UX audit that recovered ₹1.2 crore in annualized checkout revenue

A D2C wellness brand, Shopify Plus, ~₹8 crore monthly GMV, suspected UX not ads caused rising cart abandonment. Internal team debated full theme rebuild ($$$). Simplileap proposed audit-first: two-week heuristic + analytics engagement before design spend.

Methods: Nielsen heuristics scored per checkout step; Hotjar replays on abandoned carts; GA4 funnel with segment by device and acquisition channel; competitive benchmark against three category leaders.

Deliverable: prioritized backlog, 14 items ranked by ICE score with engineering effort estimates; quick-win spec for five items implementable without theme fork; executive summary for leadership with revenue modeling.

Critical findings: unexpected shipping fee reveal on step three (severity 5); coupon field prominence drew users away from payment; UPI vs card tabs confused mobile users; address autocomplete failed on rural pincodes; error on expired OTP cleared entire form.

Problems: merchandising resisted moving coupon below payment, A/B test scheduled; Shopify script limitations blocked one ideal fix, documented workaround via checkout extensibility.

Outcome: implemented top seven fixes over six weeks; checkout completion up 8.4%; modeled annualized revenue recovery ~₹1.2 crore. Brand anonymized, wellness D2C.