65% of ecommerce checkout flows score “mediocre” or worse for usability, based on Baymard Institute’s live Cart and Checkout Usability Benchmark of 335 top-grossing US and EU sites, accessed in 2026. Only 2% rate “good,” and none of the 335 sites reach “perfect.” That gap between what a checkout should do and what it actually does is where most in-checkout abandonment happens.
How good is the average ecommerce checkout in 2026?
Most checkouts fall short of a basic usability bar. Baymard Institute’s live benchmark, which continually rescores sites as they redesign their checkout, currently rates 65% of the 335 top-grossing US and EU sites it tracks as “mediocre” or worse. Only 35% clear a “decent” or better bar, and within that smaller group just 2% reach “good.” No site in the sample has ever scored “perfect” or state-of-the-art.
The benchmark itself is not a quick glance. Baymard’s team has manually reviewed more than 30,000 individual checkout elements across the 335 sites, backed by 25 rounds of qualitative usability testing spanning over 4,400 recorded test sessions and 54 rounds of manual benchmarking. That scale is why the 65% figure holds up as a real measurement rather than a single-site anecdote.
Figure 1: How 335 top-grossing US and EU ecommerce sites score on Baymard Institute’s checkout usability scale. A fourth category, “perfect,” holds 0% and is omitted from the chart for readability. Source: Baymard Institute, live Cart and Checkout Usability Benchmark, accessed 2026.
A checkout does not need to be flawless to convert well, but two out of three currently sit below even a “decent” rating, which is a wide gap for something that sits directly between a shopper and a completed sale.
How many usability problems does a typical checkout carry?
The average site in Baymard’s benchmark has 32 unique usability improvements it could make to its checkout flow. Based on combined usability test sessions, Baymard’s research puts the potential conversion gain from closing that gap at up to 35% for a typical large-scale ecommerce site, a substantially larger swing than most single-feature checkout changes produce on their own.
That scale of upside explains why checkout redesigns keep showing up on ecommerce roadmaps every year without the underlying 65% mediocre-or-worse figure moving much: 32 issues is a lot to fix in one release cycle, and new friction gets introduced as fast as old friction gets removed.
The takeaway for a store owner is not that checkout UX is unsolvable. It is that most stores are sitting on a specific, cataloged list of fixable problems rather than one big unknown.
Which checkout-specific frictions cause the most abandonment?
Once a shopper reaches checkout, a distinct set of reasons drives them away from finishing the order. Payment trust concerns lead the checkout-stage list at 19%, followed closely by forced account creation at 18% and a checkout process that’s too long or complicated at 17%, according to Baymard Institute’s survey of cart abandonment reasons. Website errors or crashes tie at 17%, and 12% of shoppers say they couldn’t see or calculate the total order cost before reaching payment.
| Checkout-stage reason | Share of shoppers citing it |
|---|---|
| Didn’t trust the site with card information | 19% |
| Site required account creation | 18% |
| Checkout process too long or complicated | 17% |
| Website errors or crashes | 17% |
| Couldn’t see or calculate total cost upfront | 12% |
| Credit card declined | 10% |
Source: Baymard Institute, survey of cart abandonment reasons.
Figure 2: Reasons shoppers cite specifically for abandoning during the checkout process itself, as opposed to earlier browsing-stage reasons. Source: Baymard Institute, survey of cart abandonment reasons. For the full reason list including pre-checkout causes like extra costs and slow delivery, see our cart abandonment statistics for 2026.
None of the top checkout-stage reasons involve the product. Trust and account friction are policy and copy problems a store controls directly. Publishing clear terms and conditions and a visible security statement at the point of payment addresses part of that 19% trust gap directly; a T&C Generator produces that language in plain terms rather than legal boilerplate a shopper skips past. Guest checkout, which lets a shopper skip the 18% account-creation friction entirely, is its own topic worth a dedicated look, separate from the terms and cost transparency issues covered here.
Trust and account requirements together account for 37 percentage points of cited reasons, more than double the share attributed to card declines. That is a policy and copy fix, not a payment-processor fix.
Does checkout abandonment differ by device?
Yes, and the gap is large. Mobile checkout abandonment runs at 77.06%, against 66.39% on desktop and 70.01% on tablet, in Dynamic Yield’s eCommerce Benchmarks dashboard, a snapshot dated July 2024. A later snapshot of the same rolling dashboard, cited by SellersCommerce in May 2025, put mobile abandonment at 75.5%, so treat the exact figure as directional rather than fixed while the underlying gap has held.
