Executive Function and Cart Abandonment

An autistic customer has spent forty minutes researching your product. They've read specifications, compared options, checked reviews, and finally added the perfect item to their cart. They click checkout.

Step 1: Create account or continue as guest?

Step 2: Enter shipping address (12 fields)

Step 3: Choose from 8 shipping options with varying prices and timeframes

Step 4: Enter billing address (is it the same as shipping? decide now)

Step 5: Select payment method from 6 options

Step 6: Review order (wait, which shipping did they choose?)

Step 7: Apply coupon code? (do they have one? should they search for one?)

By step 4, their working memory is overwhelmed. By step 6, they've forgotten which shipping option they selected. They close the browser. Cart abandoned.

You just lost a sale to executive function limitations, not lack of interest.

Executive function encompasses the cognitive processes that manage complex tasks: working memory, planning, decision-making, task initiation, and sustained attention. Many autistic individuals experience executive function differences that make multi-step processes cognitively expensive.

Your checkout process isn't just inconvenient for these customers—it's genuinely impossible to complete.

The Multi-Step Checkout Disaster

Research shows the average online checkout takes five steps. For neurotypical shoppers with intact executive function, this is manageable. For autistic shoppers with working memory limitations, each additional step compounds cognitive load.

Working memory acts like cognitive RAM. It holds information temporarily while you process it. When checkout requires remembering:

• What shipping option you selected three screens ago
• Whether your billing address matches shipping
• Which payment method you intended to use
• If you have a coupon code somewhere
• What the total cost was before you navigated away

...you're demanding significant working memory capacity.

Autistic individuals often have reduced working memory capacity or difficulty maintaining information across interruptions. Each new checkout screen is an interruption. Each decision point consumes working memory resources.

By step 5 or 6, they've hit cognitive overload. They can't remember what they selected earlier. They can't hold all the information needed to complete the purchase. They abandon the cart—not because they don't want the product, but because the process exceeded their cognitive capacity.

Amazon's one-click ordering succeeds partly because it eliminates this problem entirely. No steps. No decisions. No working memory required. Click, purchased, done.

For autistic shoppers, this isn't luxury convenience—it's accessibility accommodation that makes purchasing possible.

Shipping Options Paralysis

Your checkout offers eight shipping options:

• Standard (5-7 business days) - $4.99
• Expedited (3-5 business days) - $9.99
• Priority (2-3 business days) - $14.99
• Express (1-2 business days) - $19.99
• Next Day (1 business day) - $29.99
• Saturday Delivery - $34.99
• Plus three carrier-specific options with different pricing structures

You've just created a decision paralysis scenario for shoppers with executive function challenges.

The paradox of choice is amplified for autistic consumers. Research on decision-making under ambiguity shows that excessive options increase cognitive load and decision avoidance. For autistic shoppers already managing sensory input and working memory limitations, complex shipping decisions become abandonment triggers.

They need to evaluate:

• Cost differences
• Time differences
• Whether faster shipping is worth the premium
• When they actually need the item
• Whether any options offer tracking
• What "business days" means for their specific situation

This analysis requires holding multiple variables in working memory, projecting future scenarios, and making value judgments. Executive function-intensive tasks.

Zappos solved this by making shipping simple: free standard, free expedited upgrade if you want it. Two options. Clear value proposition. Minimal cognitive load.

For autistic shoppers, this simplicity isn't just user-friendly—it's the difference between completing checkout and abandoning it.

Account Creation: The Conversion Killer

"Create an account to complete your purchase."

This single requirement kills 23% of potential sales across all demographics. For autistic shoppers with executive function challenges, the percentage is higher.

Account creation demands:

• Generating a password meeting specific requirements (cognitive effort)
• Remembering that password (working memory load)
• Deciding whether to use the same password as other accounts (decision-making)
• Evaluating privacy implications (analysis paralysis)
• Reading terms of service (executive function demand to initiate and sustain attention on lengthy text)
• Worrying about email spam (future prediction, another cognitive load)

Each requirement adds friction. Collectively, they create a barrier that autistic shoppers with executive function limitations often cannot overcome in the moment.

Guest checkout removes all of this. Make the purchase now, decide about accounts later when cognitive resources aren't depleted by shopping decisions.

Retailers fear losing customer data by offering guest checkout. But the data from abandoned carts is worthless. A completed guest purchase generates revenue and creates opportunity for post-purchase account creation when the customer isn't cognitively overwhelmed.

Form Complexity Revenue Impact

Checkout forms that request unnecessary information kill conversions. For autistic shoppers managing executive function limitations, every form field is a cognitive cost.

Standard checkout form crimes:

• Separate fields for address line 1, line 2, city, state, ZIP, country (why not auto-populate from ZIP?)
• Phone number with format requirements (just accept the numbers)
• Asking twice for email "to confirm" (working memory test disguised as verification)
• Optional fields mixed with required ones (decision-making about what's actually necessary)
• "Company name" for individual purchases (confusion about whether this applies)

Each field demands:

• Reading the label
• Understanding what's required
• Retrieving the information
• Formatting it correctly
• Moving to the next field
• Maintaining working memory of what's already been entered

For shoppers with executive function challenges, forms become exhausting cognitive exercises.

Autofill helps, but only if:

• The customer has enabled it
• Their information is current
• The form uses standard field names that autofill recognizes
• The browser correctly identifies field types

When autofill fails, the form becomes a manual data entry task that exceeds many autistic shoppers' available executive function resources.

The Revenue Impact

Cart abandonment costs US and EU ecommerce sites an estimated $260 billion annually. Unknown percentage: how much comes from executive function barriers preventing autistic shoppers from completing purchases.

The solutions cost nothing:

• Reduce checkout steps (saves on page load times anyway)
• Simplify shipping options (reduces customer service contacts about shipping confusion)
• Make guest checkout prominent (capture revenue now, relationship later)
• Minimize form fields (fewer fields = less data to validate = faster processing)
• Enable smart defaults (save customers from making unnecessary decisions)

These aren't autism-specific accommodations. They're conversion optimization that happens to remove executive function barriers.

The autistic customer who abandoned your cart wanted to buy. They chose your product over competitors. They invested time in the decision. Then your checkout process exceeded their cognitive capacity.

Fix the process. Capture the sale.

Winsome Marketing helps ecommerce brands optimize for neurodivergent consumers. We identify the cognitive barriers that cost you sales and position checkout experiences as accessibility features. Let's convert those abandoned carts.