Many people fill in everything. Name, address, phone. And then don't complete.
And the obvious fix, free shipping, was flatly refused by the owner.
So the requirement was raising completed checkouts without touching the shipping price at all.
Here's what makes this problem different. Someone who filled in every field isn't the same as someone who arrived and left. They've done 90% of the work. They aren't hesitating about the product, they're stalled at a final step.
The fix that was applied was two simple things.
First, a progress bar in checkout. A bar showing you're nearly finished, built to work psychologically: it's almost done. Someone who has entered all their details and sees one step remaining completes. There's no persuasion here and no discount, just a signal that the road is ending.
Second, a detailed cart email telling the customer how far they are from free shipping.
Sit with that sentence for a moment. Free shipping does exist, but as a reward for a larger basket rather than a discount on every order. The owner loses nothing, and the customer gains a reason to add more.
That's what makes the idea smarter than free shipping itself.
Free shipping solves the checkout problem and creates a margin problem on every order in the store. A threshold solves the checkout problem and raises AOV at the same time. And anyone who doesn't reach the threshold pays shipping exactly as before.
You aren't paying for the solution. You're making the solution pay for itself.
The reported outcome was a noticeable rise in the rate. No exact figure was published, so we won't invent one.
Someone who filled in every field and left isn't a pricing problem, it's a final-nudge problem. And the nudge can be a progress bar and an email.
The lesson
Understand why they stop at the last step