Figure 3: Checkout abandonment rate by device category. Source: Dynamic Yield eCommerce Benchmarks dashboard, snapshot dated July 2024. See our mobile cart abandonment statistics for 2026 for the full device breakdown and its history since 2015.
A checkout built and tested primarily on desktop is being judged on the device where shoppers are least forgiving, since mobile now carries the majority of ecommerce traffic industry-wide.
What does a checkout that avoids these problems look like?
The checkout-stage reasons above map onto a short, testable sequence rather than a vague quality judgment. A checkout that shows the full order cost before the payment step, offers a path that doesn’t force account creation, and displays clear terms and a security statement at the point of payment removes three of the top six checkout-stage abandonment reasons at once.
Figure 4: A minimum three-question test a checkout should pass to avoid the leading checkout-stage abandonment reasons. Source: synthesized from the Baymard Institute reason data in Figure 2.
A checkout that fails any one of these three questions pushes a shopper toward the 65% mediocre-or-worse group; a checkout that passes all three has already addressed 49 of the 93 percentage points of cited checkout-stage friction shown in Figure 2.
Where should a store prioritize checkout fixes first?
Not every checkout-stage friction is equally easy to fix. Trust and cost-transparency problems are copy and layout changes a store can ship in a day; forced account creation and long checkout flows usually require more structural changes to the order pipeline. Plotting each reason’s share of citations against how much control a store has over fixing it shows which problems deserve attention first.
Figure 5: An editorial prioritization framework, not a measured metric. Vertical placement reflects the reason-citation percentages from Figure 2; horizontal placement reflects how directly a store controls each cause. Source: synthesized from Baymard Institute reason data.
Trust messaging and upfront cost display sit in the fastest-to-fix, highest-impact quadrant. Account creation and checkout length require more engineering time but still carry enough weight to justify the work.
The Bottom Line
65% of ecommerce checkouts score mediocre or worse on Baymard Institute’s usability benchmark, and the specific reasons shoppers cite for abandoning during checkout, payment trust, forced account creation, an unclear total cost, and a process that runs too long, are largely policy and copy problems rather than payment-infrastructure problems. Mobile shoppers face all of this at a higher abandonment rate than desktop shoppers, 77.06% versus 66.39%, which matters more each year as mobile carries a growing share of ecommerce traffic. A store that shows the full cost before payment, offers guest checkout, and publishes clear terms and a security statement at the point of purchase closes three of the six most commonly cited checkout-stage frictions without touching the payment processor at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
What percentage of ecommerce checkouts have poor usability? 65% of the 335 top-grossing US and EU sites Baymard Institute benchmarks score mediocre or worse on checkout usability, per Baymard’s live Cart and Checkout Usability Benchmark, accessed in 2026. Only 2% score good, and none of the 335 sites reach perfect.
How many usability problems does the average checkout carry? 32 unique usability issues, per Baymard Institute’s ongoing checkout benchmark of 335 sites. Fixing them could lift conversion by up to 35%, based on Baymard’s combined usability test sessions.
Why do shoppers abandon checkout after they have already started? The leading in-checkout reasons are not trusting the site with payment details (19%), being forced to create an account (18%), a checkout process that is too long or complicated (17%), and website errors (17%), according to Baymard Institute’s survey of cart abandonment reasons.
Is checkout abandonment worse on mobile than desktop? Yes. Mobile checkout abandonment sits at 77.06% versus 66.39% on desktop, per Dynamic Yield’s eCommerce Benchmarks dashboard, snapshot dated July 2024.
Sources and References
- Baymard Institute. Cart and Checkout Usability Benchmark. Live benchmark of 335 top-grossing US and EU ecommerce sites, accessed 2026.
- Baymard Institute. 50 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics. Compilation of 50 studies, 2006 to 2025, including the cart abandonment reasons survey.
- Oberlo, citing Dynamic Yield eCommerce Benchmarks. Cart abandonment rate by device. Snapshot dated July 2024.
- SellersCommerce. (2025). Shopping cart abandonment statistics, citing Dynamic Yield. Snapshot dated May 2025.
Note: All figures verified as of September 2026. Baymard’s checkout usability benchmark and Dynamic Yield’s device dashboard are both live, continuously updated sources; headline figures are refreshed at least twice a year.
