Most shoppers who add something to their basket never pay for it. Some were only browsing, but a stubborn share leave because the checkout handed them a reason to: a surprise delivery fee, a forced account, a payment method that isn’t there. The good news is that those reasons are fixable, and most of the fixes take days rather than months.
Why carts go stale
Baymard Institute has tracked checkout abandonment for years, and its benchmark has hovered around 70% across the studies it collects. Not all of that is recoverable, because people use baskets as wishlists and price-comparison tools. In our experience with UAE and Gulf stores, though, the abandonment caused by friction, doubt or missing options is a sizeable slice of the total, and that slice is worth chasing.
Before changing anything, measure. Set up a funnel in GA4 or your platform’s analytics that runs from basket to delivery details to payment to confirmation, and split it by device and country. Mobile usually leaks the most. Knowing exactly where people drop out tells you which of the nine fixes below to tackle first, instead of redesigning the whole flow on a hunch.
Fixes before the checkout starts
1. Show the full price early
Unexpected costs at the final step are the classic reason for walking away. Show delivery fees, VAT and any cash-on-delivery charge on the product page or in the basket, not on the last screen. A simple delivery estimator by city, such as next day in Dubai, two days to Al Ain or three to five days to Riyadh, removes both the guesswork and the suspicion.
2. Let people check out as guests
Forcing account creation before payment is a reliable conversion killer. Offer guest checkout by default and invite people to save their details on the confirmation page, when they have nothing left to lose. If you do want accounts, make sign-in a single tap with Google or Apple, or a one-time passcode sent by SMS or WhatsApp to the mobile number they were typing anyway.
3. Fix the basket on mobile
Plenty of baskets look fine on a laptop and fall apart on a phone: tiny quantity buttons, a chat widget sitting on top of the checkout button, a promo field that pushes everything below the fold. Test on a mid-range Android handset over mobile data, not only on the newest iPhone over office Wi-Fi. That cheaper phone is what many of your customers actually use.
Fixes inside the checkout
4. Cut the form to the bone
Every field is a small tax on patience. Ask only for what you need to deliver and invoice. In the UAE, addresses are often better captured as area, building and a map pin than as a postcode most shoppers never use. Fill the city from the pin, show a numeric keyboard for phone numbers, and validate each field as it is typed rather than after submit.
5. Offer the payment methods people expect
A missing payment method is one of the quietest reasons people leave, because they rarely tell you about it. They simply close the tab. The methods shoppers expect differ by market, so check your analytics by country and make sure each group of customers sees the options it already trusts:
- UAE and Saudi Arabia — cards, Apple Pay, mada in the Kingdom, and buy-now-pay-later through Tabby or Tamara for bigger baskets.
- Cash-on-delivery shoppers — COD is still common for first orders in the UAE, so offer it with clear fees, then nudge repeat buyers towards cards or Apple Pay.
- Returning customers everywhere — saved, tokenised cards and Google Pay so a repeat order takes seconds.
6. Put trust next to the money
Reassurance belongs beside the pay button, not in the footer. Show the card and wallet logos you accept, a one-line returns promise and a delivery date. Keep checkout on your own domain where you can, because a redirect to an unfamiliar gateway page makes people hesitate. If a redirect is unavoidable, brand the hosted payment page so it still looks like your shop.
Fixes after the pay button
7. Handle failed payments gracefully
Card declines and 3-D Secure timeouts happen far more often than most store owners realise. When a payment fails, keep the basket intact, explain what went wrong in plain words and offer another method straight away. A page that empties the basket and shows a raw gateway error code is a guaranteed lost sale, and often a lost customer as well.
8. Recover abandoned baskets politely
If someone has given you an email address or mobile number, a reminder within an hour or two wins back a meaningful share of carts. WhatsApp messages sent through the Business Platform tend to be read far more than emails in the UAE and the Gulf, but they need clear opt-in. Send one or two messages at most, and keep discount codes for the second.
9. Make speed a feature
Every second of waiting between steps costs you shoppers. Load payment scripts only on the payment step, compress basket images, and avoid full-page reloads when someone changes a quantity. Aim for each step to respond in under a second on a 4G connection. Speed work is invisible when it is done well, which is exactly the point.
A checkout should feel like a short queue at a friendly till, not a form you have to fight.
The bottom line
You rarely need a new platform to fix a leaky checkout. Measure where shoppers drop out, then work down the list: honest prices up front, guest checkout, a lean form, the right local payment methods, and a graceful recovery when something fails. Ship one change at a time, watch the numbers for a fortnight, and keep what works.
On Shopify, most of these fixes are settings and well-reviewed apps. On a custom build, each one is typically a few days of development. Either way the payback is usually measured in weeks, because every improvement applies to every visitor you are already paying to attract through ads, search and social.
