The Hidden Costs of Bad UX: How Usability Issues Impact E-commerce Revenue

UX in E-commerce – Key Takeaways:

• Poor UX reduces revenue, increases effective CAC, and weakens ROAS.
• Friction in product listings, product pages, mobile experiences, and checkout can stop customers at different stages of the buying journey.
• Not every cart abandonment is caused by UX issues, so it is important to identify the actual reason customers leave.
• The cost of UX issues can be estimated through revenue opportunity, taking into account AOV, CR/RPV, frequency, and the severity of friction.
• Priority should go to UX issues with the greatest impact on revenue, rather than those that are simply the most visible.

The cost of poor UX includes lost transactions, lower marketing budget efficiency, customer service costs, and development fixes. Over time, it can also affect retention and LTV.

This is why UX (User Experience) should be analyzed alongside an e-commerce store’s commercial performance, rather than solely as a measure of interface quality.

The cost can also extend beyond a single session. In PwC’s 2025 survey, 29% of consumers said they had stopped using or buying from a brand because of a poor customer experience, either online or offline.

Poor UX does not affect just one transaction. It can reduce the value of the entire customer journey, from acquisition costs to the long-term value of the customer relationship.

The greatest risk is not limited to checkout. Revenue can be lost much earlier: when customers search for a product, compare variants, review a product page, or check pricing and delivery terms.

This matters because a low CR is an outcome, not a diagnosis.

What Happens When Users Cannot Find the Right Product Easily?

If customers cannot find the right product, a company can lose the transaction despite having the right offer. The path from purchase intent to product discovery becomes the barrier.

The most common factors include:

• search – whether it recognizes how customers actually search for products,
• filters – whether they allow users to narrow down the selection quickly,
• categories – whether they reflect the way customers approach purchase decisions,
• product listings – whether they make it easy to compare products and reach the right offer.

For large e-commerce businesses, the difference between “the product is available” and “the customer can find it” can have a direct impact on sales. A competitor UX analysis can reveal whether the same process is easier on competing websites.

When Does a Product Page Start Blocking Purchase Decisions?

A product page starts costing a business money when it fails to provide the information customers need to make a decision or makes the next step unnecessarily difficult. This includes pricing, variants, availability, delivery, returns, images, and trust-building information.

Baymard’s March 2026 benchmark update includes more than 30,000 product page usability ratings. Baymard also reports that during testing, users abandoned products that were suitable for them because of avoidable UX issues.

This is why a product page analysis should go beyond checking whether the PDP contains all the expected elements. What matters more is whether customers can make a purchase decision without having to look for information elsewhere.

Pricing is a particularly important case. Customers assess more than the price displayed next to the product: they also consider delivery costs, discounts, free shipping thresholds, and the total order value. The way pricing psychology and cost presentation are handled on the website can therefore shape how customers perceive the offer before they even enter checkout.

Why Do Checkout Problems Start Before Checkout?

Checkout abandonment can result from decisions and information encountered much earlier in the buying journey. Unexpected costs, unclear delivery information, or insufficient trust may only become apparent when the customer is about to complete the purchase, even though the source of the problem lies before the payment form.

According to Baymard’s research roundup, the average documented cart abandonment rate is 70.22%. This is an average across 50 different studies, not a benchmark against which every e-commerce store should measure its own performance.

More importantly, not every abandonment indicates a UX problem. Among US online shoppers surveyed by Baymard, 42% said they had abandoned a cart because they were just browsing or were not yet ready to buy.

Once this group is excluded, the reasons for abandonment look different:

Aggregate CR can hide mobile-specific barriers, which is why mobile performance should be analyzed separately.

Scale matters: according to Baymard, mobile accounts for around three-quarters of retail visits, while its 2026 benchmark rated 75% of the mobile e-commerce sites studied as having “mediocre” UX.

The diagnosis should focus primarily on:

• whether customers can easily find and compare products,
• whether forms, product variants, and CTAs are easy to use on a small screen,
• whether checkout involves unnecessary steps or requires users to enter the same information more than once,
• whether essential information and interface elements are accessible to different groups of users.

The last point goes beyond convenience. If customers cannot access information, complete a form, or navigate the interface, they may be prevented from completing the transaction altogether. This is why a website accessibility audit should be part of the diagnostic process for large and complex e-commerce sites.

You do not need to build a complex financial model to assess the business impact of a UX issue. Start by determining how many customers encounter the barrier, how severely it affects the purchase process, and what share of sales it may impact.

An unclear element on a page visited by a small group of users carries a different weight than a product variant selection issue affecting your best-selling product pages.

What Should You Check Before Estimating the Cost of a UX Issue?

The priority of a UX issue depends on its scale and impact on purchase decisions. Simply knowing that an issue exists does not tell you how much it may be costing the business.

• How many customers encounter the issue? The more frequently it occurs on an important customer journey, the greater the share of potential sales exposed to it.
• How severely does it affect the purchase process? An unclear label carries a different weight than being unable to select a delivery option, choose a product variant, or complete a payment.
• What share of sales does it affect? An issue affecting best-selling products or checkout may have greater business impact than one occurring in a marginal area of the store.

