I Tested 50 E-commerce Stores: Here's What I Found

After testing 50 popular e-commerce stores, discover common patterns in what works and what doesn't in checkout experiences.

After testing 50 popular e-commerce stores, I discovered common patterns in what works and what doesn't. Here are the surprising findings.

The Experiment Over the past few months, I tested 50 popular e-commerce stores across different industries. I tested their checkout processes, payment flows, mobile experiences, and more. What I found surprised me. The Good News Most Stores Get the Basics Right The majority of stores I tested had functional checkout processes. Customers could generally complete purchases, which is good. But "functional" isn't the same as "optimal." Payment

Processing Works Most stores had working payment gateways. Transactions processed successfully, which is the minimum requirement. But many had issues with specific payment methods or error handling. The Bad News 1. Mobile Experience is Still Poor Out of 50 stores, only 12 had truly excellent mobile checkout experiences. The rest had issues ranging from minor annoyances to complete failures: 28 stores had forms that were difficult to use on

mobile 19 stores had buttons that were too small to tap easily 15 stores had checkout pages that loaded slowly on mobile 8 stores had mobile checkout flows that were completely broken 2. Error Handling is Terrible When I intentionally caused errors (entered invalid card numbers, triggered timeouts, etc.), most stores handled them poorly: 35 stores showed generic, unhelpful error messages 22 stores didn't explain what went wrong 18 stores didn't

provide any guidance on how to fix the error 12 stores showed technical error messages that confused customers 3. Payment Method Support is Inconsistent While most stores accepted credit cards, support for other payment methods was inconsistent: Only 32 stores offered PayPal Only 18 stores offered Apple Pay or Google Pay Only 8 stores offered buy now, pay later options Many stores that offered alternative payment methods had broken