The Flow, Walked
Checkout of "Ridgeline Outfitters," a specimen online outdoor-gear shop: cart → delivery → payment → confirmation. Walked twice as a first-time guest buying one item to a non-default address — once on a laptop, once on a phone — the way a buyer does it, not the way the happy path was drawn.
What each leak costs: abandoned orders first, then support load, then the trust that carries to the next purchase. The order is the deliverable. A list without an order is a way of avoiding the decision.
The Five Leaks, Ranked by Cost
Leak 1 · Payment — the declined card with a single way out
Evidence: a declined test card returns "Payment failed. Try again." The card number is cleared, nothing else is kept, no second payment method is offered. On the phone walk, going back also lost the delivery choice.
What it costs: the most expensive leak in the flow. The buyer has already decided to pay and the product stops at the decision, then asks them to redo the step before it.
The fix: failure is a fork, not a wall. Keep the form state, name the likely cause ("declined by your bank"), offer the second payment method inline, and keep the order open behind a link so the buyer can come back.
Leak 2 · Delivery — the date with no basis
Evidence: every delivery option says "Arrives Thursday" with no cut-off time, no carrier and no "if ordered by." The late-evening phone walk showed the same Thursday.
What it costs: the promise is the reason to buy today. When it slips, the buyer re-rates the shop, not the carrier.
The fix: show the basis — "Order by 14:00 for Thursday" and the carrier — and let the date move when the cut-off passes.
Leak 3 · Delivery — the option that changes the total without saying so
Evidence: choosing "Express" updates the order total at the bottom of the page — below the fold on the phone. Nothing next to the control says what it adds.
What it costs: this leak shows up in support tickets and refund requests, not in drop-off. The buyer completes the order, discovers the consequence later, and blames the shop for hiding it.
The fix: put the surcharge on the option itself, and repeat the new total next to the continue button. One sentence, in the shop's own voice, at the moment of the decision.
Leak 4 · Delivery — the address form with no example
Evidence: a column of empty fields with one-word labels. "Address line 2" and "Region" rejected the guest's entries twice with "Please check this field," without saying what was wrong.
What it costs: a first-time guest has no saved address to fall back on. The second rejection is the walk-away point.
The fix: an example under each ambiguous field, address autocomplete, and a message that names what is wrong and what is accepted.
Leak 5 · Confirmation — the edges in a different voice
Evidence: the confirmation page is warm and clear until the returns, cancellation and "manage order" links, which drop into legal register with no plain-language line above them.
What it costs: the lowest of the five, but it decides the next purchase. Buyers who cannot see how to change an order do not order again.
The fix: bring the centre's voice to the edges: one sentence above each link saying what the buyer can do and until when.
What the Report Adds, and Leaves Out
In the delivered report each leak carries the screenshot or frame it was found in, and a short note at the top explains the ranking. Left out on purpose: the full improvement plan, the walkthrough call and the whole-product review — those are the $550 and $850 audits, and the $350 counts toward either if booked within 30 days.
Client reports are confidential — showing you a real one would tell you exactly how I'd treat yours. The format, ranking and honesty above are real; "Ridgeline Outfitters" is a composite assembled from patterns that recur across shipped checkouts, the same shapes described in the five leaks I look for first. When the report about your flow lands, it looks like this — about things only your product does.