Cart Abandonment Rate

Cart abandonment rate is the percentage of online shoppers who add items to a shopping cart but leave the site without completing the purchase. It is one of the most tracked metrics in ecommerce, serving as a direct indicator of checkout friction, pricing issues, and lost revenue potential.

What is Cart Abandonment Rate?

Cart abandonment rate measures how often shoppers initiate a purchase but fail to follow through. The formula is:

Cart Abandonment Rate = (1 – (Completed Transactions / Shopping Carts Created)) x 100

If 5,000 shoppers add items to their carts in a given week and 1,500 complete their purchases, the cart abandonment rate is 70%. This means 3,500 potential orders were lost before payment was processed.

The global average cart abandonment rate is approximately 70.19%, based on Baymard Institute’s aggregate analysis of 49 studies. Rates vary by industry: travel and airlines see rates above 80%, fashion and apparel average 84%, and grocery averages around 51%. Mobile abandonment rates consistently run 10 to 15 percentage points higher than desktop due to smaller screens and more cumbersome input.

Not all abandonment is recoverable. Baymard’s research categorizes roughly 58% of abandonment as “just browsing” or “not ready to buy,” which represents natural shopping behavior rather than a fixable problem. The remaining 42% abandons for specific, addressable reasons: unexpected costs, complicated checkout, security concerns, or insufficient payment options.

The metric is most useful when tracked over time and segmented. Tracking by device (mobile vs. desktop), traffic source (paid vs. organic), and checkout step (cart page vs. payment page) reveals where and why shoppers drop off.

Cart Abandonment Rate in Practice

Baymard Institute found that the average large ecommerce site can increase its conversion rate by 35.26% through better checkout design alone. Their research, based on usability testing of 60+ ecommerce sites, identified that simplified form fields, guest checkout options, and transparent pricing reduce abandonment by addressing the most common friction points.

ASOS cut its cart abandonment rate by 50% after a checkout redesign that reduced required form fields from 12 to 4, added progress indicators, and displayed total cost (including shipping) on the product page rather than revealing it at checkout. The company reported that these changes generated hundreds of millions in incremental annual revenue.

Walmart saw its mobile cart abandonment rate drop by 20% after introducing one-tap reorder for frequently purchased items and integrating Walmart Pay to eliminate manual payment entry. The combination of fewer steps and stored credentials directly addressed the two biggest mobile checkout friction points.

Shopify’s data across millions of merchants shows that stores offering Shop Pay (a stored-credential checkout) see 1.72x higher conversion rates than those using standard checkout. The accelerated checkout reduces the average completion time from 3 minutes to 36 seconds.

Why Cart Abandonment Rate Matters for Marketers

Cart abandonment rate is the metric that connects marketing spend to revenue leakage. If a marketing campaign drives 10,000 visitors to a site and 3,000 add items to carts, a 70% abandonment rate means 2,100 of those purchase-ready shoppers leave without buying. Reducing that rate by even 5 percentage points recovers 150 additional orders without increasing marketing spend.

The metric also serves as an early warning system. A sudden spike in abandonment rate may indicate a technical problem (broken payment gateway, slow page load), a pricing issue (competitor undercut, unexpected fee added), or a UX regression (confusing new checkout design). Monitoring it daily catches problems before they compound.

For marketing teams running retargeting and email recovery campaigns, the cart abandonment rate sets the addressable audience size. A 70% abandonment rate on 100,000 monthly carts means 70,000 shoppers who are candidates for recovery campaigns each month.

Related Terms

FAQ

What is the difference between cart abandonment rate and checkout abandonment rate?

Cart abandonment rate measures all shoppers who add items to a cart but do not purchase. Checkout abandonment rate measures only shoppers who begin the checkout process (enter the checkout flow) but do not complete it. Checkout abandonment is a subset of cart abandonment and typically runs 15 to 25 percentage points lower because it excludes shoppers who never started checkout.

What is a good cart abandonment rate?

Given the global average of approximately 70%, any rate below 65% is considered strong. Rates below 55% are exceptional and typically found in high-intent categories like grocery or subscription reorders. Rather than targeting an absolute number, focus on reducing your rate relative to your baseline through continuous checkout optimization.

How do you reduce cart abandonment rate?

The highest-impact tactics include: showing total costs (including shipping and tax) before checkout, offering guest checkout without mandatory account creation, providing multiple payment options, displaying trust signals near payment fields, simplifying form fields, and adding progress indicators. Each tactic addresses a specific documented reason for abandonment.

Does free shipping reduce cart abandonment?

Yes. Unexpected shipping costs are the number one reason for cart abandonment, cited by 48% of abandoners in Baymard’s research. Offering free shipping (or clearly displaying shipping costs on product pages so they are not a surprise at checkout) directly addresses the single largest driver of abandonment.