Reducing Transaction Friction

Let’s cut to the chase ➜ Complex checkouts are conversion killers. The simpler the path from cart to completion, the higher the revenue. It's not just about fewer clicks, it’s about creating a seamless, intuitive journey for your customer. Here’s a streamlined approach that has significantly bumped up our conversion rates: [1] Minimise steps: Every extra field in the checkout process can drop your conversion rate by 10%. Keep it lean. [2] Transparent pricing: No hidden fees. Surprise charges at checkout are the fastest way to lose trust and a sale. [3] Multiple payment options: More ways to pay mean more completed purchases. Include digital wallets and localised payment methods. [4] Guest checkout option: Not everyone wants to create an account. A guest checkout can increase conversions by reducing friction. [5] Reassuring security features: Highlight security badges and encryption assurances prominently. Trust breeds transactions. Implementing these strategies led to a 35% decrease in cart abandonment and a significant boost in customer satisfaction and loyalty. Have you streamlined your checkout process recently, or have you ever abandoned a cart due to a complex checkout experience? Share your insights or changes that made a difference! #checkout #experience #online #digital

The Checkout That Thinks Like a Human 👌 We’ve all been there— You’re ready to buy something, and suddenly… you’re in checkout limbo. Five steps. Three different screens. Re-entering the same information twice. Each click feels like a little test of patience. I’ve seen it across dozens of e-commerce platforms: the “multi-step checkout maze.” But what if the checkout didn’t feel like checkout? What if it felt like one calm, guided conversation? That’s what I set out to design. The Idea 💡 Instead of breaking checkout into separate pages, I combined everything—shipping, payment, and confirmation—into one seamless section. Each step unfolds within the same frame, with a clear progress indicator showing exactly where the user is. No jumping around. No losing context. No “where am I now?” anxiety. Meanwhile, the order summary and total cost remain fixed on the left—always visible, always clear. So users know exactly what they’re paying, how much, and what’s next. Why It Works 🧠 (The UX Science Behind It) Hick’s Law: The fewer decisions a user faces at once, the faster they act. → By keeping one section active and guiding the flow, decision time drops drastically. Fitts’s Law: Important CTAs like “Complete Purchase” are always within easy reach. → Less movement, less friction, higher conversion. Cognitive Load Theory: Users can focus on one task at a time without holding multiple details in working memory. → Reduces overwhelm and boosts completion rates. Jakob’s Law: Users prefer familiar patterns—but optimized. → The experience feels familiar (same steps) but frictionless (all in one intuitive space). Visibility of System Status (Heuristic #1): The progress bar communicates exactly where the user stands. → No uncertainty, no stress. The Business Impact 💼 For the business, the benefits are just as strong: ✔️ Fewer drop-offs at the payment stage. ✔️ Faster checkout completion. ✔️ Higher trust and transparency (clear cost visibility). ✔️ Stronger brand perception through thoughtful design. The Bigger Lesson 🎯 Good UX isn’t about adding animations or colors. It’s about removing friction, guiding attention, and designing for how humans think. This one-page checkout is more than a layout—it’s a conversation between the product and user, built on trust, clarity, and flow. Because the best design isn’t the one with the most steps… It’s the one where the user doesn’t even feel the steps exist. #UXDesign #ProductDesign #EcommerceUX #DesignThinking #UserExperience #ConversionOptimization #DesignStrategy #HeuristicEvaluation #CXDesign #DesignForHumans

How a mobile cart redesign increased transactions by 3.4% Problem: Checkout drop-off rates were killing mobile revenue. → The cart design was cluttered, unintuitive, and frustrating for users. → Visitors struggled to understand their next steps, leading to high abandonment rates. Solution: We did a deep dive into user behavior with: - Google Analytics: To identify friction points in the funnel. - HotJar heatmaps: To track user interactions and frustrations. - User Testing: To understand why visitors were dropping off. What we found: Visitors needed clearer CTAs, smoother layout, tap-friendly elements. We implemented a mobile-specific cart redesign with these improvements: Larger tap targets for easy navigation. Streamlined layout to reduce decision fatigue. Stronger calls-to-action to guide users through checkout. Testing Process: We A/B tested the revamped cart design against the original. - Audience: Mobile visitors. - Metric: Increase in visits to checkout. - Duration: Conducted over a statistically significant period. Results: The redesign delivered across all key metrics: - +8% lift in visits to checkout. - +3.4% increase in transactions. - $1.39 boost in revenue per visitor (RPV). Here’s how you can use this for your brand: Eliminate friction with clear pathways. Simplify deep-funnel elements for mobile users. Invoke the “Don’t Make Me Think” principle to guide users seamlessly to checkout.

Nothing was broken. But something wasn’t working. At Nappa Dori, a brand known for craftsmanship and design, everything looked fine. The site was polished. The systems were stable. No glaring bugs. And yet… people kept dropping off at checkout. 📉 As product folks, we’re trained to look for errors, latency, broken APIs. But this wasn’t that. This was friction. Too many fields. Repeated inputs. A checkout that didn’t feel as smooth as the brand itself. This made the flow feel harder than it needed to be. The team made one smart move: they added in Razorpay Magic Checkout. Customer details auto-filled. Checkout got 5X faster. COD risks were flagged automatically. Behind the scenes, Razorpay Magic Checkout pulls saved addresses and payment info using just a mobile number. The SDK handles everything: UI, coupons, payments, and even flags risky COD orders using machine learning. ✅ This one change and conversions were up 7.3%, repeat orders were higher, and the checkout finally matched the brand. For me, the takeaway is simple: 1️⃣.Growth sometimes comes from doing less, not more. 2️⃣.Removing friction is as powerful as adding features. 3️⃣.Product and engineering decisions directly shape revenue. And here’s why it matters now. Friction doesn’t just cost you customers, it costs you more when traffic is peaking. Which is why as festive sales surge, small checkout improvements can protect margins and unlock disproportionate growth. Because at the end of the day, money doesn’t just move because of what you sell. It moves because of how easy you make it for someone to say “yes.” Product folks, what’s the one product fix that saved you this festive season❓

