The psychology of the checkout: why frictionless doesn't always work

Ahead of the IR B2B eCommerce Conference, we interviewed Dr Amna Khan, consumer behaviour expert and academic researcher at Manchester Metropolitan University, on consumer psychology at the checkout.

What do merchants get wrong about consumer psychology at checkout and what are they not measuring that would change how they think about abandonment?

When merchants think about consumer psychology at checkout, they’re looking at various dimensions within the process itself: triggering fear of missing out, using time-restricted elements to create urgency. Lots of merchants use different cognitive and psychological levers to create speed, and that matters. Consumers also respond to the idea of getting something free, like next-day delivery. They feel they're making a saving by avoiding the express delivery fee, and that can encourage them to buy more. Some retailers use this, some don't.

The assumption is that making the checkout as frictionless as possible makes it easier for the consumer. But Amazon Fresh has shown that frictionless doesn't always translate into the best experience. Consumers like choice, and those choices often come from convenience. Express self-serve checkouts work for some shoppers on some days; on others, the same shoppers want human interaction.

Completely frictionless doesn't always work because consumers end up buying things quickly without thinking, and those purchases become mistakes and refunds. I'll give you a recent example, and it's not a retail organisation. It happened whist paying for parking at Manchester Airport. Their system has changed, and drop-off payment now has to be made online after the drop-off. I went through the no barrier system, dropped someone off and went home. The payment wasn't available at the point of drop-off, and I forgot. That resulted in a fine because I hadn't paid within the window they deemed acceptable. No reminders came through, because in a frictionless system they didn't have my details.

The consequence of a seamless, barrierless payment process was a penalty for me as the consumer. Sometimes merchants think they're giving consumers everything they want, when in fact, they're creating opportunities for consumers to fail the payment process with punitive repercussions. That's a typical example of how frictionless-for-everyone doesn't work. A barrier or a point of friction can actually create more efficiency. I'm not the only one, social media is full of similar experiences. Making payments more efficient has left consumers feeling discontent with the brand experience, which affects whether they trust the brand enough to use the process again.

Much of the barrierless exit rest on consumer memory. Consumers live accelerated lifestyles with so many things to do, for work or personal reasons. A payment like this is easy to forget, because you naturally assume you've paid, because your previous habits would require you to pay before exit. The consumption activity is done, paid and it's out of mind, and you move on with your day. The consumer also doesn’t expect to pay for services after they have used them and left the vendor – at a later time and date. The payment process needs careful thought, because the barrierless experience merchants assume it works for consumers often doesn't. The consumer has to be at the heart of how the process is designed. Checkout is a vital moment of trust – the point of exchange, where the consumer is willing to trust the merchant with their money. It's a critical point in the consumer journey.

Brands invest heavily in building trust before the sale. How much of that transfers to the payment stage, or do consumers treat checkout as a separate trust decision entirely?

Every single interaction that a consumer has with your brand impacts trust. Your checkout particularly matters, because what you've done before determines whether they get to the checkout. The checkout itself is critical because whether the consumer abandons the cart or the transaction depends on how easy it is, how convenient, and how well it meets the consumer where they are at that time. Some might want a self-service checkout, while others might want human interaction. The trust elements before are important, but what you do at checkout matters just as much, because that's the point where they might walk away and not come back.

I’ve experienced this myself many times. I find a product I really want to buy, make it to checkout, and the process is clunky and inefficient, I feel like I'm going in circles, it's not quick enough, and I move on. Or an error message appears just as I'm reaching the final stages, right after I've entered my card details. Efficiency during that process matters, and by efficiency I don't just mean speed. It's about how the consumer interacts with the checkout and the stages they need to go through. Are they all necessary, or are you making them click for the sake of clicking and enter information for the sake of it? 

The checkout is another critical stage of the buying process. If you don't get it right, consumers can easily walk away from the sale and never come back. This is where trust really shows up, because the consumer starts to weigh it up: do I trust the brand enough to give them my money, to deliver the product on time, to deliver it as promised? That's where you can build trust – through your reviews, through the efficiency of the checkout, through how they feel about the discounts or what you're offering. It all has to be visible, because this is your point of exchange. It's where your entire value proposition should be on display, it's the moment of truth, where the consumer decides to take the step into an exchange with you, whether they're giving you their money, their data, or something else of theirs. That point of exchange really matters, it's where trust is built.

Are there any meaningful differences in how consumers from different cultural backgrounds approach the payment moment, or is checkout anxiety essentially universal?

It's human psychology to think about your products at that point, because that's your point of exchange. Consumers interact with the checkout differently. Some cultures engage more with self-service because they feel comfortable with technology, others don't. You see it when it comes to the age of the consumer, too – some older consumers don't want technology-based checkouts, others do. 

To say it's just a cultural thing wouldn't be right. Within cultures, different lifestyles and behaviours shape why checkout anxiety and checkout options differ. Someone might have huge anxiety with the tech part, but easy interactions with a human at the other end. A younger Gen Z consumer might not want to meet anyone through the transaction and just wants self-service. It depends on the consumer, but also on your brand proposition. Some brands want the checkout to be easy, quick, and seamless. Some don't, because at that point they're adding things to the sale. A highly personalised, bespoke service is where you're encouraging more add-on items, and that checkout is fundamentally different from the queues or the self-service till.

The checkout process is also an indication of your brand. If I'm buying a luxury product with bespoke service, someone tailoring my jacket, my shoes, a luxury suit, I don't want to be pointed to a self-checkout. I want the products taken behind the counter, the garments brought back to me. There might be a till, but there's also a sofa, and the interaction happens there – they pass me the device, I put my details in, and I'm sat with a coffee while my suit is being wrapped. I couldn't imagine going into Louis Vuitton and being handed a bag with ‘there's your express service.’ I'd take my custom to a different boutique.

