Checkout abandonment is rarely about price. It is about the dozen small moments where a user is asked to trust you with their money and hesitates.
A checkout flow is the highest-stakes screen in most products, because it is the exact moment a user is asked to hand over payment information to a party they may have known for less than five minutes. Every design decision on that screen either builds confidence or adds friction to that decision, and the friction is rarely about the total price.
The itemized-pricing point is the one we push hardest on with clients who resist it, because showing shipping cost early sometimes shows a less flattering number sooner. The data is unambiguous: a surprise at the final step costs more conversions than an honest number shown early.
The blanket advice to "remove fields from checkout" is half-right. Removing a field that reduces the user's sense of being tracked correctly (like an unnecessary phone number) helps. Removing a field that actually builds confidence — like an order summary they can review before confirming — hurts. Test which fields are friction and which are reassurance before cutting either.
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