Tesla built 360,000 versions of their car to sell online.

Most of them never sold.

Not because people didn’t want one. But the checkout had 64 clicks in it.

And by the time someone got through half of it, choosing tire specs and interior colors and autopilot configurations, they were already exhausted before they even hit the payment screen.

Jon McNeill, who ran Tesla’s sales at the time, only spotted this because he sat down and actually used the website himself. Not a report. Not a sales dashboard. He clicked through it.

At some point, Musk stopped and asked what sounds like a weird question for a car company: how many taps does it take to order a Domino’s pizza?

The answer was 10 thumb taps.

Not a car. A pizza. Ten taps.

Today, Business Insider says the checkout eventually came down to about 5 clicks for the Model 3 on the company’s website.

It’s a lot less friction between “I want this” and “I bought this.”

Thing is, this isn’t just a Tesla problem.

There’s a natural instinct when you’re building your first shop or service page to add more. More pricing tiers, so you cover more budgets.

More options, so people can personalize.

More “learn more” buttons because you want them to feel informed and not rushed, and maybe a FAQ section too just in case someone has questions, and another section for testimonials, and a popup with a discount offer that shows up after 10 seconds.

But every extra step is a small reason to wait. And wait almost always turns into never.

Baymard Institute found that ecommerce stores could improve conversions by up to 35% just by making design changes to their checkout process.

At the same time, 18% abandoned a checkout simply because the process was too long or too complicated.

So what all of this is really saying, when you take away all the extra stuff, is that the product isn’t usually the problem.

The path to buying it is.

The fix usually isn’t burning everything down either.

Start by counting how many decisions you’re asking someone to make before they can say yes. That number alone will probably tell you more than any analytics tool right now.

Talk soon,

Minosh

P.S. Also, if your page is losing people before they even reach checkout, rebuilding it yourself isn’t always realistic. Here’s where to find someone to do it clean.