By El Ghali Bennis · Published
Why Do Customers Abandon Shopping Carts? 9 Real Reasons
Why do customers abandon shopping carts? See the top reasons, the 70% average rate, and the fixes that reduce checkout abandonment.
Customers abandon shopping carts mainly because of unexpected costs (shipping, taxes, fees), forced account creation, slow or confusing checkouts, and a lack of trust. According to the Baymard Institute, the average cart abandonment rate sits near 70%. Most of those reasons are fixable, and few of them are about the shopper changing their mind.
What Is the Average Cart Abandonment Rate?
The average cart abandonment rate is roughly 70%. The Baymard Institute, which aggregates dozens of studies on this, puts the shopping cart abandonment rate at about 70% across industries (its figure has hovered around 70% for years, most recently about 70.2%). Put differently, for every 10 people who add something to a cart, only about 3 buy.
That number moves by device and category. Mobile is typically worse than desktop, and high-ticket items like furniture or electronics abandon more than low-cost consumables. If your own rate is 65%, you're roughly normal. If it's 80%, something specific is broken.
Here's how to calculate yours: divide completed purchases by carts created, subtract from 1, and multiply by 100. If 400 carts were created last month and 120 orders completed, your rate is 70%.
| Metric | What it tells you | Rule-of-thumb target |
|---|---|---|
| Cart abandonment rate | Share of carts that never become orders | Near the ~70% Baymard average |
| Checkout abandonment rate | Share who start checkout but don't finish | Track your own trend; falling is good |
| Mobile vs. desktop gap | Whether your mobile experience is leaking | Narrower each quarter |
Only the 70% figure is a published benchmark. For the other rows, compare against your own past months, because your category and price point matter more than any average.
Why Do Customers Abandon Shopping Carts? The Top 9 Reasons
The top cart abandonment reasons come from Baymard's checkout survey of US online shoppers. In its published results, the leading causes were extra costs (about 48%), being required to create an account (about 26%), slow delivery (about 23%), distrust with card details (about 25%), and a long or complicated checkout (about 22%). Percentages are from Baymard's multi-year survey and shift slightly between editions, and shoppers could pick more than one reason. Here's each one, with what it looks like on a real store.
1. Extra costs show up late (about 48%)
Baymard ranks this first. Picture a shopper who builds a $60 cart, then sees $14 shipping at the last step. That's a 23% surcharge nobody warned them about, and it feels like a trick even when it isn't. The same logic applies to taxes and "processing" fees. Showing the total before checkout starts is the single highest-impact change on most stores.
2. You forced them to create an account (about 26%)
A first-time buyer doesn't want another password. They want to pay and go. Guest checkout removes this reason entirely, and it costs nothing to offer.
3. Checkout felt too long or complicated (about 22%)
Every extra field is a chance to leave. Asking for company name, a second address line, a phone number, and a birthday adds friction with no payoff. Baymard's usability research found the average checkout has about 11 form fields, and that most sites could cut that to around 8 without losing anything they need. It also covers the "couldn't see the total" problem: if the final price only appears on the last page, shoppers feel they're doing math and feel misled.
4. Delivery was too slow (about 23%)
A buyer who needs a gift by Friday and sees "5-8 business days" is gone. Delivery speed is one of the most common checkout abandonment causes for gifts and seasonal items. Show an estimated delivery date, not a range of business days.
5. They didn't trust the site with their card (about 25%)
New or unfamiliar stores take the biggest hit. Missing reviews, no visible return policy, no recognizable payment logos, and a thin footer all signal risk. Trust is cheap to build and expensive to lack. If you have no reviews yet, here's how to add product reviews to your online store.
6. The return policy was unclear or strict (about 20%)
If shoppers can't tell what happens when an item doesn't fit, they hesitate. Baymard lists "return policy wasn't satisfactory" among the reasons shoppers abandon, at roughly one in five. A one-line policy near the pay button answers it.
7. The site errored, crashed, or was slow (about 17%)
A checkout that hangs for four seconds after a click feels broken. Heavy page weight from stacked apps and scripts is a quiet culprit here, particularly on mobile.
8. Not enough payment options (about 8%)
A smaller group leaves because their preferred method is missing. If your buyers expect PayPal, Apple Pay, or Google Pay and see only a card form, some will leave. Wallets also cut typing, which matters on a phone, and they tend to matter more in categories with impulse purchases. The share is small, but it's one of the cheapest fixes on this list.
9. They were just browsing (a large share)
Plenty of carts are a wishlist, a price check, or a comparison. Baymard's survey lists "just browsing / not ready to buy" among the top reasons, so you can't fix this with checkout design. But these shoppers are a follow-up opportunity, which is where recovery emails come in.
A Real-World Example: What Fixing One Leak Looks Like
Consider a hypothetical small store with 400 carts a month and a $60 average order. At the 70% average abandonment rate, it completes 120 orders, or $7,200 in revenue. Say it adds an upfront shipping estimator and guest checkout, and the rate drops five points to 65%. That's 140 orders and $8,400, an extra $1,200 a month from changes that cost nothing in ad spend. The numbers are illustrative, not a result from a specific store, but the math shows why a few points matter.
Baymard also reports that better checkout design could recover a large share of lost orders. Its estimate is that the average large ecommerce site can gain around 35% in conversion rate through checkout design improvements alone.
