Peak traffic does not create checkout problems, it multiplies the ones already there
Baymard Institute’s list of ten UX practices for Cyber Monday, written by research lead Edward Scott and last updated in September 2025, reads like a sales-season checklist. Very little of it is seasonal. Each item describes a weakness that costs orders in March as well. A peak simply sends more shoppers through it, with less patience and several competing shops open at once. What makes the list useful is the share of sites Baymard finds getting each point wrong, and how many of those points sit on the short route between the product page and the payment step.
Price and delivery are judged before the checkout starts
Baymard notes that free shipping can decide which site a shopper buys from when several are being compared, and reports that 47% of sites do not promote free shipping in the buy section of the product page, the spot where the decision to add to cart is made. A banner at the top of the page is easily overlooked, and a shop that does offer free delivery then loses its advantage in the comparison. Another 46% do not link their shipping and returns policies from the footer, where a group of users consistently looks for them. In Baymard’s testing, some participants checked those policies before they began shopping.
These details matter because of what happens when they are missing. In Baymard’s survey of US online shoppers, extra costs for shipping, tax or fees are the most common reason for leaving a cart (40%). Further down, 13% cite an unsatisfactory returns policy and 12% say they could not see or calculate the total cost up front. Information the shopper cannot find on the product page is information they discover later, often on the payment step, where a surprise is most likely to end the visit.
An open promo code field leaks orders during a sale
The most widespread failure on the list concerns discounts: 83% of sites do not apply eligible discounts and promo codes automatically. Baymard’s testing found that participants are more likely to complete an order when they feel they are getting a good deal, and that they read a discount applied without asking as a sign that the shop can be trusted.
The fix is to apply the best discount the shopper qualifies for without asking, and to show it as its own line in the cart and again at the payment step, so the total the shopper saw is the total they pay. If you still need codes for specific campaigns, present the field as a small link that opens on request rather than an empty box beside the total.
Two choices at the final steps decide whether the order completes
The first is the account question. Offering a guest route is not the same as making it findable. In Baymard’s tests many sites made the guest option hard to spot, and some participants never noticed it was there; 23% of sites do not give it top billing. A shopper buying once during a sale has little reason to register, and in the abandonment survey 18% say they left a cart because an account was required. Give the guest route a label that says exactly what it does and put it at the same level as logging in, not below it. Ask for an account on the confirmation page, when the order is placed and the shopper only has to add a password.
The second is the payment step itself. Baymard’s checkout testing shows that around 10% of users abandon when their preferred payment method is not available, and the institute points out that a second method also works as a fallback when a card fails. In the Netherlands the method most shoppers expect is iDEAL, which the Betaalvereniging reports is used for 71% of online purchases. Show the methods your shoppers expect, in the order they use them, and make sure a failed attempt returns the shopper to the payment step with the order intact and another method in view, not to an empty cart.
Run the audit now, while changes are still small
The list also covers search, which roughly half of users rely on to find products, according to Baymard: 55% of sites get at least one of eight common query types wrong, and 74% do not make the no-results page useful. Those are real losses, but they need development work. Most of the checkout-related points do not. Moving a free shipping line into the buy section, adding two footer links, applying a discount by default, relabelling the guest route and checking what a failed payment does are mostly changes to copy, placement and settings.
That makes them safe to do before the peak and worth keeping afterwards. Take a product you will discount, open your shop on a phone as a first-time guest, and follow the route to the payment step. Check five things on the way: whether free delivery and the returns terms are visible before the cart, whether the discount applies without a code, whether guest checkout is the first thing you see, which payment methods appear and in what order, and where you land when a payment attempt fails. Every point where you hesitate is a point where a sale-day shopper leaves.
Sources: baymard.com, Cyber Monday UX best practices, baymard.com, cart abandonment rate and betaalvereniging.nl
