Learn how to create a frictionless checkout experience that increases conversions by 31%. Step-by-step guide to reducing checkout fields, eliminating account barriers, and optimizing for mobile.
Learn how to create a frictionless checkout experience that increases conversions by 31%. Step-by-step guide to reducing checkout fields, eliminating account barriers, and optimizing for mobile.
Every additional form field in your checkout costs you customers. Research shows that the average online checkout requires users to complete 12 to 15 fields across three separate pages. Each extra field, each additional step, and each unnecessary account creation prompt adds friction that drives potential buyers away.
The solution is frictionless checkout: a streamlined, one-page experience that captures only essential information and removes every barrier between browsing and buying. This guide walks you through the exact steps to implement a frictionless checkout that can increase conversions by 31% while reducing transaction time by 44%.
Whether you manage checkout for a fashion brand, beauty retailer, or food and beverage shop, this framework will help you eliminate friction points and recover revenue lost to cart abandonment.
Frictionless checkout is a payment experience optimized to minimize customer effort. It has three defining characteristics:
This approach contrasts sharply with traditional checkout flows that require 12 to 15 fields spread across multiple pages, often forcing account creation before payment.
| Checkout Type | Number of Fields | Number of Pages | Account Required | Average Completion Time |
| Traditional Checkout | 12-15 | 3 | Yes (often) | 2-3 minutes |
| Frictionless Checkout | 6 | 1 | No | 45-60 seconds |
| Express Buttons (PayPal, Apple Pay) | 0 visible | 1 (redirect) | Yes | 30-45 seconds |
| Platform Guest Checkout | 8-10 | 2 | Optional | 90-120 seconds |
The table reveals why frictionless checkout delivers superior conversion rates. It removes the cognitive load of multi-step navigation while avoiding the account-creation barrier that causes 19% of cart abandonment.¹
Checkout friction manifests in four costly ways:
Form length friction: Each additional form field increases the perceived effort required to complete a purchase. Studies show that reducing form fields from 11 to 4 can increase conversions by 120%.²
Multi-step friction: Breaking checkout across multiple pages forces users to commit to progression without seeing the full picture. The Baymard Institute found that 18% of shoppers abandon carts because the checkout process is too long or complicated.³
Account creation friction: Requiring registration before purchase creates a psychological barrier. Users perceive account creation as committing to a long-term relationship with a brand when they simply want to complete a transaction. This single requirement accounts for 24% of all cart abandonment.¹
Mobile friction: When checkout forms are not optimized for mobile devices, users face tiny tap targets, difficult text entry, and endless scrolling. With mobile commerce representing 60% of e-commerce traffic in 2024,⁴ mobile friction translates directly to lost revenue.
The compounding effect of these friction points is severe. A checkout with 15 fields, three pages, forced account creation, and poor mobile optimization can lose 70% or more of potential buyers who reach the checkout page.
Before implementing changes, document your existing checkout experience and identify specific friction sources.
Map your current flow: Create a visual representation of every page, field, and decision point in your checkout. Note:
Analyze form fields: Review each field and ask two questions: Is this legally required to process the payment? Does this field directly reduce fraud or shipping errors? If you cannot answer yes to either question, mark the field as a candidate for removal.
Common unnecessary fields include:
Measure current performance: Establish baseline metrics before making changes:
Professional checkout audits: Comprehensive checkout audits provide detailed analysis of your current checkout, highlighting specific friction points with data on where users abandon. These audits typically include mockups showing what your branded checkout could look like with optimization applied, giving you a clear before-and-after comparison to inform your implementation strategy.
The core of frictionless checkout is field reduction. Limit your checkout to six essential fields:
Handle edge cases without adding fields: Some information can be inferred or handled differently:
Implement intelligent defaults: Use IP geolocation to pre-fill country and state when possible. For returning customers (identified by email), auto-populate name and address from previous orders without requiring account login.
