Checkout Optimisation: Six Practical Tips for UK Businesses

Checkout optimisation refers to the process of making it easier for customers to complete an online purchase. This basically entails figuring out where shoppers get stuck and improving those parts of the journey.

This guide explains how to review your checkout, choose useful improvements and measure whether they help customers finish their orders. We've also explained how Wise Business can help you manage supported overseas sales proceeds and the payments you make from them.

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Note: Wise Business offers a free Essential plan for basic spending and transferring. If you need to receive money, set up direct debits, or generate invoices, you'll pay a one-time £50 setup fee to unlock the Advanced features.

Wise services and features are not available in all regions, country and product restrictions apply. Visit wise.com to check availability, and for fee details and terms for your region, visit our pricing page for Wise Business.

This content is provided for general educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to provide legal, tax, financial, investment or professional advice and should not be relied upon as such.

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Summary of checkout optimisation tips

1. Find where customers leave

Start by following the checkout as a customer would, from the basket to the order confirmation. Record each stage in your analytics, such as entering contact details, choosing delivery and submitting a payment. Your order system should confirm which purchases actually completed.

This helps you distinguish a problem with the form from a problem with payment. For example, if many shoppers reach the address page but few continue, review that page before changing your payment provider. If they submit their details but the payment fails, look at the provider's error reports instead.

Compare mobile and desktop journeys, new and returning customers, and the main countries you sell to. A single overall figure can hide a problem that affects only one group. When using analytics or reviewing customer sessions, follow your business's privacy and consent requirements and avoid collecting payment-card details in those tools.

2. Make the total cost clear

Once you've identified the main drop-off points, check whether customers can understand what they'll pay before they commit to the purchase. Include unavoidable charges in the total price rather than introducing them late in checkout. UK price-transparency guidance covers mandatory fees, taxes and delivery charges, with specific rules where a charge can't reasonably be calculated in advance.¹

For example, if a product costs £40 and every order has a £4 delivery charge, show the £44 total clearly. If delivery depends on the address, explain how the charge is calculated prominently, then include it in the total as soon as it can reasonably be calculated. An optional delivery upgrade can be presented separately until the customer selects it.¹

Keep that total visible as the basket changes, and make the payment currency clear for overseas customers. Test discount codes, delivery choices and quantity changes together so the final payment amount matches the order summary.

3. Make forms easier to complete

With pricing clear, review the information customers need to provide. Ask for details needed to fulfil the order, and explain any field whose purpose may be unclear. If creating an account isn't necessary, consider letting customers buy as guests and offering registration after the purchase.

Use familiar field labels and supported autofill, but let customers correct an address manually when a lookup fails. Keep the details they've already entered if they need to go back a step or fix an error.

For example, a message saying “Enter a valid postcode” beside the postcode field is more useful than “Something went wrong” at the top of the page. Test the form with keyboard navigation as well as a mouse or touchscreen, and check that errors are understandable without relying only on colour.

4. Test the mobile experience

Next, complete a purchase on the phones and browsers your customers commonly use. A checkout that looks tidy on a laptop may be difficult to complete when a phone keyboard covers the address fields or a delivery selector extends beyond the screen.

Check that customers can read the order summary, edit their basket and tap the payment button comfortably. Test what happens when they switch to a banking app for an authentication check and return to your checkout. Their order details should still be available, and the payment status should be clear.

Include slower connections and interrupted sessions in your testing. If the page takes too long to respond, customers may press the payment button again or leave without knowing whether their order went through. Work with your developer and payment provider on a clear pending-payment message and duplicate-payment controls.

5. Review payment choices and recovery

Choose payment methods based on the customers and markets you serve, then test each method through to confirmation. Consider whether customers can use their preferred cards or wallets, what currencies they can pay in and what happens if authentication fails.

A declined payment needs a useful explanation and a clear next action. Depending on the provider's response, that might mean checking the details, contacting the card issuer or trying another payment method. If the payment is still pending, tell the customer before encouraging another attempt.

Your developer should confirm the result through the payment provider's documented integration, rather than treating a customer's return to the confirmation page as proof of payment. Test cancelled payments and closed browser tabs as well as successful purchases.

Keep security requirements in the review. PCI DSS, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, sets requirements for handling payment-card data. Outsourcing card entry can reduce the data your own systems handle, but the applicable self-assessment and controls depend on the implementation. Confirm the requirements with your payment provider and the organisation responsible for your merchant compliance.²

6. Measure changes consistently

After fixing obvious faults, choose one improvement to test and decide how you'll judge it before launch. A useful starting measure is checkout completion rate:

Checkout completion rate = completed orders ÷ checkout starts × 100

Define a checkout start consistently and decide how repeat attempts will be counted. For an illustrative example, 320 completed orders from 500 checkout starts gives a completion rate of 64%. If customers can pay later, decide when an order counts as complete and use that definition throughout.

Where traffic allows, compare the existing checkout with a changed version during the same period. Keep the test running long enough to cover normal trading patterns, and check that the groups contain comparable customers. With lower traffic, combine the numbers with usability testing and support feedback rather than treating a small change as conclusive.

