The checkout flow for small teams

It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. Most advice about the checkout flow assumes a team that does not exist at your size. Here is the version that does not.

Small percentage changes matter here because they apply to every order, every month. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

What to keep

Every extra step loses a measurable slice of buyers. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

What to drop

Process that exists to coordinate ten people is overhead when there are two of you. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it.

What good looks like

Save progress so a dropped connection is not fatal. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

What this looks like day to day

Trust does most of the selling online, and trust is built from unglamorous details. Three things worth confirming about the checkout flow before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Save progress so a dropped connection is not fatal — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.