So, the checkout is an integral point where the consumer builds a perception of your brand. If yours is all convenience and no human interaction, that says something about your brand. If you're a luxury, high-end brand, you need human interaction, because I'm paying for the service. I'm paying for someone to give me those human elements, that response service, that feeling, that joy. Sometimes I want a very quick one-click, get me in, get me out. Sometimes I want to sit there and have a discussion. It depends on the product. If it's an investment, or closely tied to my identity, of significant value, the checkout process has to change. Otherwise, it doesn't align with your brand proposition, and there would be issues of misalignment and trust.

Merchants have spent years building direct relationships with consumers. How much of that is at risk when AI agents start buying on behalf of consumers?

When a third party intermediary is buying from you, the decision goes more towards them and how are they going to make the right choices. That means that the trust happens a lot earlier. If I say I want a bottle of water, what is the agent going to choose for me? Maybe I want a Volvic, not just any bottle of water. If it gives me 15 options and I pick one, I've still chosen, the agent is just doing the process. But if I say ‘a bottle of water’ and it just orders one, that's a problem, because it might order something I don't want to drink. Water isn't just water. There are many different brands, and consumers have different connections with them. 

This is where your brand identity matters more, where the psychological connection matters more, it's not ‘I want gym leggings,’ it's ‘I want Gymshark leggings.’ It's not ‘I want a top,’ it's ‘I want a Nike top.’ If the agent is trained well, it would know by default I'm going to buy Gymshark leggings, and which ones I'll like. So, it should be telling me when new leggings are out, not the other way around, where I have to scroll through hours of social media to catch a drop. It would know every one of my preferences, down to the fact that I have takeout on a Tuesday.

The difficulty is that if it's trained and it works well, it's never going to give me a different option. It's going to get used to Amna as she is. But Amna changes, my lifestyle changes, what I need changes. Trust with established brands is going to be crucial before agents become more popular. And it's going to make it very difficult for new emerging brands to get that space, if the agent isn't trained to give you new options. If I say I don't want to hear from any other athleisure brand because I've already tried them all, offering me a new product isn't going to change things. That limits the consumer in many ways. I'm well aware my preference for Gymshark means there are other brands equally popular that I've never tried and would like to. If you're getting the agent to do the work, the consumer is doing the work somewhere else.

If you were advising a merchant on one change to their checkout flow based on what the research actually shows, what would it be?

This is less from research and more from experience. The checkout process is a critical stage of the consumer's journey with that product, that service, that brand. Not getting it right can really affect how the consumer trusts you.

When I say not getting it right, I mean how the checkout aligns with your brand perception and how the consumer views you. It's an integral stage where they take that leap – the moment of trust, the moment of truth, to see how you're going to deliver. It's the start of the journey of trust, because everything before that was the consumer deciding whether you were trustworthy enough. The moment of exchange, where they're handing over their money, is where the trust actually starts. That's the cycle. What do you do once you've got my money? Do you deliver the goods in three days? Do you deliver them at all? Are they the quality promised? That's the process where they start to trust you. They've made themselves vulnerable, they've taken a risk. Before that, they were just checking your trustworthiness.

So, what would I change about the merchant's flow? I'd make sure it aligns with the brand and the brand proposition, but I'd also make sure it's not completely frictionless. You want the consumer to think about it. Yes, you want some urgency, you want them to feel the fear of missing out, but the more they feel that emotion, the happier they'll be with the purchase. Think about how happy you feel when the checkout goes through and you've got the last item in the basket, you get a massive dopamine rush. That's important for the consumer. They bought for the dopamine rush, they bought for the bargain in the sale. There's so much psychology connected to that, and if you miss it by making the process completely barrierless, it doesn't always work.

That would be my advice. Barrierless doesn't work for everything, because you're waiting for the consumer's memory to do a lot more – and memory works in mysterious ways. The check-out process is a reflection of the brand identity. 

Dr Amna Khan is a speaker at IR B2B eComm Conference, an event built specifically for manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers. It’s designed to help transform and elevate your B2B ecommerce capabilities and tackle the real challenges facing the industry today. Taking place 29 - 30 April in Victoria Warehouse, the event runs alongside Creator Economy Live, and in partnership with Manchester Tech Week. You can secure your ticket here.

About the author

Dr Amna Khan is a global speaker, educator and author. She enjoys explaining consumer behaviour, psyche and consumer trust. She speaks at conference, events, and for and global brands to help them unpack what is happening, why and what the future holds. Awarded a prestigious corporate PhD scholarship from AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, she empowers brands, businesses and creators to build trusted relationships with consumers. She is a go-to media contributor, for BBC, ITV, Channel 5, BBC Radio, and The Conversation and internationally to CGTN (China Global TV Network) and CTN (Canada TV News). She has featured on over 35+ primetime retail documentaries for Netflix, Channel 5, and Channel 4 discussing brands, such as Deliveroo, ASOS, Tesco, Coca-Cola, and Primark. She has partnered with Global brands such as Paypal, Tesco Mobile, and Sainsbury on marketing campaigns providing research evidence insights and opinions. Connect with Dr Amna Khan on LinkedIn or via her website.

About Manchester Metropolitan University

With 43,000 students, 5,100 employees and a global alumni community of 350,000 across more than 170 countries, Manchester Metropolitan is one of the UK’s largest and most diverse universities. 

Founded in 1824, today it is home to four facilities which deliver courses from Engineering to Art and Design, to business disciplines, to education and healthcare professions. Its international Business School is recognised by the major UK, US, and European accreditation bodies.