Before/After: Reworking a Marketplace Checkout to Reduce Drop-off

Tech · 4 min read

LocalHand, a marketplace for home services, saw the largest abandonment during the booking confirmation stage where users faced too many optional upsells and ambiguous pricing. The product team mapped the funnel, timed user hesitation points, and ran quick tree tests to understand which options readers considered important versus noise.

The after design removed secondary upsells from the critical path, introduced progressive disclosure for add-ons, and moved all price guarantees and refund policies adjacent to the confirmation CTA. Microcopy was rewritten to focus on the user goal—‘Book with confidence’—and a single, persistent payment summary replaced multiple scattered totals.

Post-launch metrics showed a 15% reduction in checkout abandonment and a slight uplift in average order value because users who wanted add-ons could still access them after booking. This before/after demonstrates how clarifying hierarchy and reducing cognitive load in payment flows yields better outcomes than creative tweaks alone.