Case study
Case study: rebuilding a client's checkout flow
July 14, 2026 · 6 min read
The problem: a checkout people abandoned
The client's analytics showed the same pattern every week: plenty of people adding items to their cart, far fewer finishing the purchase. The checkout itself was a five-step form spread across five separate pages — contact info, shipping address, shipping method, payment, and a final review — and the drop-off numbers made it obvious that most people never made it past step three.
Image placeholder
Screenshot of the original five-step checkout, showing the shipping method page
Watching real users get stuck
Before redesigning anything, we sat in on a handful of recorded sessions of real customers checking out. The pattern was consistent: people would fill in their address, hit next, and then hesitate on the shipping method page — not because the options were confusing, but because they'd lost track of how many steps were left and whether the price they'd been quoted was still accurate.
Video placeholder
What changed
The fix wasn't cleverer copy on the shipping page — it was removing the uncertainty entirely. We collapsed all five steps into a single scrollable page with a running order summary pinned to the side, so the total price and item list were visible no matter which section someone was filling in. Nothing about the underlying data collection changed; only how much of it was hidden behind a click at any given moment.
Image placeholder
Screenshot of the redesigned single-page checkout with an order summary sidebar
The result
Checkout completion improved within the first week of launch, and stayed improved — this wasn't a novelty bump that faded once people got used to a new layout. The lesson that generalized well beyond this one project: a lot of what looks like a copywriting or design problem is actually an uncertainty problem, and showing people where they stand fixes more of it than better wording ever does.
Got a project or idea you want to talk through?
Get in touchMore articles
New explainers, straight to your inbox
One email whenever a new concept goes up. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.