Remove distractions from checkout

Someone has added items to their cart, entered their details, and is about to pay. This is not the time to show them your blog, your about page, or a banner for a different product.

Every link on a checkout page is an exit. The navigation bar alone gives people 5-8 reasons to leave before they finish paying. Remove it.

Amazon figured this out years ago. Their checkout is a tunnel. No header navigation. No footer links. No sidebar. Just the steps to complete the purchase.

One ecommerce store removed their top navigation from the checkout flow. Nothing else changed. Cart abandonment dropped 15%. That's not a design opinion. That's a leak they plugged.

The same logic applies to any multi-step conversion flow. Sign-up forms, onboarding wizards, payment pages. Once someone has committed to a process, remove everything that isn't that process.