Checkout Friction
by
Checkout diagnosis for ecommerce teams: find the step actually losing carts and what it costs, then propose the fix worth shipping first.
Checkout abandonment gets treated as one number and one problem, usually answered with a shorter form. The real losses are specific and unevenly distributed: a payment method that fails silently on one browser, a shipping cost that appears three steps in, an address validator that rejects legitimate addresses in one country. Each of those loses a different group of customers at a different step, and the aggregate rate hides all of it. This skill finds the step actually losing carts and what it costs, then proposes the fix worth shipping first.
What It Does
- Breaks abandonment down by step, device and payment method.
- Sizes each drop-off in revenue rather than in percentage points.
- Finds the error that fails silently rather than showing a message.
- Checks where shipping cost first becomes visible to the customer.
- Separates a friction problem from an intent problem.
- Proposes the fixes in order, with what each is worth and its effort.
Use Cases
- Find the payment method failing silently on one browser.
- See what showing shipping cost late is actually costing.
- Fix the address validator rejecting legitimate addresses.
- Rank checkout fixes by revenue rather than by how annoying they look.
Example Session
Our checkout abandonment is 71%. Where are we actually losing people?
Most of the 71% is normal. Two specific failures account for $94,000.
- Step and segment | Drop-off | Above peer | Worth | Effort
- Payment, wallet on older iOS | 94% | Yes, silent failure | $58,000 per quarter | Low
- Shipping cost reveal, step 3 | 38% | Yes | $36,000 per quarter | Medium
- Address, one export country | 61% | Yes, validator | $9,000 per quarter | Low
- Cart to checkout entry | 64% | No, normal | Not a defect | None
The wallet failure is the one to fix this week: it fails without an error message, so those customers do not contact support and do not appear as errors anywhere, they simply vanish. Ninety-four percent drop-off in that segment against a normal rate is not friction, it is a broken payment path. The 64% at cart entry is ordinary browsing behavior and not worth touching.
Why This Beats Prompting It Yourself
One Abandonment Rate vs The Step Losing The Cart: The Hidden Risk
A generic prompt hears 71% and recommends shortening the form, adding trust badges and offering guest checkout. Those are reasonable and generic, and none of them finds the wallet that fails silently on older iOS. An aggregate rate cannot point anywhere, so the advice it produces cannot either.
When You Still Need Normal Told Apart From Broken
Most checkout abandonment is people who were never going to buy, and treating all of it as a defect leads to endless work on a number that cannot go much lower. This skill marks the 64% at cart entry as ordinary and concentrates on the two segments performing far below their peers, which is where the recoverable money is.
Known Limitations
Step-level diagnosis needs checkout event tracking, and on a hosted checkout that does not expose it the skill works from what the platform reports and says which steps it cannot see. Silent failures are inferred from drop-off patterns rather than observed directly, so each one should be reproduced before the fix is scoped. It proposes the fixes and does not implement them.
Install It
- Download the ZIP.
It is free and there is no account to create. - Unzip it into your agent's skills folder.
Claude Code reads ~/.claude/skills/, which is hidden by default: the command in the folder block opens it. Other agents scan their own directory, so drop the same folder there instead. - Ask your agent to use it.
Restart the agent if it was already running, then it picks the skill up with no config.
skills folder
Copy
~/.claude/skills/checkout-friction/
SKILL.md
references/checkout-steps.md
findings/
# one file per review, with the ranked fixes
# macOS: create the folder and open it in Finder
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && open ~/.claude/skills
# Windows: paste in the Explorer address bar
%USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\Frequently asked questions
How is this different from a checkout best practices list?
A best practices list applies to every store and points at nothing in yours. This breaks abandonment down by step, device and payment method, sizes each loss in revenue, and separates ordinary behavior from actual defects.
Which agents does the skill run in?
Any agent that supports the open SKILL.md format: Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Manus, Grok and others load it unmodified. The format is portable, the location is not. Each agent scans its own skills directory, so you drop the same folder into whichever one yours uses. There is no config file to edit and no API key to provision.
What does it need connected to work?
Checkout funnel events with step, device and payment method, plus order data. Error logs help find silent failures faster and the skill can infer them from drop-off patterns without them.
What is a silent failure?
A payment or validation path that fails without showing the customer an error. They do not contact support because nothing told them anything went wrong, and they do not appear in error monitoring because nothing was logged. Drop-off is the only trace.
Is 71% abandonment bad?
On its own it is uninformative. Most of it is ordinary browsing. The question is whether any specific segment is performing far below its peers, and here two are, which is where the $94,000 sits.
What is included with the skill?
The skill itself, the checkout step reference, the findings format, and the peer benchmarks. It is free and security scanned. We re-publish the ZIP when the benchmarks change, so download it again if your rankings start shifting.
A lost cart costs whatever that cart was worth.
Polar values every abandoned step in net revenue and margin, so the fix you ship first is the one with the largest amount behind it.
<script type="application/ld+json">{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How is this different from a checkout best practices list?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"A best practices list applies to every store and points at nothing in yours. This breaks abandonment down by step, device and payment method, sizes each loss in revenue, and separates ordinary behavior from actual defects."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Which agents does the skill run in?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Any agent that supports the open SKILL.md format: Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Manus, Grok and others load it unmodified. The format is portable, the location is not. Each agent scans its own skills directory, so you drop the same folder into whichever one yours uses. There is no config file to edit and no API key to provision."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What does it need connected to work?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Checkout funnel events with step, device and payment method, plus order data. Error logs help find silent failures faster and the skill can infer them from drop-off patterns without them."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What is a silent failure?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"A payment or validation path that fails without showing the customer an error. They do not contact support because nothing told them anything went wrong, and they do not appear in error monitoring because nothing was logged. Drop-off is the only trace."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Is 71% abandonment bad?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"On its own it is uninformative. Most of it is ordinary browsing. The question is whether any specific segment is performing far below its peers, and here two are, which is where the $94,000 sits."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What is included with the skill?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"The skill itself, the checkout step reference, the findings format, and the peer benchmarks. It is free and security scanned. We re-publish the ZIP when the benchmarks change, so download it again if your rankings start shifting."}}]}</script>