Kestrel & Vine sells homeware through 14 shops and a web store that took a quarter of turnover and most of the complaints. Checkout ran to seven steps, asked for a marketing preference before it asked for a delivery address, and forced account creation at step three. Abandonment sat at 78 per cent, which the team had come to treat as normal for the sector.
Session replay made the argument for us. People were not price-shopping and leaving; they were leaving at the account wall, and a surprising number were leaving at a postcode field that silently rejected valid formats. We rebuilt checkout as three steps with guest purchase first, deferred the marketing question to the confirmation page, and replaced the address logic outright. Nothing about pricing or delivery changed.
Conversion moved within the first week and held. The marketing opt-in rate went up rather than down, which surprised the client and ended a longer argument about consent placement. Online now takes 38 per cent of turnover, and the shops report far fewer of the phone orders that used to arrive from customers who had given up on the website.