Biljana Kovačić Baničević

Product Designer · Stockholm

All stories

05

Simplifying a complex checkout

Reducing cognitive load without removing necessary checkout complexity.

  • Checkout
  • Conversion
  • Interaction Design
  • Edge Cases
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01The problem

Checkout had to support delivery, payment, billing, vouchers and market-specific requirements.

The complexity was necessary, but exposing too much at once made the journey harder to review and complete.

02How I knew

Reviewing the checkout journey and its conditional scenarios showed where complexity accumulated, particularly around reviewing information, editing details and handling exceptions.

03My role

I designed the checkout experience across mobile and desktop, including information hierarchy, returning-user flows, payment and delivery scenarios, validation and error states.

04Key constraints

The existing Bag → Offers → Checkout journey had to remain, while payment, delivery and billing requirements varied across markets and user states.

05Design process

  1. Flow mapping
  2. complexity audit
  3. information hierarchy
  4. interaction design
  5. edge cases
  6. specifications

I focused on reducing what users needed to process at each moment rather than removing necessary functionality.

06Key decisions

I used progressive disclosure: returning users saw compact summaries of existing information and could edit only what they needed.

I also designed loading, validation and failure states as part of the core journey rather than treating them as implementation details.

07Trade-offs

Showing less information reduced cognitive load but risked hiding details users needed to verify.

I balanced this with clear summaries and predictable editing, keeping information accessible without displaying everything at once.

08Solution

A more focused checkout experience with condensed summaries, contextual editing, clearer payment and delivery sections, and designed recovery states across mobile and desktop.

  • Bag → Offers → Checkout
  • Condensed sections
  • Edge cases
  • Ready for dev

09Result

+9%
Checkout completion
−15%
Checkout abandonment
−11%
Payment-step drop-off

The specifications also gave Engineering consistent behaviour for transitions and exceptional states.

10What I’d do differently

I’d test recovery and error scenarios earlier alongside the happy path.

In checkout, confidence when something goes wrong can be just as important as speed when everything works.