InsightsGrowth
Growth

Cut checkout friction before you buy more ads.

UK ecommerce CPA is rising. Fix wallet-first checkout, delivery clarity and drip pricing before you spend more on traffic — practical steps for SMEs.

By StJohn Krog, Founder & MD

Growth7 minute readPractical guide
Customer paying with a smartphone at a checkout terminal

Photo via Unsplash

Paid traffic is getting dearer. That makes leaky checkouts expensive, not just annoying.

IRP Commerce's August 2026 benchmarks for UK and Irish independent merchants put average cost per acquisition at 9.17% of revenue, up year on year, while mobile accounted for 63.7% of sales. Session conversion averaged 2.23%, with revenue per session at £1.92. In short: fewer visitors are costing more to win — so every completed checkout matters more.

For growing UK retailers and scale-ups, the practical move this autumn is not another campaign. It is removing the friction that stops people who already want to buy.

Why wallets belong at the top of checkout

UK shoppers increasingly expect to pay the way they already pay elsewhere. UK Finance's Payment Markets data (published August 2026) shows 65% of UK adults were registered for at least one mobile payment service in 2025, up from 57% the year before. Among 25–34-year-olds, registration reached 89%.

That is a clear brief for owned stores: put Apple Pay, Google Pay, Shop Pay (or your platform equivalent) and PayPal above the long contact-and-card form — especially on mobile. Card entry should remain available, not primary. Express checkout shortens the path for the majority who already have details saved; it does not replace a clear fallback for everyone else.

Show the full cost early — including delivery

Baymard Institute's aggregated studies put average cart abandonment at roughly 70%. Once "just browsing" is set aside, the leading fixable reason is extra costs — shipping, tax and fees — cited by about 40% of abandoners in their research. Slow delivery expectations, forced account creation and long checkouts follow close behind.

UK law sharpens the commercial case. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC), drip pricing — a headline price that grows with unavoidable fees later — is firmly in scope. For SMEs that means:

  • Show VAT-inclusive totals consistently.
  • State delivery cost, or the rule that sets it, on product and cart pages — not only at payment.
  • Offer guest checkout by default; invite account creation after purchase.

Surprise fees do not just hurt conversion. They erode trust you have already paid to acquire.

A 30-day checkout sprint for UK SMEs

  1. Measure the leak — Track sessions from cart → checkout started → order. Note mobile vs desktop and your revenue per session.
  2. Enable express wallets first — Confirm wallet buttons load above the form and work on iOS and Android.
  3. Publish delivery clarity — Cut-offs, next-day options (or honest alternatives), and free-shipping thresholds near add-to-cart and in the mini-cart.
  4. Audit for drip pricing — Walk the journey as a new customer. Does the total at payment match what you showed earlier?
  5. Only then spend more — Reinvest paid media once checkout completion and RPS move in the right direction.

Practical takeaway

If acquisition costs keep climbing, the highest-ROI ecommerce work for most UK SMEs is still unglamorous: wallet-first payment, transparent delivery pricing, and a checkout that does not force accounts or surprise fees. Fix those before you buy another thousand clicks.

Clarity Growth helps growing businesses connect commerce systems, reduce friction and turn digital spend into measurable outcomes.

Sources

Make checkout work for the traffic you already have.

Clarity Growth helps ambitious ecommerce retailers and growing SMEs streamline checkout, clarify delivery and connect payment systems.

Discuss a conversion project