ChatGPT now handles transactions directly in-app. The other LLMs will follow within weeks/months (if not already!) This isn't a new problem. It's the old problem on steroids. Your employees could always bypass procurement with PCards. But now? The friction just dropped to zero. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗱: Before: "I need a wireless keyboard. Let me find my PCard, search Amazon, compare options, enter shipping details, wait for the email receipt, forward it to finance..." Now: "ChatGPT, buy me a wireless keyboard for under $50." Done. 30 seconds. Zero cognitive load. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗫 𝗴𝗮𝗽 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗮 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝘆𝗼𝗻. Your procurement portal requires 73 clicks and 3 approval steps to buy a $40 item. An LLM does it in one sentence. You're not competing with Amazon checkout anymore. You're competing with conversation. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗼 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘄: → Map the actual user journey for low-value purchases in your system → Identify which purchase categories are most vulnerable to this shift (Look at anything under $500) → Build a business case for procurement UX improvements using "risk of AI-enabled maverick spend" as justification → Test if your employees even know how to buy simple items through approved channels (the results will scare you) The teams that win this decade will be the ones who accept the truth: Compliance through friction is dead. Your approved process needs to be faster and easier than asking Chat GPT. Not equal to it. Better! (e.g. Match the Chat GPT experience and remove the need for PCard reconciliation for employees) Get ahead of this adoption curve now or spend 2026 trying to claw back spend visibility. 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝘆 𝗮 $𝟱𝟬 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺? _________________________ 𝗣.𝗦. If you liked this, consider subscribing to my weekly digital procurement newsletter. Every Sunday, I give 10,000+ procurement leaders the tips and tricks they need to build their ideal procurement technology ecosystem without the guesswork, vendor confusion, or million-dollar mistakes Subscribe here for free: https://lnkd.in/eFs8dc-F

Ever skip the cart and go straight to checkout? We tried it, and the results blew us away. A single-product supplement brand came to us with a familiar challenge: cart abandonment. Shoppers were adding items to their cart…but then bouncing before purchase. They only sell one product, so we wondered: Is the cart page really necessary? So we ran an A/B test. Instead of loading a mini cart drawer, we sent visitors straight to checkout after “Add to Cart.” One simple tweak—no extra fluff. The outcome? A 16.8% boost in conversion rate, climbing from 5.54% to 6.46%. Even better, it’s estimated to add 265 extra monthly transactions and roughly $21,200 in additional revenue if all factors stay consistent. That’s a big jump for a small switch. What did we learn? ✅ Minimizing steps pays off. ✅ Fewer “decision points” reduce drop-offs. ✅ Even single changes can yield surprising wins. At the end of the day, removing friction is the name of the game. If your customers already know what they want, why slow them down?

Agentic Commerce: “when your AI shops, BNPL and PoS Financing solutions could becomes everyday money💰” As consumer agents move from recommending to transacting; finance solutions like BNPL transition from being checkout options into “programmable cashflow” feature for daily spend What the data already says (before agents even arrive): ❇️ In the Tabby | تابي study, 77% of users say they’ll definitely use BNPL more for essential shopping this year, with another 17% “likely.” The text notes no meaningful difference by age or gender; this is broad-based behavior (see chart on page 4) ❇️ Essential purchases already outweigh discretionary ones, and in Saudi Arabia the shift is strongest (66% of first orders and 67% of total orders are essentials vs 61%/51% in the UAE). The report also highlights cash-flow management and not convenience as the main reason in KSA (page 7) ❇️ The summary (page 8) calls BNPL a money management tool helping shoppers plan monthly spending rather than just impulse buys —————— Why I am suggesting that “agentic commerce” will 10× embedded finance (and its “naughty posterchild,” BNPL) provided the policymakers don’t halt the progress: ⏺️ Autonomous budgeting: Agents will run rolling cash-flow forecasts and pick installments only when they smooth liquidity vs. income cycles which will turn BNPL into automatic bill-smoothing, not impulse fuel ⛽️ ⏺️ Dynamic tender routing: Agents will choose the optimal rail (A2A, wallet, card, BNPL line) per basket, fee, and settlement— this will result in BNPL getting picked far more often for daily spends when it beats alternatives on net cost + cash-flow ⏺️ Contextual underwriting: With permissioned first-party data, agents continuously update affordability signals, enabling micro-limits and shorter plans for everyday spend which means safer growth with lower loss rates ⏺️ Invisible UX: Agents collapse the checkout. Friction drops to zero, and “pay in 4” becomes a default setting, not a decision while driving frequency and retention ⏺️ Merchant economics: Agents will optimize for total basket conversion and repeat rate; merchants will surface BNPL earlier (search), fund incentives, and accept instant settle BNPL to cut working capital friction ⏺️ New use cases: Subscriptions, utility bills, school fees, fuel/top-ups, transit, micro-health, mid-ticket categories become more BNPL-friendly when orchestrated by agents ⏺️ Programmable safeguards: Hard limits, repayment autopay, and real-time nudges are coded into the agent which means growth with guardrails (so enough of the negative rhetoric) —————— So what? Agentic commerce in my opinion has the ability to upgrade embedded finance to “always-on financial choreography.” If essentials are already the majority of BNPL usage today, agents will accelerate the shift from discretionary to daily, making BNPL an operating system for household cashflow 💸 Hosam | Litesh | Zain | Oliver | Christoph | Sanjiv | Sami | Khalil | Ramana