Cart abandonment explained: the metric every merchant should be tracking

Shoppers are browsing, adding items and making it all the way to the checkout. Then they leave. There’s no purchase and no explanation, just a session that ends before it should. 

Cart abandonment is one of the most common and most expensive problems in ecommerce. And for many merchants, it’s also one of the least understood. This post breaks down what cart abandonment is, how to measure it accurately, why it happens, and what merchants can actually do about it.

What is cart abandonment? 

Cart abandonment is when a shopper adds one or more items to their online shopping cart but leaves the site without completing the purchase. The session ends, the cart is left behind, and the potential sale is lost.

It’s worth separating cart abandonment from a few related terms.

• Browse abandonment happens when a shopper views a product but never adds it to their cart.
• Checkout abandonment refers to shoppers who begin the checkout process, such as entering shipping details, but don’t complete payment.
• Cart abandonment covers the broader behavior: adding to cart, then leaving at any point before the order is confirmed.

For merchants tracking ecommerce performance, cart abandonment is significant because it represents shoppers who have demonstrated real intent. They found your product, they want it, and something in the path to purchase stopped them.

How to calculate your cart abandonment rate

Your cart abandonment rate tells you what percentage of shopping sessions that include an add-to-cart action do not result in a completed purchase.

The formula:

Cart abandonment rate = 1 − (completed purchases ÷ shopping carts created) × 100

So if 1,000 shoppers add something to their cart and 350 complete a purchase, your cart abandonment rate is:

1 − (350 ÷ 1,000) × 100 = 65%

What is a normal cart abandonment rate?

Industry benchmarks vary by sector, but average cart abandonment rates is estimated to be 70.22% across ecommerce broadly. That might sound alarming, but it reflects a mix of genuine intent and casual browsing behavior. Not every shopper who adds to cart is ready to buy immediately. Some are comparing options, saving for later, or researching on behalf of someone else.

The more useful question isn’t whether your rate is above or below average. It’s whether it’s improving over time, and where in the funnel you’re losing the most sessions.

Other metrics worth tracking alongside your cart abandonment rate:

Checkout abandonment rate: how many shoppers drop off after starting checkout specifically.

Cart-to-purchase conversion rate: the inverse of your abandonment rate, tracking what’s working rather than what isn’t.

Revenue lost to abandonment: multiply your abandonment rate by your average order value to quantify the dollar impact.

Recovery rate: the percentage of abandoned carts you win back through follow-up emails or retargeting.

Tracking these together gives you a much clearer picture of where the friction is and what recovering even a small percentage of those sessions is worth.

Why shoppers abandon their cart at the checkout 

Understanding the causes of cart abandonment is what separates merchants who fix it from those who keep patching the symptoms. The reasons shoppers leave are well-documented, and most of them are within a merchant’s control.

Unexpected costs at checkout

This is the most cited reason for cart abandonment across every major study on the subject. Shoppers add items based on the displayed price, then arrive at checkout to find shipping fees, taxes, or handling charges that weren’t surfaced earlier. The perceived deal changes, and they leave. Transparency about the total cost earlier in the journey, on product pages rather than just at checkout, directly reduces this.

A checkout process that takes too long

Ecommerce checkout was built for speed. When a shopper has to navigate multiple pages, create an account, re-enter information, or wait for redirects, momentum breaks. The longer a checkout takes, the greater the risk of abandonment. 

Forced account creation

Requiring shoppers to register before they can complete a purchase is a known conversion killer. Many shoppers, particularly those buying for the first time, will abandon rather than commit to another account and password. Guest checkout is not optional infrastructure for competitive ecommerce. It’s a baseline expectation.

Limited or unsuitable payment options

If the payment method a shopper wants to use isn’t available, they won’t substitute. They’ll leave. This applies to preferred credit cards, digital wallets, and increasingly, flexible payment options. Shoppers who want to spread a purchase across installments will abandon a checkout that doesn’t offer that option and find a merchant who does.

Concerns about payment security

Trust signals matter most at the payment step. Unfamiliar payment interfaces, missing security badges, or a checkout that feels disconnected from the merchant’s brand all introduce doubt at the worst possible moment. Shoppers who aren’t confident in the security of a checkout won’t complete it.

