Checkout UX for Shopify Stores: Fewer Fields, Fewer Exits

When a shopper leaves at checkout, it is tempting to blame price or shipping. Research from the Baymard Institute, which has studied e-commerce usability for years, suggests that a lot of the damage comes from something less glamorous: forms that ask for more than they need. This article summarizes what Baymard has published and turns it into a review list for small Shopify stores.

What the research says

Baymard’s latest checkout overview reports a global average cart abandonment rate of around 70 percent, and notes that much of it is unavoidable. In one 2026 survey, 42 percent of US shoppers had left a cart in the previous three months simply because they were browsing and not ready to buy. Design cannot do much about those visits. Among people with other reasons, 17 percent said the checkout process was too long or complicated.

That last group is where your effort pays off. Baymard’s benchmark found that the typical US checkout shows 23.48 form elements by default, including 14.88 fields, while an ideal one needs about 12 elements in total. It says many sites could cut default elements by 20 to 60 percent. Its separate article on field counts argues that the number of fields matters more to usability than the number of steps, and that most sites need only about eight fields.

Where fields hide in plain sight

Baymard’s list of removable or hideable items is specific enough to turn into a checklist:

Separate first and last name fields. In its testing, 42 percent of participants typed a full name into the first-name box at least once, and 89 percent of benchmarked sites use more than one name field. A single full-name field avoids the mix-up.
Address line 2. About 30 percent of participants stopped at this field, yet 75 percent of sites show it openly. Baymard suggests tucking it behind a link.
Coupon code box. Seventy percent of sites have one, and 35 percent of those display it by default. An always-visible box may tempt shoppers to go hunting for a code elsewhere. Hide it behind a link, or apply eligible discounts automatically.
Billing address. Defaulting to “same as shipping” and hiding the fields entirely, not just prefilling them, shortens the form. The exception is gifting or B2B stores where different billing addresses are common.
Optional extras such as company name or a second phone number belong behind a link as well.

Baymard also recommends automatic address lookup, which cuts both typing and errors.

Guest checkout needs to be obvious

In a 2022 survey of 4,384 US shoppers cited by Baymard, 24 percent had abandoned at least one cart in the previous quarter purely because an account was required. Offering guest checkout is therefore only half the job. Baymard found that 47 percent of sites that offer it do not make it the most prominent option. Four pitfalls recur: vague labels such as “Continue”, a subdued text link, placing the option beneath sign-in or registration, and revealing it only after an email is typed.
Its guidance is to use an explicit “guest” label, present it as a button, put it at the top of the account step, and leave account creation until the order is confirmed. It also warns against silently defaulting to guest checkout without telling people.

What a Shopify merchant can actually do

Shopify runs the checkout itself, so the first step is to find out what your plan and current settings let you change. Some items, such as whether customers must log in, may be a setting; others, such as the wording of buttons and the layout of the cart page, depend on your theme and what Shopify allows at checkout. Check the admin and Shopify’s documentation rather than assuming. A pragmatic way to work:

Walk through your own checkout on a phone. Count the fields and note every box that is optional, redundant or confusing.
Fix what sits before checkout. The cart page and product pages are fully under theme control. Make sure shipping costs and delivery expectations are clear before the shopper commits, and that nothing nudges them toward creating an account.
Review account settings. If customer sign-in is compulsory, ask whether that is truly necessary for your business.
Change one thing at a time. Baymard notes that most of its recommended fixes involve layout, simple form features and microcopy. These are cheap to attempt, but they are easier to judge if you move one lever per test.
Watch your own data. Baymard’s averages come from large benchmarks and its own tests, so a small store’s results will differ. Compare your funnel before and after, over a long enough period to smooth out seasonality.

A caution on numbers

Baymard’s pages contain a few inconsistencies, for example slightly different abandonment figures in different places and a mix of dates. The direction of the findings is consistent, but quote the numbers carefully and prefer ranges over false precision.

If your theme’s cart page or pre-checkout flow needs reworking, our services page is the place to start, and our themes may suit stores that want a cleaner baseline.