Why Shoppers Leave at Checkout on Mobile
Mobile shoppers leave at higher rates because typing card details, addresses, and codes on a small screen is painful, and slow pages cost you the sale before they get that far. Fixing mobile is usually the fastest way to reduce checkout abandonment.
Look at three things on your own phone, on cellular data, not office wifi:
- Load time: Can you reach the checkout page in under three seconds?
- Tap targets: Are buttons big enough that you never mis-tap?
- Input types: Does the phone field open a number pad, and does the card field support autofill?
Google's own web.dev performance guidance backs up the speed point: slower pages lose more visitors. For a deeper walkthrough, see our guide to mobile conversion rate optimization.
One more mobile-specific cause: the app stack. Each Shopify app can add scripts to the page, and when your checkout flow inherits that weight, shoppers feel it. If that sounds familiar, here's how to reduce Shopify app costs without losing the features that matter.
How to Reduce Cart Abandonment: A Step-by-Step Fix List
To reduce cart abandonment, start with the biggest leak first: show full costs early, offer guest checkout, cut form fields, add trusted payment methods, and then recover the carts that still leave. Work through these in order.
- Audit your own checkout. Buy something from your store on a phone. Write down every moment you hesitate. That list beats any benchmark.
- Show shipping and tax early. Add a shipping estimator on the product or cart page. If you can afford it, set a free-shipping threshold slightly above your average order value.
- Turn on guest checkout. Offer account creation after payment, on the confirmation page, with one click.
- Cut the form. Remove optional fields. Use address autocomplete. Aim for the fewest steps possible.
- Add wallets and local methods. Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal for most stores.
- Put trust signals near the pay button. Return policy in one line, delivery dates, secure payment badges, and review stars.
- Speed up the pages. Compress images, remove unused scripts, and test with Google's PageSpeed Insights.
- Answer objections on the product page. Sizing, materials, and compatibility questions cause quiet abandonment. A visible Q&A section helps; here's how to add customer Q&A to product pages.
- Recover what's left. Send a sequence of reminders after a cart is left.
What does a recovery sequence look like?
A simple three-touch flow works for most stores: a reminder at about one hour, a second message at 24 hours with reviews or an FAQ answer, and a final one at 72 hours with a small incentive if your margins allow it. Our abandoned cart email examples show wording you can copy, and the abandoned cart subject lines list helps with open rates. SMS can add a second channel, and these abandoned cart text message examples cover it.
Cart Abandonment Statistics Worth Knowing
The most useful cart abandonment statistics aren't the headline rate. They're the split by cause, device, and what recovers. Here's a summary with sources named.
| Statistic | Source |
|---|---|
| Average cart abandonment rate is about 70% | Baymard Institute |
| Extra costs are the top reason, cited by about 48% of abandoning shoppers | Baymard Institute checkout survey |
| About 26% leave because of forced account creation | Baymard Institute checkout survey |
| Average checkout has about 11 form fields; about 8 is achievable | Baymard Institute checkout usability research |
| Checkout design improvements can lift conversion by around 35% | Baymard Institute |
Read these numbers with a clear head. They're averages across thousands of stores, so use them to guess where to look, not as promises. Check Baymard's site for the latest edition, since figures are updated over time. A store selling $15 candles and a store selling $900 sofas have different rates for different reasons.
One more nuance: not every abandoned cart is lost revenue. Some shoppers were comparing, saving for later, or checking shipping. Expect to recover a slice of abandoned carts, not all of them, and measure recovery as a percentage of the carts you actually contacted.
Do You Need Apps to Fix Cart Abandonment?
You shouldn't need a pile of paid add-ons to fix cart abandonment, but on some platforms you do. On Shopify, features like abandoned cart recovery, wishlists, and customer Q&A typically need separate apps, each with its own monthly fee. Our comparison of the best abandoned cart apps for Shopify shows how those costs add up.
That matters because the fix itself can become a cause. Every app adds code, and every script slows the checkout. Several paid apps at typical monthly fees can easily add up to a meaningful extra cost on top of the base plan and transaction fees, which is a heavy price for features that should come standard.
Common questions about abandoned carts
Is a high cart abandonment rate always bad? No. A rate near 70% is normal. What matters is whether it's rising, or much higher on mobile than desktop.
What's the difference between cart and checkout abandonment? Cart abandonment counts anyone who added an item and left. Checkout abandonment counts only those who started the payment process, which usually points to a friction or trust problem.
How fast should I send a recovery email? Within an hour is a solid starting point. Test it against a 3-4 hour delay, since the best timing depends on your product.
Do discounts help? Sometimes, but they train customers to abandon on purpose. Try fixing shipping costs and trust first, and keep discounts for the final message in your sequence.
Why Customers Abandon Shopping Carts, and What to Do Next
Customers abandon carts because of surprise costs, forced accounts, long forms, slow pages, and thin trust, with about 70% leaving on average. Fix the friction in your checkout first, then recover the shoppers who still go with a short email or SMS sequence.
If you'd rather not assemble that stack yourself, Rovela builds a store from a plain-language conversation with abandoned cart recovery, Stripe and PayPal checkout, reviews, and Q&A already included, so you don't pay per app. You can see how the flat subscription compares on the pricing page, and start by running the checkout audit in step one today.
