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Visitors are less likely to complete a purchase, submit a lead form, or take another intended action when a site makes the next step confusing or difficult. Start by tracing the task that matters most on your site, on both desktop and mobile, and look for friction such as unclear navigation, ambiguous form fields, or errors that offer no way forward.
The ten items below are a practical checklist, not a universal ranking or a promise of a particular conversion lift. Evidence cited for checkout patterns comes from ecommerce research; applying the same usability principles to lead-generation forms and other goals is a reasoned extension, not direct evidence of identical conversion effects.
1. Navigation makes people guess where to go
Visitors need to understand where they are and how to reach the next useful page. Inconsistent menu labels, changing navigation placement, or vague headings can force people to guess instead of moving toward the task.
How to fix it
- Use familiar, consistent names for navigation items and keep their styling and placement predictable.
- Offer more than one useful way to find important content, such as a primary menu plus contextual links or breadcrumbs where appropriate.
- Check whether someone can locate the next step without relying on insider knowledge of your site.
2. Mobile is treated like a shrunken desktop
A page that technically loads on a phone can still be difficult to use if content is cramped, controls are hard to reach, or text becomes unusable when enlarged. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends adapting information and navigation to different viewport sizes. Google also includes mobile display in its page-experience self-assessment.
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How to fix it
- Inspect the key task at narrow viewport widths, including the pages and forms visitors must pass through to complete it.
- Verify that text can be enlarged without hiding important content or controls, and that buttons and fields remain usable.
- Test the full action path on a real mobile device as well as a desktop-sized screen.
W3C notes in its WCAG 2.1 document that following its guidelines will often make web content more usable to people generally, not only to people with disabilities.
3. Form fields have unclear labels or instructions
A person should not have to infer what a field is asking for. A placeholder alone may disappear as soon as someone begins typing, leaving no persistent clue about the information requested.
How to fix it
- Place a descriptive label next to each field and make the relationship between label and input clear.
- Give instructions where they help someone provide the right information, such as explaining a format or an unusual requirement.
- Use plain language that describes the requested information rather than internal terminology.
4. The site gives no clear feedback after an action
After someone submits a form or activates a control, the page should make clear whether the action worked and what happens next. Silence leaves visitors uncertain; a hidden confirmation can look like a failed submission.
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- Show an explicit confirmation after a successful submission, with any next step the visitor needs to know.
- When the action fails, make the feedback visible and specific enough to guide recovery.
- Ensure that feedback requiring the visitor to act is prominent rather than easy to miss.
5. Dialogs and page elements interrupt the main task
Pop-ups, interstitials, or distracting ads can obscure the page or interrupt someone who is trying to complete an important action. Google’s page-experience checklist calls out excessive distracting ads and intrusive interstitials.
How to fix it
- Review interruptions on pages where visitors make decisions or complete a task.
- Remove or reduce elements that obscure the primary action, especially when they appear before someone can use the page.
- Check the experience on mobile, where an overlay can consume much of the visible screen.
6. Performance and page experience are ignored
Slow or unstable pages can make a task harder to complete. Core Web Vitals provide diagnostic measures to help evaluate page experience, but Google says they are used by its ranking systems and also cautions that passing reports does not guarantee top rankings. A performance score is a diagnostic input, not proof that a page converts well.
How to fix it
- Check Core Web Vitals for the pages involved in the key task and investigate pages with poor results.
- Look at the actual task path as well as aggregate metrics: a slow or unstable form step can matter even if other pages perform well.
- Use findings to guide investigation and validation rather than treating SEO scores as a substitute for measuring user outcomes.
Google Search Central says, “There is no single signal” for page experience in its page-experience FAQ; it describes a variety of signals rather than one ranking switch.
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7. Guest checkout is hidden behind account options
For ecommerce, forcing shoppers to find or create an account before they can see a guest option adds an avoidable obstacle. Baymard Institute’s checkout UX article, updated November 25, 2025, reports that 62% of the benchmarked sites did not make guest checkout the most prominent option. This is a finding about those benchmarked ecommerce sites, not a measure of conversion loss across all websites.
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How to fix it
- Where guest checkout is offered, make it easy to see before visitors commit to an account path.
- Keep account creation available for shoppers who want it without making it appear mandatory when it is not.
- For non-commerce sites, apply the same principle to any optional registration that blocks a primary action: make the direct path clear when an account is not essential.
8. Required and optional fields are not distinguished
When visitors cannot tell which information is mandatory, they may hesitate, omit something important, or provide more than the task requires. Baymard includes clear required-field identification among its checkout recommendations and desktop UX practices.
How to fix it
- Identify required and optional inputs consistently and explain the convention near the form when needed.
- Do not make people infer required status from an error that appears only after submission.
- Review whether each requested field is genuinely needed for the action being completed.
9. Form errors are generic
A message such as “There was a problem” does not tell someone which field needs attention or how to correct it. Baymard recommends adaptive error messages that identify the specific subissue; W3C guidance also supports identifiable error feedback.
How to fix it
- Name the field or problem and say what the visitor can do to resolve it.
- Place the message where it is easy to associate with the affected input, and make the error perceptible without relying on color alone.
- Preserve information the person already entered so an error does not force them to start over.
10. Checkout adds avoidable steps or inputs
Every checkout step and field should support the purchase task. Unnecessary complexity can make it harder to finish, but the available evidence does not establish one ideal number of checkout steps or fields for every business. Baymard’s checkout research focuses on ecommerce usability rather than a universal formula.
How to fix it
- Walk through checkout as a shopper and identify steps, questions, or decisions that do not help complete the purchase.
- Review the flow and inputs against the actual requirements of your business, rather than removing information that is necessary for fulfillment or payment.
- Check that the route to completion is understandable and that visitors can recover from mistakes without losing progress.
What the benchmark figures do—and do not—show
Baymard Institute’s ecommerce usability findings illustrate how often checkout and related user-experience problems appear in its benchmarks; they are not causal tests of how much any one fix will increase conversions on a particular site.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware match- In a Baymard Institute checkout UX article published November 13, 2024 and updated November 25, 2025, 64% of desktop sites, 63% of mobile sites, and 46% of apps had checkout UX rated “mediocre” or worse.
- Baymard’s 2025 desktop UX article reports 76% overlap between desktop and mobile UX issues and says 74% or more of issues it finds are shared across industries selling physical products.
These figures describe Baymard’s ecommerce-focused research and benchmarks. They do not establish the performance of every website, prove that a particular issue causes a specified loss, or promise a fixed improvement from a redesign.
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How to decide what to fix first
Start with the action that matters most—such as a purchase or lead-form submission—and find the point where visitors encounter the greatest practical obstacle. Use these questions to compare candidate fixes; they are useful prioritization criteria, not a validated scoring model.
- Reach: How many visitors encounter this page or step?
- Impact on the task: Does the issue confuse people, slow them down, or prevent completion?
- Severity and access: How serious is the failure, and does it disproportionately affect mobile or assistive-technology use?
- Effort and dependencies: How much work is required, and does another change have to happen first?
- Measurability: Can you observe a reliable outcome after the change, such as completion of the target action?
After choosing a change, assess it against your own site’s goal and audience. The cited guidance and benchmarks do not establish a universal percentage increase from these fixes.
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