returns, Security and Order Information
Trust comes from information, not decoration. Put your returns policy, delivery times and contact details where people are about to pay. Keep the order summary plain: items, quantities, shipping, tax, final total. And only show security badges and payment logos you're entitled to use. A made-up badge does more harm than none at all.11. Track Checkout Drop-Off and Test Improvements
Without step-by-step data you're guessing. Track the funnel from basket to payment to confirmation, split it by device and log the errors at each step. Change one thing at a time, A/B test when you have the traffic, and release in a way you can roll back. Then compare the results with your own baseline. A competitor's blog post isn't one.How Do You Measure Magento Checkout Conversion Rate?
The formula is simple:Checkout completion rate = completed orders ÷ checkout sessions × 100
Pick a period, say the last 30 days, and define a checkout session the same way every time. Here's a hypothetical example. If 1,000 shoppers start checkout and 420 complete an order, your checkout completion rate is 42%. On its own that number tells you little. What counts is how it moves after a change, and how it differs by device, country and payment method. In GA4, track begin_checkout, add_shipping_info, add_payment_info and purchase, and make sure each one fires once. Duplicate events, missing events and different definitions between tools are the usual reasons a dashboard disagrees with your order list. There's no universal “good” rate, so measure against your own history first.Should You Use a Magento One-Step Checkout Extension or Custom Development?
You've got three routes: Magento's built-in one-page checkout, a third-party extension, or custom development. One-step isn't automatically better. What decides it is usability, whether it plays well with your payment and shipping extensions, how it performs, and what it costs to maintain. Adobe's developer documentation says to keep customisations in a separate module and leave the default application code alone, so upgrades stay manageable. Ignore that and you can end up with a checkout nobody dares upgrade. Work out why shoppers leave first, then pick the smallest change that deals with it.When Should You Hire a Magento Development Agency to Fix Checkout Problems?
Some problems keep coming back: payment failures nobody can explain, clashing extensions, orders that don't process reliably, performance that slips with every release, errors after an upgrade. That's usually the point to bring in specialists. Ingold Solutions is a Magento agency in Berlin and a certified Adobe Solution Partner. We do consulting, implementation, maintenance and support, migration from Magento 1, Shopify, Shopware and WooCommerce, and integrations with ERP, CRM, PIM and warehouse systems. If stock availability, order sync or checkout validation depends on your ERP, we can look at the connection between Magento and SAP Business One as well.Quick Checkout Checklist
| Area | Question to ask |
| Guest checkout | Is it on, visible, and followed by an optional sign-up after purchase? |
| Shipping | Are costs and delivery dates clear before payment? |
| Payments | Do the methods match what customers use, and are failures handled clearly? |
| Extensions | Has each checkout extension been tested after its last update? |
| Performance | Have response times been measured at each step, on staging first? |
| Order processing | Do gateway records match Magento orders? |
| Mobile | Has the full flow been tested on real phones? |
| Tracking | Do GA4 events fire once and match your order count? |
Losing Sales at Checkout?
Fixing checkout comes down to three things: find the friction, fix the technical faults, and prove each change with data. If you'd like a second pair of eyes on yours, speak to Ingold Solutions about a Magento checkout performance and conversion audit.Quick Checkout Checklist
| Area | Question to ask |
| Guest checkout | Is it on, visible, and followed by an optional sign-up after purchase? |
| Shipping | Are costs and delivery dates clear before payment? |
| Payments | Do the methods match what customers use, and are failures handled clearly? |
| Extensions | Has each checkout extension been tested after its last update? |
| Performance | Have response times been measured at each step, on staging first? |
| Order processing | Do gateway records match Magento orders? |
| Mobile | Has the full flow been tested on real phones? |
| Tracking | Do GA4 events fire once and match your order count? |
Losing Sales at Checkout?
Fixing checkout comes down to three things: find the friction, fix the technical faults, and prove each change with data. If you'd like a second pair of eyes on yours, speak to Ingold Solutions about a Magento checkout performance and conversion audit.Frequency Ask Question
Start with what changed recently: a release, an extension update, a payment or shipping change. Check the error logs and your payment provider’s status, then reproduce the problem on staging. Switching extensions off one at a time usually finds the cause faster than guessing.
It can. Forced account creation is one of the reasons shoppers give for leaving, and guest checkout removes that step. How much it helps varies from store to store, so measure completion rate before and after, and offer registration once the order is placed.
No. Hyvä is a front-end theme, and Hyvä Checkout is a separate module that needs the Hyvä theme. A faster theme won’t fix slow API calls, gateway timeouts or heavy extensions. Treat Hyvä as one possible part of the answer, and check how your payment extensions behave with it before you commit.
After every major release and every payment or shipping change, and before your busy season. In between, look at the checkout funnel once a month, so a drop shows up in weeks, not quarters.
