Apple Pay: express checkout mobile buyers actually use

Boaters buy from docks, marinas, and boat decks - which means phones, glare, and no patience for typing a card number and shipping address into a mobile form. I led the Apple Pay implementation on westmarine.com to cut that friction out of the funnel entirely.

The problem

Mobile was the majority of traffic but converted well below desktop, and the funnel data pointed at the obvious culprit: manual card and address entry on a phone. Every field between "I want this" and "paid" was leaking orders - on a site whose customers are frequently standing on a boat when they buy.

What I did

• Made the case with funnel data - used the checkout funnel analysis to show where mobile buyers were dropping and what an express payment path was worth.
• Designed the express checkout flow - Apple Pay entry from the cart that bypasses the shipping and payment form steps entirely, taking the mobile path from form-filling to Face ID.
• Held the standard - button placement, sizing, and sheet behavior per Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, integrated cleanly with the existing checkout rather than bolted on.
• Instrumented adoption - payment-type measurement in GA4 so adoption, revenue, and device mix are attributable and reportable, not anecdotal.

Why it matters

Adoption is the honest metric for a payment method: nobody is forced to use Apple Pay, yet within six months nearly a quarter of mobile purchases chose it. That is measurable, user-validated friction removal - and it compounds with the broader cart and checkout redesign as part of the same funnel story.