Optimize field order: Place fields in a logical sequence that matches how users think:
This sequence allows users to complete contact and shipping information before committing payment details, reducing psychological friction.
Account creation is the single largest avoidable barrier in e-commerce checkout. Here is how to remove it while preserving customer data:
Offer post-purchase account creation: After successful payment, present a one-click option: “Save this information for faster checkout next time?” This converts 40-60% of customers into account holders without creating pre-purchase friction.
Implement email-based recognition: When a returning customer enters their email, recognize them and offer to auto-fill their previous information without requiring a password. This provides convenience without mandatory account creation.
Use express checkout without account requirements: Unlike PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, which require separate account creation, advanced express checkout solutions use tokenization to enable one-click purchasing without external accounts. Every transaction creates a secure token, and when customers opt to save their details, only the token is stored—never the actual card information. This adds an extra layer of security while enabling returning customers to check out in one click without redirects or account creation.
Clarify guest checkout visibility: If you maintain both guest and account login options, make guest checkout equally prominent. Place “Continue as Guest” button at the same visual hierarchy as “Sign In” to avoid implying that account creation is preferred or required.
With 60% of e-commerce traffic occurring on mobile devices,⁴ mobile optimization is not optional. Apply these mobile-specific enhancements:
Use appropriate input types: Set form fields to trigger the correct mobile keyboard:
Implement large tap targets: Buttons and form fields should be minimum 44×44 pixels to accommodate thumb-based navigation. Space fields with adequate padding to prevent mis-taps.
Enable autofill: Use standard HTML autocomplete attributes (autocomplete=”shipping street-address”) so mobile browsers can auto-populate fields from saved information.
Design for vertical scrolling: Arrange fields in a single column on mobile. Never place fields side-by-side, which requires horizontal attention shifting and increases cognitive load.
Minimize typing: Use dropdown menus for state selection rather than text entry. Provide address autocomplete using Google Places API or similar services.
Platform-agnostic checkout solutions integrate with your existing e-commerce stack without requiring custom development work. This approach offers several advantages:
Eliminate development burden: Pre-built checkout solutions connect to Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, custom builds, and other platforms through standardized APIs. This removes the need for in-house developers to build and maintain checkout functionality.
Maintain brand consistency: White-label solutions preserve your site’s look and feel, keeping customers in your branded experience rather than redirecting to third-party payment pages. This increases trust and reduces abandonment.
Ensure cross-platform consistency: Platform-agnostic solutions deliver identical checkout experiences regardless of which e-commerce platform powers your site. This is valuable for brands running multiple storefronts or planning future platform migrations.
Preserve flexibility: Unlike platform-specific checkout solutions tied to Shopify or WooCommerce ecosystems, platform-agnostic options move with you if you change platforms. Leading solutions integrate directly with WooCommerce and Magento via plugin, while other platforms connect seamlessly via API without blockers. For merchants on WooCommerce or Magento, implementation can take as little as one to two days. Custom integrations typically complete within two weeks, with white-glove support handling the technical lift.
Access flat-fee pricing: Many platform-agnostic solutions offer transparent, flat-rate transaction fees without hidden charges, making revenue forecasting more predictable compared to tiered pricing models.
Implementation must be followed by rigorous measurement. Track these key metrics:
Conversion rate: Calculate the percentage of users who complete checkout after adding items to cart. Compare pre-implementation and post-implementation rates.
Checkout completion time: Measure the seconds or minutes required from checkout page load to completed purchase. Frictionless checkouts should reduce this time by 40-50%.
Device-specific performance: Analyze mobile vs. desktop conversion rates separately. Mobile should show the largest improvement when friction is reduced.
Field abandonment: Use analytics to identify which specific fields cause drop-off. If users consistently abandon at a particular field, consider whether that field is truly essential.
Revenue per visitor: Beyond conversion rate, track overall revenue per site visitor. Reducing friction should increase both conversion rate and average order value as customers complete purchases more quickly.
