Last updated: May 2026
The MISE principle — "Make It Super Easy" — is the eCommerce equivalent of removing every possible reason a customer might not buy. That means a clear path to purchase, no hidden costs at checkout, free shipping where possible, and your products available through every channel your customers prefer (your own site, Amazon, distributors, in-store). Research consistently shows over 70% of online shoppers abandon their cart before completing a purchase, and most of those abandonments are friction: a form that's too long, unexpected shipping costs, a checkout that doesn't work on mobile. This post walks through how we apply MISE across the three places it matters most.
The three places to apply MISE in eCommerce:
One of my greatest marketing teachers was my dad, and he often offered unsolicited advice on how to be a more effective marketer. He was a fan of the KISS principle — "Keep It Simple, Stupid." I recently had an informal poll in the office to discover where we all learned about this principle. Many people said a teacher, a boss, or a parent — but most people actually referenced "The Office," the hit TV show where Dwight Schrute says: "Michael always says K.I.S.S. Keep it simple stupid, great advice… hurts my feelings every time."
A similar principle is MIES or "Make it Easy, Stupid" — but I prefer to take the stupid part out because it's confusing. So we're going with "Make It Super Easy," or MISE.
When it comes to selling your products online, it's vital that you create a plan to make it as easy as possible for people to make a purchase. That involves enabling them through design, user experience, and targeting. But it's just as important to remove any possible barriers that might stop them from buying.
We've all been there. You click on a product, decide to buy, and abandon the transaction because the process is too complicated, the site is broken, or hidden costs surface at checkout. And we're not the only ones. The Baymard Institute's continuously updated benchmark puts the average cart abandonment rate around 70%. That's a lot of money left on the table.
This is where MISE comes in. When you're selling a product on the Internet, you've got to make it super easy for people to buy your product or service the way they want to. Amazon's 1-click checkout established what's now the industry baseline: friction-free purchase in a single action. The 1-click patent expired in 2017, and the pattern is now standard practice across every major eCommerce platform.
For another example, people should be able to buy your product with free shipping. They should be able to do that quickly and easily from whatever device they're using. And they should still be able to buy your product through distributors and physical store locations if those channels matter for your business. The bigger framework behind this — how MISE fits into a complete eCommerce strategy — is in our piece on the broader eCommerce strategy behind MISE.
This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as eCommerce best practice is concerned. To help you start to recover some of those abandoned carts, here are three places we apply the MISE principle to make customers' lives easier.
Are you selling a product (could be anything) and don't have eCommerce set up? Several times a week, we have a conversation with a business owner who's afraid to upset their existing distributors by selling online. That's a valid concern. But in five years it won't matter, because you and they will both be out of business unless you start selling online now.
Your store itself is where MISE has the most direct impact on conversion. Reducing friction at every step — from how customers find a product to how they pay for it — is what separates stores that scale from stores that plateau. Our companion piece on organizing your store around the customer's path to purchase covers the specifics of taxonomy, content, and checkout flow.
To see this in action, see what we did for Zephyr Epic.
In a previous post, we talked about how Amazon is a MUST for any eCommerce business. You don't need to have all of your products on Amazon. You might just want to sell the ones with the highest margin, or those that cost the least to ship. You also need to decide which products belong in Amazon FBA based on velocity, margin, and storage cost.
The MISE logic for Amazon is the same as for your own store: meet customers in the channel they already use, with the friction-free purchase experience they already trust. For a category of shoppers, Amazon Prime is the default expectation. Skipping that channel because it feels like competition with your own store leaves money — and brand awareness — on the table.
Customers expect free shipping when they're shopping online, and they want the option to expedite products for an extra cost if they want to. People are willing to pay for faster service, and free shipping is almost a constitutional right in their minds (thank you, Amazon Prime). If you don't offer free shipping, it's an obstacle standing in the way of customers buying your products.
The practical move for most stores is a threshold-based free-shipping offer — free above a cart value that protects margin while still meeting customer expectations. We've found this pattern lifts average order value at the same time it reduces abandonment, because customers actively add items to clear the threshold.
The next time you're thinking about your eCommerce experience, remember: MISE means "Make It Super Easy." The easier you make it for your customers to make a purchase, the more likely they are to act. That principle applies across navigation, performance, checkout, mobile, and trust signals — the full seamless eCommerce journey from arrival to repeat purchase.
Looking for help with your eCommerce marketing and sales? Our team can find clarity in the chaos of friction reduction and conversion lift. Take a look at our eCommerce strategy services or get in touch.
MISE stands for "Make It Super Easy." It's a friction-reduction principle for eCommerce: remove every possible barrier between a customer and a purchase. That includes simplified navigation, transparent pricing, fast page loads, mobile-first checkout, guest-checkout options, free shipping where possible, and presence in every channel your customers prefer. The simpler the path to purchase, the higher the conversion rate.
The Baymard Institute's continuously updated benchmark puts the average eCommerce cart abandonment rate around 70%. That figure has held remarkably steady for years. The reasons are also consistent: surprise costs at checkout, forced account creation, slow page loads, and a process that takes too many steps. Bring the rate down for your store by removing those friction points one at a time.
Start with the three biggest friction points: surface all costs (including shipping) before checkout, offer guest checkout so customers don't have to create an account, and design the experience mobile-first since most traffic now arrives on a phone. After that, audit your navigation, search, product pages, and trust signals. The MISE principle says: if you can remove a step or a friction, do it.
Yes — meaningfully and consistently. Unexpected shipping costs are repeatedly cited in Baymard's research as the most common reason for cart abandonment. The practical move for most stores is a threshold-based free-shipping offer that protects margin (free above a cart value of $X) while still meeting customer expectations. Threshold free shipping often lifts average order value at the same time it reduces abandonment.
Amazon FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon) means you send your inventory to Amazon's warehouses, and Amazon handles storage, packing, shipping, returns, and customer service. You pay storage and fulfilment fees per unit. FBA makes products eligible for Prime, which is a substantial conversion lift on the Amazon marketplace. The decision to put a SKU in FBA usually comes down to velocity, margin, and product weight or size.
Most major eCommerce platforms now include one-click or accelerated checkout out of the box. Shopify has Shop Pay. Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce support PayPal Express, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. The technical setup is usually under an hour. The harder work is making sure the rest of your checkout doesn't undo the accelerated-checkout gains — guest checkout, autofill, and clear costs all need to be in place.
The biggest wins come from three changes: surface all costs (including shipping and tax) before checkout, support the payment methods your customers actually use, and keep the checkout to three steps or fewer with autofill and guest-checkout options. After that, set up an email recovery sequence to bring back the customers who still leave. Together these usually move the abandonment rate several points.
Obstacles are like asteroids. Shoot 'em down and let's go to the moon.
