Why we started keeping notes

Ecom Checkout Handbook began as an internal document. Our founders were running checkout and cart-recovery work for a handful of US merchants, and every engagement started the same way: the client had already read a dozen listicles promising a 30% lift from a popup, and none of them said which numbers were measured, on what traffic, or over what period. So we started writing down what actually happened on each store — the test, the baseline, the result, and the reasons a tactic that worked for one catalog failed on another.

The notes outgrew the spreadsheet. In 2021 we published them, stripped of client names, as a reference we could send to prospects instead of repeating ourselves on sales calls. That reference is this site.

What we publish, and what we don't

We write about checkout flow, payment method coverage, form design, shipping-threshold messaging, and cart abandonment email and SMS sequences. Everything we publish falls into one of three buckets:

• Work we ran ourselves. Store, traffic range, dates, and the measured change. When a result was noisy or the sample was too small to call, we say so in the piece.
• Public data we can cite. Baymard Institute's checkout usability research, benchmark reports from payment processors, and merchant disclosures. We link the source and note its vintage, because a 2019 benchmark on mobile form friction may not describe a 2026 storefront.
• Our own opinions, labeled as such. Where we argue for something — say, keeping guest checkout ahead of account creation — it's an argument, not a finding, and we mark it.

What we don't publish: vendor case studies we can't verify, before-and-after screenshots with no baseline, or lift percentages rounded up for effect. If we can't trace a number to a test log or a named source, it doesn't go on the page.

How we work

We're a small editorial and consulting team, not a software vendor. We don't sell a checkout platform, an email tool, or a CRO agency retainer, which means we have no product to steer you toward. Our revenue comes from two places: fixed-scope audits for merchants who want a second read on their funnel, and the occasional sponsored slot, which is labeled at the top of the article and never influences the recommendation inside it.

When we audit a store, we look at session recordings, funnel step drop-off, payment failure codes, and the actual abandonment emails in a customer's inbox. We don't start from a tactic list. The most common finding across our audits is not a missing discount popup — it's a shipping cost or delivery estimate that appears later than the customer expected.

Who's behind it

The editorial team has spent a combined two decades on the merchant side of ecommerce: operations at a mid-size apparel retailer, payments support at a processor, and lifecycle marketing for a subscription box brand. That background shapes what we're skeptical of. We've been the people on the phone with a customer whose card was declined three times, and we've seen how a checkout change that looks clean in a dashboard can create a support queue nobody budgeted for.

Our reviewers include a payments consultant who checks every claim about authorization rates and decline codes, and a lifecycle marketer who reviews the email and SMS templates before publication. Their names appear on the articles they review.

What we get wrong

Checkout behavior shifts with device mix, payment rails, and seasonality, and guidance ages faster than most publishers admit. When we find an old article that no longer holds — a recommendation based on a payment method that has since changed its fee structure, for instance — we add a dated correction at the top rather than quietly editing the text. If you spot something that reads wrong for your store, tell us. The corrections inbox is the most-read part of our week.

How to use this site

Start with the checkout audit checklist if you want a structured pass over your own funnel. Read the cart recovery sequence teardowns if you're rebuilding emails. And treat every number here the way we treat the numbers we cite: ask what the baseline was. That habit is the whole point of the handbook.