Why form fields matter more than checkout steps
Most merchants obsess over the number of steps in their checkout flow. Baymard Institute’s latest large-scale usability research suggests that energy is largely misplaced. The average checkout today runs to 5.2 steps, a figure that has barely moved since 2012. What has a far greater bearing on completion rates is something far more granular: the total number of form fields a shopper must fill in.
The average checkout currently presents 11.8 form fields. Baymard’s research shows that 18% of users abandon an order specifically because the process feels too long or complicated, and qualitative testing confirms that a dense wall of fields triggers anxiety and drop-off before shoppers even begin entering data. The implication is clear: trimming steps while leaving field counts unchanged delivers little measurable benefit to conversion.
The more instructive finding is that most sites can cut their default field count by 20 to 60 percent without removing any genuinely necessary data. Baymard’s worked example takes a 16-field checkout down to 8 fields through a combination of smart defaults, conditional logic, field consolidation, and removing fields that serve internal data needs rather than the customer’s journey. Getting to 8 fields is an achievable target for a wide range of e-commerce implementations, not a theoretical minimum reserved for big-platform retailers.
For Dutch and Belgian merchants, this research has direct practical weight. Both markets have high mobile checkout usage, and field fatigue is amplified on a small screen. A checkout that looks manageable on desktop can feel exhausting on a phone. Reducing visible field count by default, even while retaining optional fields behind progressive disclosure, directly addresses the friction points most likely to cause abandonment in a mobile-first shopping session.
The actionable takeaway is to audit your current checkout not by counting screens or steps, but by counting every individual input field a new customer must interact with. If that number exceeds 10, there is almost certainly scope to reduce it, and the conversion uplift from doing so will outweigh any benefit from collapsing or expanding checkout steps.
Source: baymard.com
