Cart abandonment rate is the percentage of shopping carts created that do not result in a completed purchase. It shows how often customers start the purchase process but leave before checking out.
Why Cart Abandonment Rate matters
High cart abandonment rates represent lost revenue and point to friction in the purchase process. In ecommerce, this is one of the most critical leak points in the funnel because it occurs after the shopper has already shown strong buying intent. Reducing abandonment can yield fast ROI since you’re converting people already interested in buying. Causes can range from unexpected shipping costs to poor mobile checkout experiences. Tracking and optimizing cart abandonment is often easier and more profitable than driving more top-of-funnel traffic.
How Cart Abandonment Rate works
Cart abandonment rate = ((Number of Carts Created − Number of Completed Orders) ÷ Number of Carts Created) × 100%. This can be measured site-wide or by segment (device, traffic source, product category). Many analytics tools also track checkout abandonment separately, which focuses on users who start checkout. Effective reduction strategies often include clearer pricing, simpler checkout steps, and remarketing tactics like cart recovery emails.
Example in ecommerce
A fashion retailer has a cart abandonment rate of 78%. Heatmaps and surveys reveal that customers are surprised by high shipping costs shown only at checkout. The retailer tests showing estimated shipping earlier on PDPs and in the cart summary, reducing abandonment to 65% within a month and boosting monthly sales without increasing ad spend.
Common mix-ups
Cart abandonment is different from checkout abandonment, the latter only measures drop-offs during the checkout process. It’s also different from bounce rate, which measures single-page sessions with no interaction.
Best practices
- Display shipping costs and delivery times early.
- Offer guest checkout to reduce account-creation friction.
- Use clear progress indicators in checkout.
- Send automated cart recovery emails with personalized content.
- Offer multiple payment methods.
- Test mobile checkout separately from desktop.
- Reduce unnecessary form fields.
Industry benchmarks
- Average ecommerce cart abandonment rate: 60-80%.
- Mobile abandonment rates are often higher due to smaller screens and slower load times.
- A 10% relative improvement can significantly impact revenue.
