More insights
Co-founder, Chief Growth Officer
November 3, 2025 at 12:30 PM
Every year, the same story repeats itself.
Merchants pour energy into campaigns, discounts, and retargeting. But the real battle for conversion is lost (or won) much closer to the finish line.
The checkout.
Black Friday isn’t just another sales event. It’s a stress test for your entire e-commerce experience. Traffic spikes. Shoppers juggle ten tabs comparing deals. And in that chaos, every extra second, every unnecessary click, becomes a potential lost sale.
Even in normal times, 70% of online carts are abandoned (Baymard Institute). During Black Friday, that rate can soar. Not just because of traffic surges, but because shoppers behave differently: they switch devices, jump between payment options, and abandon the moment friction appears.
A single second of delay in page load time can dramatically reduce conversions (Webwave). But it’s not just about speed. It’s about trust, confidence, and familiarity at the payment step.
If your checkout isn’t ready, you’re not just leaving money on the table; you’re handing it to your competitors.
Multiple studies and our internal data highlight the biggest drivers of abandonment, many of which are amplified during seasonal peaks.
1. Forced Accounts and Long Forms Speed matters. 19% of shoppers leave when forced to create an account, and 18% when the checkout process is too long (Baymard). The average checkout contains around 23 fields, but the most efficient ones use just 7-8.
Action: Offer guest checkout. Use address lookup and autofill to save typing. Every extra field is a small tax on your conversion rate.
**2. Beyond Just Cards A significant 19% of shoppers abandon checkout because they’re not comfortable entering their card details online. To build this confidence, merchants should not limit themselves to only card payments, but offer trusted local payment methods (Apple Pay, PayPal, Klarna, etc.) chosen specifically for their audience.
Action: Make sure to offer more than just cards, or you risk losing the sale at the payment step.
**3. Limited Payment Options Payment preference is both personal and highly regional. 10% of global shoppers abandon if their preferred method isn’t there. In Europe, that number jumps to 27%. But it’s not just about what you offer; it’s also about which option is presented first. Our data shows 50.68% of shoppers switch from the default payment option when given the choice. Selecting and prioritizing the most relevant method for your audience reduces friction and increases conversion.
Action: Offer the right mix for each market, and put the most relevant payment method first. By prioritizing what’s truly most popular for your customers, you remove unnecessary choices and friction, directly increasing conversion.
**4. Trust and Security Concerns Black Friday brings a wave of new visitors who don’t yet trust your brand. 19% abandon due to security worries, and 15% because of site errors or crashes (Baymard).
Action: Trust starts before the final payment step. Display the logos of trusted and familiar payment methods early in the buying journey, not just at the last step, so customers recognize options they know and feel secure using. Invest in load testing and uptime monitoring ahead of peak season to avoid errors or crashes that rapidly destroy trust.
**5. Weak Mobile Experience In 2024, 57% of all Cyber Week sales happened on mobile (Geotargetly). Yet mobile conversion rates lag behind desktop (2.9% vs. 4.8%) because mobile checkout often isn’t optimized.
Action: Create a truly mobile-first flow, larger buttons, minimal typing, and one-tap payments. Shopify reports that accelerated wallets can lift conversions by up to 50%.
Small improvements now can unlock major results. Here’s where to start.
Streamline Every Step If a field doesn’t serve a clear purpose, remove it.
Offer and Prioritize the Right Payment Methods Cards alone aren’t enough. Match your mix to each market and set the right default.
Build Visible Trust A checkout that feels both safe and familiar is far more likely to convert both first-time and returning shoppers.
Optimize Performance and Mobile UX Every extra second costs you. Literally.
Black Friday doesn’t create checkout problems; it exposes them. But it also exposes opportunity.
Baymard’s research suggests that improving checkout design alone can lift conversions by 35%. That’s millions in potential revenue recovered, without spending another cent on ads.
Before the holiday wave hits, fix the small things: costs, speed, forms, and payments. A smoother, faster, and more trustworthy checkout doesn’t just protect your sales; it showcases your brand’s reliability when it matters most.
This season, make every click count.
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