The checkout factors merchants overlook

Most merchants focus on the obvious: pricing, page speed, and checkout flow. What gets less attention is how payment infrastructure itself shapes ecommerce cart abandonment rates, often more than any surface-level UX change.

Payment approval rates 

If a shopper is declined at checkout, or even just uncertain about whether they’ll be approved, the session is over. Traditional BNPL providers report average approval rates of around 35%. That means roughly two-thirds of shoppers who want to pay in installments can’t. The sale doesn’t complete, and the merchant never knows why.

Checkout redirects 

Any point in the checkout where a shopper is taken off your site and onto a third-party page is a risk. Redirects break brand continuity, introduce security concerns, and reduce the sense of control a shopper has over their own purchase. White-label payment solutions that keep the entire journey on your domain, with your branding, reduce this risk and keep shoppers in the flow they started.

Payment options that work against you

Some BNPL providers don’t just add their own branding to your checkout. They use the touchpoint to surface competing products, recommend alternatives, and build their own marketplace relationships with your customers. For merchants focused on retention, this is a structural problem: the payment provider is using your customer’s attention to market someone else’s products. It’s worth asking what your payment provider’s incentives actually are, and whether they’re aligned with yours.

Checkout experience on high-ticket purchases

Cart abandonment rates are higher for big-ticket items, not just because of the price, but because the decision process is different. A $1,500 purchase requires more consideration than a $50 one. Merchants selling in higher average order value categories such as home services, electronics, furniture, healthcare, and jewelry often see abandonment spikes that standard checkout optimization doesn’t address. Payment flexibility, specifically the ability to spread a large purchase across interest-free monthly installments using existing credit, changes the math for those shoppers in a way that a faster page load simply cannot. For a closer look at how this plays out in one high-ticket vertical, see why furniture merchants lose high-value sales at checkout.

How to reduce cart abandonment without compromising your brand

There’s no single fix for cart abandonment. It’s a composite of factors, and reducing it requires addressing more than one at a time. But there are clear priorities.

Surface your total cost earlier

Move shipping estimates and fee disclosures to the product page or cart view, not the final checkout step. Shoppers who know the total cost before they commit to checkout are far less likely to abandon when they see it confirmed.

Streamline your checkout flow

Audit every step in your checkout process and ask whether it’s necessary. Reduce the number of pages, minimize required fields, and offer guest checkout as a default. Every additional step is an opportunity to lose a sale.

Offer payment options that match how your customers want to pay

Shoppers have payment preferences, and those preferences vary by purchase type, price point, and demographic. A checkout that only accepts full card payment will lose shoppers who want to pay monthly.

Card-linked installments are particularly effective for merchants in categories where purchase values are high and shoppers are credit-card-oriented rather than BNPL-inclined. Because they use existing credit rather than new loan applications, they introduce no additional friction and carry an 85%+ approval rate without compromising the checkout experience you’ve built.

Invest in trust signals throughout checkout

Security badges, recognizable payment logos, SSL indicators, and consistent branding through the payment step all reduce the anxiety shoppers feel at the point of payment. If your checkout feels unfamiliar or disconnected from the rest of your site, that’s worth fixing before any other optimization.

Build a recovery sequence for abandoned carts

Not every abandonment is preventable in the session. A structured follow-up, with a triggered email within one hour of abandonment followed by a reminder at 24 hours and optionally an incentive at 72 hours, is one of the most reliable ways to recapture revenue from shoppers who left intending to return. Keep the messaging direct and avoid over-discounting. Many shoppers simply needed time, not a coupon.

The hidden cost of cart abandonment

It’s easy to treat cart abandonment as a conversion rate problem, a percentage to improve. But the dollar figure it represents is often significantly larger than merchants account for.

If your store processes $2 million in annual revenue and your cart abandonment rate is 70%, you’re losing roughly $4.67 million in potential revenue every year to abandonment. Recovering even 5% of that, through better payment options, a streamlined checkout, or a recovery email sequence, is worth considerably more than most standard CRO projects.

Cart abandonment isn’t a UX problem to tidy up. It’s one of the highest-leverage levers in your entire ecommerce operation.