Around seven in ten online baskets never become orders. Baymard Institute's latest benchmark puts the average cart abandonment rate at 70.22%, and that figure has barely moved in years.
Much of that is unavoidable. Plenty of shoppers are browsing, comparing prices or saving items for later. But a meaningful share leave because something on the site got in their way. Baymard's research suggests around 20% of abandonment is typically caused by friction a business can fix.
That is where ecommerce user experience comes in. It covers every point where a shopper interacts with your store: finding a product, judging whether it is right, trusting you enough to pay and getting through checkout. Get it wrong at any stage and the sale is lost, however good your products or prices are.
Below are the nine issues that usability research shows cost ecommerce sites the most sales, along with how to fix each one.
1. Hidden or unexpected costs
Extra costs revealed late in checkout are the biggest fixable reason shoppers leave. In Baymard's most recent survey, 39% of shoppers said they had abandoned a checkout because of added fees such as delivery charges and taxes.
The problem is not always the cost itself. It is the surprise. A shopper who has mentally settled on a price feels misled when the total jumps at the final step.
How to fix it: show the full order cost in the basket, including delivery and any fees. If you cannot give an exact figure, give a clear estimate and explain how it is worked out. If you offer free delivery above a threshold, show how close the shopper is to qualifying.
2. Forced account creation
Making shoppers register before they can buy causes 19% of users to drop out. Even where a guest option exists, shoppers often miss it if it is visually weak or tucked below the login form.
How to fix it: offer guest checkout to everyone and make it the most prominent option on the sign-in screen, with a clearly labelled button such as "Continue as guest". Offer account creation on the confirmation page instead, once the order is placed.
3. Long or complicated checkouts
A checkout that looks like hard work loses customers before they start. Baymard found 18% of users abandoned because the process felt too complicated. Long forms are especially off-putting on mobile, where typing and correcting text is slower.
Fewer pages is not automatically better. A single-page checkout with 30 fields is often worse than three well-designed steps. What matters is how much effort each step appears to ask for.
How to fix it: cut every field that is not essential, hide fields that only apply in certain situations and make sure every step works with browser autofill.
4. Unclear delivery information
Delivery is part of the product. 21% of users abandoned because delivery was too slow, and shoppers are equally put off when delivery details only appear at the final review step.
How to fix it: show estimated delivery dates, not vague speeds like "3 to 5 working days", and show them early. Keep delivery information visible throughout the basket and checkout.
5. Weak trust signals and checkout distractions
Shoppers need to feel safe before they enter card details. Around 19% of abandonment is linked to a lack of trust, driven by missing security cues, unclear returns policies or an unfamiliar brand.
Distractions make this worse. Prominent adverts, finance offers and aggressive cross-sells in the basket pull shoppers away from finishing their order.
How to fix it: make returns, delivery and payment security information easy to find. Keep promotions visually secondary to the checkout buttons, and consider an enclosed checkout that removes the main site navigation while still giving shoppers a clear way back.
6. Poor on-site search
Shoppers who use site search usually know what they want, which makes them some of your most valuable visitors. Yet search is one of the most neglected parts of ecommerce user experience.
Common failures include searches that return nothing, weak autocomplete and poor handling of synonyms. If your catalogue says "athletic footwear" but a shopper types "trainers", a basic search engine may show nothing at all. Baymard found only 19% of ecommerce sites get autocomplete design right.
How to fix it: review your search logs for zero-result queries, add synonyms and common misspellings, and make sure autocomplete suggests products and categories as the shopper types. Never show a dead-end results page.
7. Confusing navigation, product lists and filters
This is where most sites score worst. Baymard reports that 67% of mobile sites have mediocre or poor homepage and category navigation. For product listing pages, 58% of desktop sites and 78% of mobile sites perform at mediocre or worse.
Specific problems include filters that use industry jargon without explanation (62% of sites), no price per unit for multi-pack products (86% of sites), too few images per listing and colour variants shown as separate products.
How to fix it: build categories around how customers think, not how your stock system is organised. Explain technical filters, group product variants into a single listing and show enough images in the listing for shoppers to compare without opening every product.
8. Thin product pages
The product page is where the buying decision is made, yet up to 62% of leading ecommerce sites have mediocre or worse product page UX.
