Most checkout monitors answer one question: “Is the site up in our home country?” For shops that sell in the US, UK, EU, AU, and beyond, that is the wrong question. Buyers in Germany or the UAE can hit missing rates, blocked payment methods, or broken localization while the US path still looks green.

What “geo friction” looks like

• Shipping options missing or absurdly expensive in one market only
• Payment methods that work in the baseline country but fail elsewhere
• Currency, tax, or language issues that stop checkout presentation
• Theme or app changes that only break a non-primary market

A single-locale ping or one US journey will not see those failures. You need the same product → cart → checkout path run from each market you care about, with a clear baseline to compare against.

How Friction Observatory handles it

On Pro and Agency you watch up to five markets (US, CA, GB, FR, DE, AE, ZA, AU) and pick a baseline country. When the baseline fails, it is usually site-wide. When only a secondary market fails, it is localization — and that is where revenue quietly leaks.

1. Choose markets in Settings (and a baseline)
2. Run the same checkout path from each market on a schedule
3. Open Market Health after a few trustworthy runs