Baymard applies similar logic in its Opportunity Sizing Calculator. When evaluating recommendations, it considers factors such as frequency of encounter, meaning how often users come across an issue, and severity of friction, meaning how strongly the issue affects their ability to complete an action.

How Can You Estimate the Cost of UX With a Simple Example?

Suppose an analysis reveals a recurring problem with variant selection on best-selling product pages. Since these pages account for a significant share of sales, the business impact may be greater than that of an issue occurring on a rarely visited page.

This does not mean that every exit from such a product page can be treated as lost revenue. First, you need to confirm whether the issue actually affects customer decisions, for example by analyzing user behavior, conducting usability research, or testing a change.

What Is Revenue Opportunity in UX?

Revenue opportunity is the sales potential that could be unlocked by removing a validated UX barrier. It is not an accounting measure of lost revenue or a guarantee of additional revenue.

If users complete the purchase process more frequently after a change, you can estimate the business value of that improvement. However, factors such as the offer, pricing, seasonality, acquisition source, and customer mix also affect overall e-commerce performance.

Revenue opportunity is therefore best treated as a decision-making tool: does the potential value of solving the issue justify the cost of analyzing, designing, and implementing the solution?

Why Shouldn’t You Add Up the Potential of All UX Improvements?

The potential impact of multiple UX recommendations should not be added together automatically, because different issues may affect the same customers and the same transactions.

A customer may first struggle to find a product, then have difficulty understanding delivery costs, and finally encounter friction when completing the order. Removing the first barrier changes the number of customers who will reach the next one.

This is why a UX business case is better built around scenarios:

• conservative scenario – the improvement removes only part of the identified friction,
• base scenario – the expected impact reflects the results of the test or observation,
• optimistic scenario – the effect is sustained when the change is implemented at a larger scale.

A low CR is not proof of a UX problem. It may result from the quality of acquired demand, intent mismatch, pricing, the offer, seasonality, or a technical issue. UX can only be identified as the cause once user behavior data is analyzed in the context of the customer journey.

This is one reason why optimizing CR alone can lead to the wrong decisions. Two e-commerce stores can have exactly the same conversion rate while requiring completely different actions.

The same CR does not necessarily mean the same diagnosis. To identify the source of the issue, you need to analyze the entire process from user intent to transaction.

This is why a customer journey analysis combining SEO and UX should cover the entire sequence:

Analytics will show you where users drop off. It will not always explain why they leave.

The highest priority should go to issues that occur frequently, interfere with actions that directly contribute to sales, and affect journeys responsible for a significant share of revenue. The most visible UX issue is not always the one that costs the business the most.

When prioritizing changes, answer four questions:

• How often does the issue occur? Check how many users actually encounter it.
• How severely does it affect task completion? A minor inconvenience should be treated differently from a barrier that prevents users from moving forward.
• What share of sales does it affect? An issue on best-selling PDPs or in checkout carries a different weight than an issue in a marginal area of the site.
• How much will it cost to fix? The potential value of the improvement should be compared with the UX and development resources required, as well as the implementation cost.

In simple terms, a UX issue can be assessed across two dimensions: how often it occurs and how much potential revenue is exposed to it.

This model does not replace UX research. It helps determine where UX and development resources have the strongest economic justification.

Why Can a Small UX Issue Be a High Priority?

The business impact of a UX issue depends on its context, not its size on a list of identified problems. A seemingly minor barrier may require immediate attention if it affects a high-value customer segment or appears at a point directly connected to purchase completion.

• User segment. A UX persona helps determine who is affected by the issue. A barrier affecting a relatively small group may still matter if those customers have high AOV or LTV.
• Microcopy. An unclear message in a form may seem like a minor detail until it appears at a stage responsible for a significant share of abandonment. At that point, UX writing becomes part of designing the purchase journey.

If an e-commerce store reaches customers who are ready to buy but loses them once they arrive on the site, increasing the marketing budget may only amplify the problem. In this situation, removing barriers from the purchase journey may offer greater potential.

The first step is to determine where exactly you are losing the customer. Before they reach the store, or while they are already choosing a product and completing the purchase?

This is why the decision is not simply a choice between “marketing or UX.” SEO, AISO, and paid campaigns help customers discover the brand and its offer. UX determines whether they can then find the right product, evaluate the offer, and complete the purchase efficiently.

Technology is another part of the equation. What appears to be a UX issue may actually result from a slow component, incorrect form validation, CMS configuration, or checkout functionality. Without identifying the root cause, you can improve the interface and still fail to solve the actual problem.

This is why Delante projects can combine Search analysis with UX, analytics, and the work of our in-house development team. A recommendation alone does not change business performance if the identified issue remains in the backlog for months.

This may be where the biggest hidden cost of poor UX lies: the company pays to reach the right customer, then loses part of the value of that investment within its own store.

At Delante, we combine Search, UX, analytics, and development to identify barriers that limit sales and determine their business priority. If a company invests in acquiring the right customers, its UX should help preserve the value of that investment.

Sources:

• https://baymard.com/blog/hidden-cost-bad-ux-revenue-calculator
• https://contentsquare.com/press/2025-digital-experience-benchmarks/
• https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate
• https://baymard.com/research-articles/current-state-ecommerce-product-page-ux
• https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/consulting/commercial-excellence/library/2025-customer-experience-survey.html