// FREE CHECKLIST
The 24-point Shopify checkout audit checklist
This is the actual working checklist behind our paid audits — the things that decide whether a shopper who clicked "add to cart" actually pays you. Industry-wide, roughly 70% of carts are abandoned (Baymard Institute's long-running research), and most of the leaks below are invisible from the admin side. Walk your own store through it as a first-time customer would: real product, real cart, all the way to the payment step, on your phone too.
No email gate. No signup. Severity tags show what to fix first.
1. Cart page & cart drawer
First checkpoint after "add to cart" — friction here ends the session before checkout even starts.
Cart is reachable without leaving the page — a flyout/drawer lets shoppers view and edit the cart in place.MEDIUM
Quantities and removals work inline — no full page reload to change a line item.MEDIUM
A free-shipping progress bar updates live as the cart total changes ("You're $12 away from free shipping").HIGH
The checkout button is the single dominant action — not competing with cross-sells, discount hunts, or "continue shopping."HIGH
2. Checkout entry & accounts
The single highest-abandonment decision point in the entire flow.
Guest checkout is available and obvious — Baymard attributes roughly a quarter of abandonment to forced account creation.CRITICAL
Account creation is offered after purchase, not demanded before it.HIGH
Accelerated checkout buttons (Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal) are visible early, not buried at the payment step.HIGH
3. Shipping & delivery
Surprise costs at the final step are a leading cause of last-minute abandonment.
Shipping cost is disclosed early — on the product or cart page, never first revealed at the final payment step.CRITICAL
A real delivery estimate is shown — an actual date window, not just a method name like "Standard."HIGH
The quoted cost matches the charged cost — no late recalculation surprises between cart and payment.HIGH
4. Payment & trust
Where price transparency and confidence either close the sale or trigger a last-second exit.
The running total (including tax and shipping) stays visible throughout — no fees revealed at the last moment.CRITICAL
Trust signals are present at checkout itself — visible security cues, a return-policy link, HTTPS.HIGH
The discount-code field is low-emphasis (a collapsed "have a code?") — a big empty box sends shoppers off-site hunting for coupons.HIGH
A declined card fails gracefully — clear, actionable message, and nothing the shopper typed gets cleared.HIGH
5. Forms & fields
Small frictions compound — this is where a "fine" checkout becomes an abandoned one.
Entered data survives errors — a validation problem on one field never wipes the rest of the form.CRITICAL
Validation happens inline, in real time — not as a wall of red after submitting.HIGH
Address autocomplete is on and there are no redundant fields.MEDIUM
6. Mobile checkout
For most stores in the $500K–$5M band, the majority of checkout sessions are mobile — it's its own audit, not an afterthought.
The whole flow works one-handed — thumb-reachable CTAs, no precision tapping required.CRITICAL
Every field pops the right keyboard — numeric for card and ZIP, the email keyboard for email.HIGH
Step-to-step loads are fast on a real phone connection — test on cellular, not office Wi-Fi.HIGH
7. Cross-sell & retention
Revenue left on the table rather than actively lost — the easiest quick wins.
Abandoned-checkout emails are actually sending — Shopify's native flow or your email tool, tested end to end, not left at defaults.HIGH
The Thank You page does a job — a post-purchase offer, reorder prompt, or loyalty hook instead of a dead end.HIGH
8. Shopify technical & compliance
The section most audits skip — and the one most likely to be silently costing you money with no visible error.
You're fully migrated off legacy checkout.liquid / "Additional Scripts" — Shopify retired these for standard stores on August 26, 2026. Anything still relying on them has already stopped firing, silently. Place a test order and confirm your replacements actually work.CRITICAL
Your tracking pixels still fire after migration — Meta, GA4, and TikTok confirmed working under Checkout Extensibility/web pixels. Silently broken tracking means your ad attribution is lying to you.CRITICAL
No third-party app breaks the checkout — no errors, duplicate steps, or layout glitches introduced by apps.HIGH
Want a real person to run this against your store?
The free CheckoutGrade scan is this checklist applied to your actual storefront by a human expert — mystery-shopped like a real customer, findings in your inbox within 5 business days. No store login needed, ever.
Get my free checkout audit →
Grounded in Baymard Institute's long-running checkout usability research (baymard.com) and Shopify's published Checkout Extensibility migration guidance. Severity tags reflect our professional judgment about typical revenue impact — your store's actual priorities depend on your store, which is what
the free audit figures out.
