Checkout is the one part of the funnel where every additional field has a measurable cost. Customers have already decided to buy — the only thing left to do is make that decision easy to complete. Most Shopify checkouts we audit are quietly working against that goal.
The usual suspects
Company name fields marked optional but styled identically to required ones. A second address line customers don't need and don't know what to do with. Phone number fields requested without explanation, which reads as a data grab rather than a delivery necessity.
None of these are dramatic on their own. Together, on a mobile screen, they add up to a form that feels longer and more effortful than it needs to be — at exactly the moment friction is most expensive.
What we test instead
We typically start by removing anything that isn't required for fulfilment or payment, then test address autocomplete, single-page versus multi-step layouts, and explicit reassurance near the fields most associated with hesitation, like payment and phone number.
The gains here are rarely from one dramatic change. They come from a checkout that no longer asks a customer to think harder than the purchase warrants.