Alongside completed orders, monitor payment failures, duplicate charges, refunds and checkout-related support requests. An improvement should make purchasing easier without creating more problems after the sale. Record what changed, the test dates and the result so the next review builds on what you've learned.

Manage international sales proceeds with Wise Business

Once a customer has paid, you need to receive the proceeds and account for the sale. Eligible UK merchants can use Wise Business to receive supported overseas payments and hold supported currencies. If you want a payment provider to pay out to Wise, check that it accepts your Wise account details for the currency and business involved.

You can then use those funds for supported international business payments, such as paying for stock in the same currency as your sales proceeds. A connection to supported accounting software can bring Wise transactions into your books, where your team can match payouts to the provider's sales, fee and refund reports. This supports the work after checkout while your store and payment provider handle the purchase journey.

Wise Business offers a free Essential plan for basic spending and transferring. If you need to receive money, set up direct debits, or generate invoices, you'll pay a one-time £50 setup fee to unlock the Advanced features.

With Wise Business, you can:

• 🌍 Send money to 70+ countries and pay overseas invoices at the mid-market exchange rate with low, transparent fees and no hidden exchange rate markups (product availability varies by region)
• 📥 Receive payments in 24 currencies and counting
• 💵 Get local account details for 8+ currencies, including USD and EUR, to let your customers pay in a currency they know and trust - convenience for them and peace of mind for you
• 💰 Hold money in 40+ currencies
• 🔁 Convert currencies anytime at the mid-market exchange rate with low, transparent fees
• ⚡ Use the batch payments tool to create and send up to 1,000 payments in a single transfer
• 👥 Run payroll and make international payments for up to 1,000 employees all over the world - including paying suppliers using local payment methods like ACH, SEPA, and Faster Payments
• 💳 Get business debit cards with 0.5% cashback for you and your team to keep track of team expenses and spend all over the world, with real-time visibility and categorisation. See full cashback terms and conditions
• 🏢 Manage cash in 55+ currencies across international offices from a single business account and move money between business accounts in seconds (exact speeds can vary depending on individual circumstances and may not be the same for all transactions)
• 🧾 Connect and sync every business transaction to your favourite accounting software, including Xero, Quickbooks, and more
• 🔐 Create your own payment approvals process to manage your team better with customised access for different team members, roles and permissions
• 📑 Create custom professional invoices and schedule invoice payments for future dates
• 📈 Earn variable returns on GBP, USD and EUR with Wise Interest (Growth not guaranteed. Your balance will go down in the event of a government default or interest rates going negative.)
• 🔗 Create payment links and QR codes to get paid easily (Card payment acceptance for new Wise Business customers is currently unavailable. Payment methods subject to eligibility and availability.)
• ⚙️ Automate payouts with the Wise API (comes with 24/7 customer support, a sandbox account to test integrations, API tokens, and clear documents on how to implement and make the most of our API)

Make the wise choice when selecting a business account for your domestic and global needs.

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Register for Wise Business ✍️

Wise Interest disclaimer: Growth not guaranteed. Your balance will go down in the event of a government default or interest rates going negative. Taxes may apply. 3.32% variable rate on GBP is based on 7 day performance as of 05 Aug 2026. For full 5-year past performance and fund information, visit https://wise.com/interest. Investments are offered by Wise Assets UK Ltd. (FRN 839689)

Wise services and features are not available in all regions, country and product restrictions apply. Visit wise.com to check availability, and for fee details and terms for your region, visit our pricing page for Wise Business.

FAQs

What is CRO in retail?

Conversion rate optimisation, or CRO, means improving a shopping experience so more visitors complete a chosen action, such as buying a product. Checkout optimisation focuses on the final stages of that journey, while retail CRO can also cover product pages, navigation and other parts of the store.

What is payment optimisation?

Payment optimisation focuses on how customers pay and whether those payments complete successfully. It can include payment-method selection, authentication, error handling and provider performance. Checkout optimisation also covers the forms, delivery choices and price information customers encounter before paying.

Is a one-page checkout better than a multi-step checkout?

Neither is automatically better. A short order may fit comfortably on one page, while a more complex purchase may be easier to follow in clearly labelled steps. Test the design with your customers and compare completion, errors and support requests.

What's the difference between cart abandonment and checkout abandonment?

Cart abandonment usually measures shoppers who add something to their basket but don't buy. Checkout abandonment measures those who start checkout but don't complete it. Define the start and end events in your analytics before comparing either measure over time.

What should a small business improve first?

Fix broken payment flows, unclear prices and forms customers can't complete before testing cosmetic changes. Then use your analytics and customer feedback to choose the next improvement, focusing on the part of checkout causing the most difficulty.

Sources:

1. Competition and Markets Authority: Providing clear and accurate information about prices
2. PCI Security Standards Council: SAQ A eligibility for outsourced payment pages

Sources last checked on 6th November 2026