E-Commerce Checkout Optimisation Guide

The “Add to Cart” button is the start of a journey, not the end. In Australia, cart abandonment rates still hover around 70%. Most of this isn’t due to a lack of interest, but rather a friction filled checkout process. If your checkout feels like an interrogation, your customers will walk away, and they’ll rarely come back to finish what they started.

The good news is that checkout friction is one of the most fixable problems in e-commerce. Unlike brand positioning or product-market fit, it’s mechanical. You can audit it, measure it, and improve it step by step. Below is our full breakdown of what’s working for Australian online stores right now.

The Guest Checkout Mandate

The biggest conversion killer remains forced account creation. Shoppers want speed, not another password to remember. By offering guest checkout as the default option, you remove the psychological hurdle of “yet another account” standing between a customer and their purchase.

The smarter play is to invite account creation after the sale is secured, once someone has paid, they’re far more receptive to saving their details for next time. A simple post-purchase prompt such as “Want to save these details for faster checkout next time?” converts far better than a mandatory sign-up wall ever will, because the trust has already been earned.

If you’re running WooCommerce or a custom cart build, this is a five minute settings change that can meaningfully lift completed orders. It’s one of the first things we check in a checkout audit, because it’s low effort and high impact.

Frictionless Payments: The Aussie Standard

Australian consumers are savvy and expect a variety of payment options at the final step. If a shopper’s preferred method isn’t there, they’ll often abandon rather than switch.

Digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay should be one click options, not buried behind extra steps. Digital wallet usage keeps climbing across Australian retail, and for mobile shoppers in particular, wallets are fast becoming the expected default rather than a nice to have extra.

BNPL, or Buy Now Pay Later, options such as Afterpay and Zip remain essential for the Australian retail landscape, particularly for fashion, homewares, and higher ticket items. BNPL is now a regulated credit product in Australia, which means responsible lending checks apply the same way they do for other forms of credit. This hasn’t dented adoption. If anything, it’s made the sector more mainstream and trusted, but it’s a good reason to keep your BNPL provider relationships and disclosures current.

Merchants should also be aware that Australia is banning card surcharges from October 2026, which will change how many stores present payment costs at checkout. If you currently pass on card surcharges to customers, it’s worth flagging with your bookkeeper or accountant ahead of time, as it will affect both your checkout pricing display and your margins. Reviewing your payment provider fees now, before the change takes effect, will make the transition far smoother than trying to adjust pricing at the last minute.


Traditional cards are still a staple, so make sure entry fields are mobile optimised with auto-fill and auto-formatting, such as spacing card numbers as they’re typed, to reduce fumbling on a small screen.

Real time bank payment options such as PayTo are also growing in Australia, offering faster settlement and lower processing costs for merchants compared with traditional card payments. It’s not yet essential for most small business checkouts, but it’s one worth keeping an eye on, especially for businesses processing recurring or subscription style payments.

Visual Cues and Trust Signals

Trust is earned in pixels. Small, recognisable icons, such as a padlock, “Secure SSL,” or an “Australian Owned” badge, placed near the payment button reduce anxiety at exactly the moment doubt tends to creep in.

A progress bar or step indicator at the top of the checkout also does a lot of quiet work. Customers like to know exactly how many steps stand between them and their order. Three visible steps feels manageable, while an unknown number of steps feels like a trap. If you’re running a multi-page checkout, name each step clearly, such as Delivery, Payment, and Review, rather than just showing “Step 2 of 4.”

Displayed reviews or a trust score near the checkout, not just on the product page, can also help close the deal for first time customers who are still weighing up whether to trust a smaller or lesser known store.

Shipping Transparency

Nothing kills a sale faster than surprise shipping costs appearing at the final step. This is consistently one of the top reasons Australian shoppers cite for abandoning a cart.

There are two solid approaches, and which one suits you depends on your margins and average order value. A shipping calculator on the product page, using postcode, lets customers factor the true cost into their decision before they’ve committed emotionally to the purchase. Alternatively, a flat rate or a free shipping threshold, such as “Free shipping over $75,” clearly messaged site wide, in the cart, and at checkout, removes the surprise entirely and can lift average order value as customers add items to qualify.

Whichever you choose, consistency matters more than the specific model. Customers forgive a shipping cost they expected far more readily than one that appears unannounced.

Mobile Optimised “Fat Finger” Design

The majority of Australian shopping happens on mobile, often during commutes or on the couch. This means checkout design needs to account for thumbs, not just eyes.

Buttons need to be large and well spaced, form fields need generous tap targets, and the keyboard should automatically switch to numeric entry for phone numbers, postcodes, and card details. Autofill and address lookup, rather than manual address entry, also make a meaningful difference to completion rates on mobile, where typing a full street address one field at a time is genuinely tedious.

If you haven’t tested your checkout on an actual phone, in one hand, on real mobile data, rather than just resizing a browser window on your desktop, that’s worth doing this week. It’s often where the most obvious friction hides.

Checkout Speed and Page Performance

A checkout that looks clean but loads slowly will still lose sales. Every extra second of load time on the checkout page compounds the abandonment problem, particularly on mobile connections. Compressed images, minimal third party scripts, and a lightweight checkout template, rather than one loaded with tracking pixels and pop up scripts, all contribute to a checkout that feels instant rather than effortful.

This is one area where a custom built checkout tends to outperform a heavily plugin dependent one. Fewer moving parts means fewer places for delay to creep in.

One Page vs Multi-Step Checkout

There’s no universal right answer here, and we’d be wary of anyone who tells you there is. A single page checkout can feel fast and reduce the sense of a “process,” which suits simple, low consideration purchases well. A multi-step checkout, broken into clear stages, can reduce overwhelm for higher ticket or more complex orders, particularly where shipping options or customisation choices are involved.

The right approach depends on your product, average order value, and customer base. This is exactly the kind of thing worth A/B testing rather than guessing at, and it’s something we help clients test properly rather than relying on a hunch.

Recovering the Ones Who Still Get Away

Even with a well optimised checkout, some customers will still leave before completing their purchase. That’s simply the nature of online shopping. A well timed abandoned cart email, sent within an hour or two while intent is still fresh, can recover a meaningful share of these sales. Keep it simple: a reminder of what’s in the cart, a clear link back to checkout, and, if margins allow, a modest incentive for completing the purchase.

Where to Start

If you only action one thing from this guide, make it guest checkout. It’s the fastest fix with the least technical effort. From there, work through payment options, shipping transparency, and mobile testing in that order. Checkout optimisation isn’t a one off project, it’s worth revisiting every six to twelve months as payment habits, devices, and customer expectations continue to shift.

If you’d like a second set of eyes on your checkout flow, that’s exactly the kind of thing we love digging into. Get in touch and we’ll walk you through what we find.