7 places your checkout is quietly leaking revenue

The checkout is the last thing between a visitor and their credit card. It's also where most health DTC brands leak the hardest, because the fixes feel too small to matter. They're not. A buyer at checkout has already crossed most of the Belief Chain. Losing them here is losing a sale you'd almost paid for in full.

Here are seven leaks I find on almost every store, ranked by how often they show up.

1. A navigation menu at checkout. Every link in your header is an exit door. Once someone hits the cart, the only jobs left are "buy" and "reassure." Strip the nav on checkout and cart pages. You'll be surprised how many people were wandering off to "just look at the reviews again."
2. Shipping cost revealed late. Nothing spikes abandonment like a surprise fee on the final screen. Show shipping (or your free-shipping threshold) early. Ideally on the product page. Surprise is the enemy of trust, and trust is the whole game at checkout.
3. No trust signal near the buy button. The moment of payment is the moment of maximum anxiety. A guarantee badge, a secure-payment icon, a one-line refund promise placed right beside the button does more than the same signals buried in the footer.
4. No order bump. A single checkbox, "Add [complementary product] for $X," is pure margin on a customer who's already buying. Most brands leave this money on the table entirely. It's the easiest AOV lift in e-commerce.
5. Too many form fields. Every field is friction. Ask for what you need to ship and bill, nothing more. Enable express checkout (Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay) so mobile buyers can pay in two taps instead of typing an address on a phone.
6. Weak or missing guarantee. "The risk is low" is belief #7 in the chain. A real, specific guarantee ("60 nights, full refund, keep the bottle") removes the fear of wasting money. Vague or absent guarantees leave that fear running.
7. No honest urgency. Not fake countdown timers. Those erode trust. Real reasons to act now: low stock, a cohort/batch closing, a bonus that expires. Belief #8 is "I should act now," and without it, "I'll come back later" wins. It rarely comes back.

How to prioritize which to fix first

Start where the money is bleeding fastest. If your add-to-cart rate is healthy but your checkout-completion rate is low, you have a checkout problem. Fix leaks 1, 2 and 5 first. If your AOV is thin, leaks 3 and 4 are your fastest wins. The point isn't to do all seven at once; it's to find your biggest leak and seal it.

That's exactly what a teardown is for.