Reduced median checkout time by 33.3% (from 5.7 to 3.8 minutes) and improved cart-to-payment conversion from 43.72% to 46.11% by combining a redundant 4-step flow into a 2-step mobile checkout.

• The Problem:
  IGP’s old checkout was spread across four separate screens. Cart and Order Summary duplicated a lot of the same information, making the process feel slow and dragging out checkout completion time.
• The Approach:
  We analyzed quick-commerce checkout patterns and merged Cart, Address, and Order Summary into a single screen. This allowed users to review items, pick delivery addresses, check item deliverability, and add greeting cards all in one place before moving to payment.
• The Outcome:
  Increased Cart to Payment conversion from 43.72% to 46.11%, while reducing median Cart to Payment time from 5.7 minutes down to 3.8 minutes. Overall Cart to Transaction conversion also grew from 37.15% to 38.99%.

IGP is an Indian gifting platform where people buy cakes, flowers, and personalized gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, and celebrations. Aside from personal occasions, a large chunk of orders comes from seasonal events like Rakshabandhan, where users buy rakhis and gift hampers. Gifting often has hard delivery deadlines, so speed and clarity during checkout matter a lot.

Reducing checkout steps was Phase 1 of a broader push to make product discovery and ordering faster across the platform. While IGP isn't a quick-commerce app, users shouldn't feel exhausted trying to send a gift. When we mapped out the touchpoints based on effort versus return, updating the checkout flow offered the highest immediate value.

Our primary goal was simple: reduce the time it takes for a user to place an order without dropping our overall conversion rate.

• Primary Metric: Reduce time to convert (TTC) from Cart to Payment and Cart to Transaction.
• Secondary Metrics:
  • Keep overall funnel conversion stable or improve it.
  • Maintain or increase greeting card add-on sales.

The original checkout had 4 distinct screens:

• Cart
• Address Selection
• Order Summary
• Payment

When looking closely at Cart and Order Summary, almost all the information was duplicated. The only real reason Order Summary existed as its own standalone step was to sell greeting card add-ons. If two screens carry identical information, merging them is an obvious starting point.

Merging Cart and Order Summary made sense, but we still had to solve how address selection fit in. At IGP, address selection isn't just about picking a location—it's tied to product deliverability.

A single cart might contain a same-day hand-delivered cake alongside a courier-delivered personalized mug. If deliverability is checked only after address selection, forcing the user into a separate screen creates unnecessary back-and-forth if an item in their cart turns out to be unavailable for that pincode.

To find a cleaner way to handle address selection, we benchmarked flows across traditional e-commerce and quick-commerce platforms. E-commerce apps typically treat address selection as a dedicated step. Quick-commerce apps (like Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy), on the other hand, treat address selection as an inline sub-step right inside the cart summary. We realized that embedding address selection directly into the Cart Summary was the right approach for IGP:

• Immediate deliverability checks
  Most users entering the cart either have a saved address selected or have already entered a pincode on the product page. For users with a saved address, they can review their details and proceed straight to payment.
• Handling mixed carts easily
  If a user selects an address and an item isn't deliverable to that location, they can remove or replace that specific item on the spot, rather than jumping back and forth across multiple screens.
• Inline address changes
  Users can select a saved address or add a new one directly on the summary screen before moving to payment.

We made a deliberate choice to launch 2-step checkout only on Mobile Web and Native Apps, keeping the Desktop checkout on the old 4-step flow. Here’s why:

• Multi-address ordering
  Desktop has IGP’s multiple-address delivery feature (sending different gifts to different recipient addresses in a single order).
• Backend complexity
  Fitting multi-address logic into the new 2-step UI would have required extensive API and backend refactoring.
• Low volume impact
  Desktop accounts for only ~10% of our total order volume. On an effort-to-returns basis, rebuilding multi-address backend APIs for 10% of our traffic didn't make business sense at the time. Focusing on mobile covered 90% of our user base with much lower risk.

In the updated design, users do everything on a single screen before payment:

• Everything in one place
  Review cart items, select or change delivery address, add a greeting card, apply coupon codes, redeem gift vouchers, and view price breakups—all on the Cart Summary screen.
• Familiar visual layout
  We adapted UI patterns from quick-commerce apps that users interact with daily. Because key components remained structurally familiar, existing customers didn't feel lost.
• Reduced screen jumping
  Previously, if a user wanted to modify item quantities or change address details, they had to navigate back to the Cart. Now, all edits happen directly on the summary screen.
• Contextual CTAs
  he primary CTA dynamically changes state to guide the user clearly—displaying "Select Delivery Address" if an address is missing, or "Proceed to Payment" once an address is selected.

To evaluate the new checkout flow, we looked at two sets of data: a controlled 50/50 A/B test in December 2025 to prove direct causality without seasonal noise, and the platform metrics once we scaled to 100% of mobile users in January 2026.

• Controlled A/B Test (December 2025 — 50% Rollout)

  
  Running a side-by-side test comparing the 2-step variant against the old 4-step flow confirmed that merging steps directly improved both conversion and speed:
  • Higher Cart-to-Payment Conversion: Increased from 43.72% to 46.11% (a +2.39% absolute lift).
  • Higher Overall Conversion: Cart-to-Transaction completion grew from 37.15% to 38.99%.
  • 33.3% Faster Cart-to-Payment Time: Median time spent dropped from 5.7 minutes down to 3.8 minutes.
  • Faster Overall Order Completion: Median time from Cart to full Transaction completion dropped from 9.2 minutes to 8.3 minutes.
  • Big Speed Boost for Power Users: 25th percentile users completed Cart-to-Payment in just 1.1 minutes, down from 2.4 minutes.

• Full Scale Impact (January 2026 — 100% Mobile Rollout)

  
  After confirming the wins from the A/B test, we rolled out the 2-step checkout to all mobile web and app users. The initial performance gains held steady at scale:
  • 36.5% Drop in Overall Checkout Time: Platform-wide median time to convert settled at 3.1 minutes, down from 4.9 minutes.
  • Higher Sustained Conversion: Cart-to-Payment funnel conversion reached 48.21%, compared to 47.43% in the previous quarter.
  • Add-on Sales Preserved: Greeting card conversion remained stable, confirming that moving add-ons inline into the cart summary worked without needing a standalone step.