Checkout Initiation

Checkout initiation is the moment a shopper leaves the cart and enters the checkout process, reaching its first step.

The event is the boundary between two very different kinds of drop-off: abandoning the cart before it, and abandoning checkout after it; the first is usually about price and hesitation, the second about the form, shipping cost or the payment gateway. Where exactly it fires varies between implementations, which is why two stores end up comparing incompatible numbers: some send it on the checkout button click, others on the first checkout screen. In a multi-step checkout, a shopper who steps back and forward again will fire it repeatedly unless it is guarded, inflating the denominator of checkout abandonment for no reason.