Your checkout is compared with a marketplace checkout the shopper has already completed many times
In April 2022, eMarketer forecast that US marketplace ecommerce sales would reach $357.26 billion that year, 34.6% of all online sales. Amazon alone held more than 72% of that marketplace volume. The headline of the piece was about slowing growth: marketplace sales had grown by nearly 45% in 2020, by 16.7% in 2021, and the forecast for 2022 was 14.8%. Slower growth did not mean a smaller role. In June 2023, eMarketer put US marketplace sales at $603.20 billion by 2027, 34.8% of retail ecommerce. On both forecasts, roughly one dollar in three spent online in the US goes through a checkout run by a marketplace rather than by the brand or retailer that sells the product.
These are US forecasts, not measurements of European shoppers, and the report says nothing about checkout design. What it does show is scale. When a third of online spending passes through a few large platforms, those platforms set the habits shoppers bring to every other checkout. The shopper who arrives at your payment step has often bought from a marketplace recently, with an address, a delivery promise and a payment method already in place. That is the reference your checkout is judged against, whether or not you sell on a marketplace yourself.
A cart left on your site may be an order placed somewhere else
Abandonment reports treat a cart that stops as a sale that did not happen. With marketplaces this large, that reading is often wrong. A shopper who hesitates in your checkout over a delivery charge, a long form or a missing payment method has an alternative one tab away, often for the same product, where nothing has to be typed. Leaving your checkout is then not a decision against buying. It is a decision about where to buy.
That changes what a friction point costs. When the alternative is not buying at all, some shoppers push through a clumsy step because they want the product. When the alternative is the same product with stored details, the clumsy step loses the order to a competitor, and with it the customer data, the follow-up and the next purchase. The bar for your checkout is therefore not an abstract best practice. It is the effort a shopper knows they can avoid.
Match the marketplace on the four things the shopper compares first
Total cost comes first. A shopper used to marketplaces expects to see the price with delivery, and a delivery date, before committing to anything. If your shop reveals the shipping charge only after the address step, the shopper compares your partial price with their complete one, and your offer looks better than it is until the moment it looks worse. Show delivery cost and the total on the product page and in the basket.
The delivery promise is second. A date tells the shopper more than a number of working days, and a date shown before checkout carries more weight than one that appears in the confirmation email. If you cannot promise a date, say which day the order leaves your warehouse.
Third is the payment step itself. On a marketplace the shopper usually pays with a method that is stored or one they use every day. Your payment step should lead with the methods your shoppers actually use in their market, in that order, under names and logos they recognise. In the Netherlands, where iDEAL accounts for 71% of online purchases according to the latest figures of the Betaalvereniging, that means iDEAL | Wero at the top, not a card form. A shopper who has to look for their method is a shopper who is reminded there is an easier place to buy.
Fourth are the returns terms. A shopper who knows how returns work on a marketplace wants the same certainty from you before paying: how many days, who pays for the return and how the refund comes back. Put that in one sentence next to the order button, not only on a separate page.
Compete where your own checkout can be better
Matching the marketplace on cost, delivery, payment and returns removes the reasons to leave. It does not yet give a reason to stay. Your own checkout can offer things a marketplace listing often cannot: delivery options specific to your products, such as installation or a chosen time slot, a gift option with your own packaging, a clear answer about stock in a particular size, and an order that is handled by the brand itself when something goes wrong. These belong in the checkout as plain choices, not as banners that push the payment step further down the page.
Keep the number of steps honest while you add them. Every option you add to the delivery step is another decision before payment, and the marketplace route has fewer of those. Add only what changes the order for the shopper, and make the default the choice most shoppers make.
Buy your own product twice, once on each route
If your products are also sold on a marketplace, by you or by a reseller, the comparison is easy to run. Buy the same item on both routes today, on a phone, as a first-time buyer in your shop. Write down for each route the moment the total including delivery appears, the number of fields you fill in, the delivery date shown, the payment methods offered and where the returns terms are. Then fix the points where your shop asks more or shows less, starting with the one closest to the payment step. If you do not sell on a marketplace, run the same test against the one your shoppers use most. It is the checkout they will measure yours against either way.
Sources: emarketer.com, emarketer.com, betaalvereniging.nl
