What causes high checkout abandonment on Shopify?

The most common causes, in order of frequency among Shopify stores: required account creation before purchase, no express checkout options like Shop Pay or Apple Pay, unexpected shipping costs revealed at checkout, too many required form fields, and payment methods that feel unfamiliar or untrustworthy to the buyer. The first two are settings changes in the Shopify admin. The third is a pricing strategy decision. The fourth and fifth are admin and payment configuration changes.

Does turning on guest checkout increase Shopify sales?

For most stores, enabling guest checkout or making accounts optional rather than required at checkout reduces abandonment at the account creation step. The tradeoff is that guest buyers do not have an account, which can make reactivation through email slightly more dependent on whether they opted into marketing at checkout. However, the revenue gained from buyers who would have abandoned rather than create an account typically outweighs the list-building cost of not requiring account creation.

How do I set up Shop Pay on Shopify?

Shop Pay activates automatically when Shopify Payments is enabled as your primary payment processor. In Shopify Admin, go to Settings, then Payments, and ensure Shopify Payments is active. Once Shopify Payments is enabled, Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay become available in the express checkout section of the checkout settings and can be toggled on. If a third-party payment processor is used instead, Shopify Payments and its associated express checkout methods are not available.

What is a good checkout completion rate for a Shopify store?

Among ecommerce practitioners, a checkout completion rate of 45 to 65 percent is commonly cited as the range for a well-optimized Shopify store, meaning 45 to 65 out of every 100 sessions that reach checkout complete the purchase. Below 35 percent on an established store with consistent traffic typically indicates a friction or trust issue in the checkout flow. Above 70 percent is possible for stores with high repeat-purchase rates or highly qualified traffic sources, since returning customers and buyers who have already made a decision convert at higher rates.

Shopify Diagnostic

Part of Ecommerce Checkout Abandonment Rate High

Shopify Checkout Abandonment: The Settings to Check in Your Admin Before Anything Else

The industry-cited benchmark for ecommerce checkout abandonment is around 70 percent of people who reach the checkout page not completing a purchase. For Shopify stores specifically, a significant portion of that friction is created by settings inside the Shopify admin rather than by the product, the price, or the buyer's intent. Before investing in checkout page redesigns, A/B tests, or conversion rate optimization work, the admin settings audit takes about 20 minutes and eliminates the most common sources of built-in friction. The settings below are the first four to check because they are the most frequently misconfigured and the most directly tied to checkout completion rate.

Four Admin Settings to Check First

Account Requirement at Checkout

In Shopify Admin, go to Settings, then Checkout. Find the Customer accounts section. If the setting is set to Accounts are required, every buyer must create or log into a Shopify account before completing a purchase. This is the single most common friction source in Shopify checkout abandonment. Buyers who arrived from an ad and are ready to purchase do not want to create an account. The recommended setting for most ecommerce stores is Accounts are optional, which allows guest checkout while giving returning customers the option to log in. Shopify research and independent practitioner data consistently show that switching from required accounts to optional or guest checkout is one of the highest-impact single-setting changes for checkout completion rate.

Express Checkout Options

In the same Checkout settings page, look for the section that shows which accelerated or express checkout options are enabled. Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay are express checkout methods that allow buyers to complete a purchase in one or two taps without entering card details or shipping information. These methods remove the most friction-intensive part of the standard checkout flow and are particularly effective for mobile buyers. If none of these are enabled, or if Shop Pay specifically is not active, enabling them is a straightforward admin change. Shop Pay is enabled through the Shopify Payments settings, and Apple Pay and Google Pay activate automatically when Shopify Payments is enabled.

Shopify Payments vs. Third-Party Gateway

If Shopify Payments is not your primary payment processor, Shopify charges a transaction fee on every sale processed through a third-party gateway, in addition to the gateway's own fees. More relevant to checkout abandonment: Shopify Payments enables the full range of accelerated checkout options including Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. A store running on a third-party gateway does not have access to these options and therefore cannot offer the lowest-friction checkout path available to Shopify merchants. In Settings, go to Payments and check which processor is set as primary. If Shopify Payments is not the primary processor, evaluate whether the reason for using a third-party gateway outweighs the checkout friction it introduces.

Form Field Count at Checkout

In the Checkout settings, look at the fields that are required from buyers: email, phone, shipping address, and any additional fields. Every required field is an opportunity for a buyer to stop. Shopify allows you to set fields to required, optional, or hidden. Phone number is often set to required by default for order notification purposes but is not necessary for order fulfillment. If phone number is set to required and your store does not use SMS for order updates, setting it to optional removes one required field from the buyer's path. Similarly, check whether any custom fields have been added to the checkout form that may not be necessary for order processing.

What Shopify Analytics Shows About Checkout Drop

In Shopify Admin, go to Analytics, then Reports, and look for the Checkout Funnel or Sales Funnel report. This shows the percentage of sessions that reached checkout versus the percentage that completed a purchase. It also shows, where Shopify can track it, at which checkout step the exit occurred: at the contact information step, the shipping step, or the payment step. A high exit rate at the payment step, after shipping information has been entered, suggests a payment method or trust issue at the final step. A high exit rate at the contact or shipping step suggests friction earlier in the form. The step-specific data helps prioritize which of the settings above to focus on first.

When the Problem Is Not a Settings Problem

If all four settings checks come back clean and checkout abandonment is still high, the issue is more likely at the trust and pricing layer rather than the friction layer. High checkout abandonment with correctly configured settings points to a buyer who reached checkout but was not fully convinced, which is a different problem from one who wanted to buy but ran into friction. Common causes in this category: unexpected shipping cost revealed at checkout, a price point that requires more trust than the product page built, or a checkout page that does not carry enough social proof to close the hesitation. These are addressed at the product page and offer level rather than the checkout settings level.

A buyer who wanted to buy but ran into friction is a different problem from a buyer who reached checkout but was never fully convinced.

Shopify Checkout Not Completing

If the admin settings are already correct, this page covers the trust and pricing causes of buyers starting and then leaving checkout.

Mobile Conversion Rate Low

Express checkout and form friction hit mobile buyers hardest. If most of your traffic is mobile, this signal is worth checking alongside checkout settings.

Frequently Asked Questions

What to Do Next

If the admin settings are correctly configured and abandonment is still high, the issue is at the pre-checkout layer: product page trust, pricing presentation, or the offer itself. A revenue system audit maps the checkout abandonment rate to the specific signal in the business that is driving it and identifies which fix has the highest-leverage impact on conversion.

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