Run A/B tests if possible, sending 50% of traffic to the new frictionless checkout and 50% to your existing flow. This provides statistical validation of improvement.
Krepling Pay’s checkout architecture demonstrates the frictionless approach in action. Their solution reduces the traditional multi-step, multi-field checkout to a single page with six essential fields.
The performance difference is measurable:
Unlike express checkout buttons (PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay) that require external account creation and redirect users away from the merchant’s site, Krepling’s express option is built directly into the branded checkout experience. Using tokenization technology, every transaction creates a secure token that can be saved for one-click future purchases—without storing actual card information. This eliminates redirects while maintaining the speed advantage of one-click purchasing with enhanced security.
The technical implementation requires no custom development work. Merchants receive white-glove implementation support, with checkout integration typically completed within one to two days for WooCommerce or Magento merchants, or approximately two weeks for custom integrations—all without requiring developer resources.
Several technical factors influence successful frictionless checkout deployment:
PCI compliance: Payment processing must meet Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) requirements. Use certified payment processors that handle sensitive card data, removing compliance burden from your development team. Leading frictionless checkout solutions maintain both PCI DSS and SOC 2 compliance, ensuring your payment processing meets the highest security and data protection standards.
Address verification: Implement Address Verification Service (AVS) to reduce fraud without adding visible fields. AVS validates addresses against card issuer records in the background.
Fraud detection: Use machine learning-based fraud detection that operates invisibly rather than adding security fields or CAPTCHA challenges that create customer friction.
API integration: Ensure your checkout solution offers RESTful APIs with comprehensive documentation. This allows seamless integration with your existing order management, inventory, and customer service systems.
Payment method flexibility: Support major credit cards, debit cards, and digital wallets through a unified interface. Avoid requiring customers to navigate multiple checkout flows for different payment types.
Localization: If you serve international markets, ensure the checkout handles multiple currencies, languages, and address formats without increasing field count for domestic customers.
E-commerce businesses implementing frictionless checkout typically see measurable improvements within 30 to 60 days:
Conversion rate increase: The average improvement ranges from 25% to 35%, with mobile conversion showing larger gains than desktop.
Revenue lift: Even without increasing traffic, reducing checkout friction directly increases revenue. A site with $1 million in annual revenue and a 30% conversion improvement generates an additional $300,000 without additional marketing spend.
Cart abandonment reduction: Frictionless checkout can reduce abandonment from the industry average of 69.8%⁵ to below 50%, recovering thousands or millions in previously lost revenue.
Customer satisfaction: Post-purchase surveys show that customers rate streamlined checkout experiences more positively, increasing likelihood of repeat purchases.
Competitive advantage: In markets where most competitors maintain traditional multi-step checkouts, frictionless checkout becomes a meaningful differentiator that drives market share gains.
Results vary based on your starting point. Businesses with particularly high-friction current checkouts (15+ fields, forced account creation, poor mobile optimization) will see larger improvements than those starting from better baselines.
Use this checklist to implement your frictionless checkout:
Checkout friction is costing your business real revenue. Every unnecessary field, each additional page, and all forced account creation prompts drive potential customers away before they complete their purchases.
Implementing frictionless checkout with one page, six essential fields, and zero account requirements can increase your conversion rate by 31% while reducing transaction time by 44%. These improvements translate directly to recovered revenue without requiring increased traffic or marketing spend.
The technical implementation is simpler than building custom checkout flows. Platform-agnostic solutions integrate with your existing e-commerce stack without custom development work, maintaining your brand consistency while delivering measurable performance improvements.
Your next step is to audit your current checkout, identify specific friction points, and implement a streamlined solution that removes barriers between browsing and buying.
Learn how to create a frictionless checkout experience that increases conversions by 31%. Step-by-step guide to reducing checkout fields, eliminating account barriers, and optimizing for mobile.
Learn how Krepling Pay can power your business—whether you’re enhancing your existing checkout or launching a fully embedded, end-to-end retail experience.
