You're refreshing your analytics dashboard for the third time this hour. “The average cart abandonment rate is 70.19%,” you keep chanting to yourself.
You know checkout speed matters. You've read the case studies. You're doing everything right, or so you thought.
Then BigCommerce drops an update that sounds like the answer to your prayers. Faster load times with zero effort from your side? It should change everything, right?
It will! But it's probably not going to work for you.
Let’s go over what improved, and why it might not get you as far as your competitors.
BigCommerce optimized the cart-to-checkout transition, so your customers can now interact with checkout pages a whole second faster. To most people, we might sound crazy celebrating this improvement. But to merchants, it’s the difference between ranking tenth and ranking 1st in an Olympic 100m sprint.
In fact, according to a Deloitte survey, a microsecond of improvement equals to 8.4% retail conversion increase on mobile. This is obviously important because mobile traffic represents 60% of ecommerce visits.
The best part about the BigCommerce update is that it’s already live across all stores using Optimized One-Page Checkout and requires no action from your end.
Your customers won’t see any changes visually, making it a pure performance enhancement that makes things smoother than ever.
If you already have a clunky checkout process, having the +1 second improvement will help, but you’ll still be behind your competitors. Making a bad checkout load faster doesn't make it good. It just makes it bad a little faster.
The average checkout flow is 5.1 steps long and contains 11.3 form fields, and 18% of users have abandoned the process due to this checkout complexity.
Remember, your customers are trying to buy a coffee maker, not apply for a mortgage.
What you can do to make buying easier is to:
Otherwise, by the time your customers fill in their address, they’re ready to click off and forget about the purchase.
“My issue is the checkout is confusing my customers. I have on the product pages that click and collect is available on that item, but when they checkout it asks them to enter their shipping address BEFORE it shows them that click and collect is available as an option. Its creating phone call after phone from confused people.” - A frustrated merchant on Reddit.
63% of customers abandoned their cart when they didn’t have an option to check out as a guest. On top of that, even if you have the option ready, BigCommerce says 60% of buyers couldn't find the guest checkout on their phones on their own.
You’ve got to make guest checkout obvious. Big button. Primary color. Top of the page. It might make you cringe, but you'll also get more sales.
Payment methods like Apple Pay and Google Pay are being increasingly preferred by users. Not everyone is comfortable adding in their credit card info on a site, and this lack of trust is honestly natural given how scams have been evolving.
Plus, Apple Pay is literally two taps on mobile. Credit card entry on mobile is like trying to thread a needle while wearing oven mitts. Which experience do you think converts better?
Every plugin you add slows down your checkout, so adding multiple of them isn’t a great idea.
But here's the thing: not all integrations are created equal. Some actually earn their place on your checkout page. Plugins like extended warranties and accidental damage protection plans are essential to you and your customers. In fact, customers who purchase them have 2–3x higher lifetime value.
This applies across the site. 60% of customers abandon a purchase if the return policy feels too confusing. And if you don’t have it clearly visible, it makes consumers more likely to not purchase.
Additionally, make the difference between returns and warranties clear to them to avoid any future confusion. You don’t want them raging on you for something they should’ve understood from the start.
Here's the silver lining: most of your competitors are also running terrible checkouts.
If they're on platforms slower than BigCommerce, they're losing sales to checkout friction while you're at least getting the speed boost. If they're also on BigCommerce but haven't optimized their checkout flow, they're in the same boat as you: faster page loads, same cluttered pages.
But there's one specific mistake you can exploit: most merchants don't offer protection plans at checkout. According to Mordor Research, attaching protection plans within checkout flows increases conversion and reduces processing cost.
In other words, users who see warranty options are more likely to complete their purchase, even if they don't buy the warranty. It's a confidence signal. "This seller thinks this product is worth protecting. They will take care of the product if something goes wrong."
Essentially, merchants without warranty programs are leaving money on the table twice: once from missing warranty revenue, and once from the conversion lift they never get.
BigCommerce just removed a major technical barrier, which is an easy win. The hard part is making your checkout actually worth completing.
Audit your checkout flow today. Go through it on your phone like a customer would. Count the form fields. Find the friction points. Look for the moment where you'd personally think "eh, maybe I don't need this product after all." Then fix those things.
The new reality is this: BigCommerce gave everyone using it a speed boost. The merchants who win are the ones who combine that speed with an actual good checkout experience.
Everyone else? They're just watching customers abandon carts faster.
.jpg)