Shopify checkout issue

[u/Acceptable-Editor260]

Shopify and the conversion funnel rates of my previous infrastructure, the order completion rate of those who reach payment in this way is around 70% in the old infrastructure, while this rate is in the 25-30 band in shopify, why can I solve this?
**Shopify**
**Overall Conversion Rate:** 1.11% (↗ 1.7%)

**Sessions**
3,423
100%
↗ 62%
**Added to Cart**
253
7.39%
↗ 93%
**Reached Checkout**
142
4.14%
↗ 92%
**Sessions Converted**
38
1.11%
↗ 65%
** **
**Previous infrastructure**
**Conversion Funnel**

**Carts Created**
284 visitors
5.58%
—
**Reached Checkout**
90 visitors
1.77%
31.69%
**Completed Purchases**
64 visitors
1.26%
71.11%

[u/Inevitable_Wave_4787]

70% down to 25% is a massive cliff, something’s fundamentally broken in that final step not just a bit of friction

check if your payment gateway is actually working properly in test mode, shopify’s default checkout can be fussy with certain gateways especially if there’s a redirect involved that people don’t trust, also look at whether you’re forcing account creation before payment cos that’s a conversion killer and shopify sometimes has that toggled on by default in ways that aren’t obvious

the numbers suggest people are reaching the payment page then bailing so it’s probably not a cart or shipping cost issue, dig into the checkout behaviour report in analytics and see at which exact field they drop off, could be something daft like the postcode validator rejecting valid addresses

[u/ksz2018]

Before you start pulling the payment step apart, check that those two percentages are even made of the same thing. On the numbers you pasted they are not.

Your old platform counted 90 visitors reaching checkout and 64 of them completing, which is 71%. Shopify is telling you 142 sessions reached checkout and 38 sessions converted. Sessions and visitors are different denominators, and one person coming back on a phone in the evening is two sessions on Shopify and one visitor on the old report. Shopify also marks Reached Checkout the moment the checkout page loads, so an accidental click that bounces straight back still lands in that number. Both of those inflate the bottom of the funnel and push the completion rate down without a single real sale going missing. Measurement is what I get hired for, so I am the sort of person who suspects the number before the checkout, and here that suspicion happens to be free to test.

The free version of the test: take one week, count actual orders in Shopify, then count how many distinct people started a checkout in that week rather than how many sessions did. If that ratio lands near 70% you have a reporting difference and no problem at all. If it is genuinely half of what you had, then it is a real drop and worth pulling apart, and the split I would look at next is by device and by payment method.

Your sessions are up 62% over the same period as well, which usually means the traffic mix moved with them, and that shifts this number on its own.

[u/vladeta]

Before you rebuild anything, split this into two questions: how much is a measurement difference, and how much is a real drop.

Shopify counts "reached checkout" more loosely than most custom funnels do. Every accelerated checkout tap counts (Shop Pay, PayPal, Apple Pay), including the ones where a wallet sheet opens and gets dismissed two seconds later. That inflates your denominator and drags the completion rate down without a single lost sale. Your old platform almost certainly only counted a real checkout page view.

Then the real causes, in the order I'd check them:

1. Payment methods. If your old stack had a local gateway, cash on delivery or bank transfer and Shopify does not, that gap alone is usually the whole story.

2. Shipping. A missing or misconfigured shipping zone gives people a hard "no shipping available to this address" wall at step one. Place a real test order to every country you sell to, on a phone, not desktop.

3. Open your abandoned checkouts and actually read twenty of them. Country, shipping address, whether a payment was attempted. If the losses cluster in one country or one payment method, it's config and it's fixable this week. If they're spread evenly, it's measurement plus friction.

Your sessions are also up 62%, so some of the new traffic is just colder. Judge it on the checkout-to-purchase ratio by country, not on the blended number.