Typical gaps are too few images, low resolution or poor zoom, no images showing scale, spec sheets that are hard to scan and size options hidden in dropdowns so shoppers cannot see what is in stock. For trade and B2B products, missing or messy specifications are often the single biggest barrier.
How to fix it: show multiple high-resolution images including in-use and scale shots, structure descriptions around key highlights and lay specifications out as a scannable table. Show available sizes and options up front.
9. Slow page speed, especially on mobile
Speed underpins every other part of ecommerce user experience. The Google and Deloitte study Milliseconds Make Millions found that a 0.1 second improvement in mobile site speed increased retail conversions by 8.4% and average order value by 9.2%.
Mobile is where the pressure is greatest. Mobile cart abandonment runs at roughly 80% against around 66% on desktop, and only 48% of websites deliver a good Core Web Vitals experience on mobile.
How to fix it: test real load times on mid-range phones, not just office broadband. Compress and correctly size images, cut unnecessary scripts and third-party apps, and track Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console.
What won't fix a poor user experience
It is tempting to reach for quick wins such as exit-intent pop-ups, discount codes and abandoned basket emails. They have their place, but they do not solve UX problems.
A discount pop-up might win back a price-sensitive shopper, but if your checkout is frustrating it simply makes a frustrating experience cheaper. Retargeting emails work well for shoppers who were distracted, but they send people with a genuine UX complaint straight back to the same friction that drove them away.
Persuasion tactics work best on top of a good experience, not as a replacement for one.
Where to start improving your ecommerce user experience
Start with the fixes that are high impact and low effort. Adding guest checkout and showing full costs in the basket are usually quick changes with an immediate effect on abandonment.
From there, work through the bigger jobs in order of likely return:
- Show total costs and delivery dates early in the journey
- Make guest checkout the default route
- Improve payment error handling and optimise forms for autofill
- Fix zero-result searches and weak autocomplete
- Rework category navigation, filters and product listings
- Strengthen product pages with better images and scannable specifications
- Improve mobile page speed and Core Web Vitals
Use your own analytics to check where shoppers actually drop off, then pair that with a UX review to understand why. Numbers tell you where the problem is. Watching how people use the site tells you what to change.
Ecommerce user experience FAQs
Still need help understanding the basics of how user experience impacts the success of an ecommerce store? We’ve got you!
For anything else, please get in touch with the Imaginaire team for a free site review.
What is ecommerce user experience?
Ecommerce user experience is how easy and reassuring it is for shoppers to find, evaluate and buy products on an online store. It covers navigation, search, product pages, basket, checkout, page speed and post-purchase touchpoints such as order tracking.
How does user experience affect ecommerce conversion rates?
Every point of friction gives a shopper a reason to leave. Baymard's research suggests around 20% of basket abandonment is caused by UX issues a business can fix, such as hidden costs, forced account creation and complicated checkouts.
What is a good cart abandonment rate?
The average cart abandonment rate is around 70%, so most stores lose the majority of baskets. Rather than chasing a target figure, focus on reducing the share of abandonment caused by fixable UX problems.
Does page speed really affect ecommerce sales?
Yes. The Google and Deloitte Milliseconds Make Millions study found that a 0.1 second improvement in mobile site speed lifted retail conversions by 8.4% and average order value by 9.2%.
Sources mentioned in this post
- Baymard Institute: How to Reduce Cart Abandonment (May 2026)
- Baymard Institute: Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics
- Baymard Institute: Product Page UX Best Practices 2026
- Baymard Institute: Product List UX Best Practices 2025
- Baymard Institute: Desktop Web UX Best Practices
- Deloitte: Milliseconds Make Millions
- Growthegy: mobile vs desktop abandonment, citing Baymard
- Contentsquare: trust as an abandonment driver, citing Baymard
- Lupa Search: autocomplete, citing Baymard
- Machina: Core Web Vitals pass rate, citing Web Almanac 2025
SEO and user experience - let’s join the dots for your ecommerce store
We might all be familiar with shopping online as a customer. But when it comes to running an ecommerce store as a business, things aren’t always so simple. No business can do it alone, which is why specialist SEO, design and development are key to maintaining a good user experience and therefore, boosting sales.
At Imaginaire, we help ecommerce brands find and fix the friction that costs them sales, combining UX, SEO and Shopify Plus expertise.
If your conversion rate is not where it should be, get in touch with our team to talk through an ecommerce user experience review.
