10 Ready-to-Implement Strategies to Stop Shopping Cart Abandonment
Imagine that a customer walks into your store, picks out some items, and adds them to their shopping cart. But, as they make their way around the store and to the cashier to pay… they decide at the last minute that they don’t want to buy anything after all.
So, the shopper just ditches their full shopping cart, right in front of the cash wrap, and walks out. Although this sounds like bizarre behavior in a brick-and-mortar setting, it’s all too common in eCommerce.
In 2025, 70% of all online shopping carts were abandoned before checkout; a figure that’s been steadily rising for the last two decades. For merchants, the costs are staggering. Over $4 trillion in merchandise is abandoned annually before checkout, a sum that results in billions of dollars of lost potential profits for sellers.
Why is it so common for online shoppers to abandon their carts before checkout? And, how can you stop it from happening? Let’s get into it.
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What is Shopping Cart Abandonment?
- Shopping Cart Abandonment
Shopping cart abandonment is a term used in eCommerce referring to when cardholders place items in their cart but fail to complete a purchase.
[noun]/shä • ping • kärt • ə • ban • dən • mənt/
An abandoned shopping cart occurs when a shopper selects and adds an item to their cart but never finishes the purchasing process. For whatever reason, they liked your product enough to select it from your listings but just couldn’t seem to cross that final threshold to a full sale.
There are a variety of factors that could lead consumers to abandon shopping carts. It could be that the buyer is simply doing some comparative shopping and never intended to continue on through checkout. Or, it might be because of a faulty mobile app interface, shipping costs, or even hidden fees. We’ll get into some of these details a little later.
Shopping Cart Abandonment Benchmarks: Where Do You Stand?
The average card abandonment rate across all verticals stood at 70.19% as of September 2025. The average number can vary widely though, depending on factors like product vertical, device type, and region.
Trying to get your shopping cart abandonment rate down to a perfect zero percent is probably not realistic. What matters instead is that you’re performing on par with (or preferably better than) competitors in your vertical.
For this, you’ll need to establish a benchmark for what a “good” card abandonment rate looks like. According to recent data, here are examples of average abandonment rates in some common verticals:
It makes intuitive sense that some industries face higher cart abandonment rates than others. For example, shoppers more frequently abandon online jewelry purchases because of the relatively large order values. In some cases, taxes and duties added at checkout could make buyers second-guess their purchasing decisions, too.
Regardless of the industry, however, global cart abandonment rates are above 70%. That’s largely attributable to the fact that only a minority of shoppers who land on your website truly have purchasing intent.
43% of users are window shoppers who are “just looking.” In fact, it takes as much as seven visits to your site before a customer is ready to checkout, meaning that an abandoned cart could be a distant precursor to an eventual purchase.
Why Do Buyers Abandon Purchases?
Customers generally abandon their carts due to issues with transparency or usability.
So, we can see that most buyers who abandon shopping carts don’t have a specific intent to buy. But, what about those that do?
There are two consistent themes among customers’ complaints here: transparency and usability. For example, customers who see a bunch of extra costs tacked on at checkout may feel cheated by hidden fees, even if you believe that displaying taxes or platform fees at checkout is fair.
What’s important here is that you put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Is it seamless and frictionless for buyers to checkout, no matter the device they use? Does the price displayed on your product listing page reflect what buyers really pay at checkout? Is your site PCI-DSS compliant, secure, and furnished with trust badges and other signals?
If you can’t unequivocally answer “yes” to all these questions, chances are your customers will hesitate too. After all, some reasons for shopping cart abandonment are preventable:
| Reason for Abandoning Past Transaction | % of respondents |
| I was browsing/not ready to buy | 43% |
| Extra costs were too high (shipping, etc.) | 39% |
| Delivery was too slow | 21% |
| I didn’t trust the site with my credit card | 19% |
| Too long/complex checkout process | 18% |
| Return policy wasn’t satisfactory | 15% |
| Website had errors/crashed | 15% |
| I couldn’t see total order cost upfront | 14% |
| My credit card was declined | 10% |
Benefits of Reducing Your Card Abandonment Rate
Reducing your card abandonment rate can lead to higher conversion rates, stronger brand reputation, higher ROI, and a better customer experience.
As explained above, shopping cart abandonment has a direct influence on your revenue generation, customer satisfaction, and overall business growth. This is why it’s absolutely essential to get the issue under control as soon as possible.
Concentrating on minimizing cart abandonment provides several benefits. It can help you:
Addressing shopping cart abandonment effectively can lead to numerous benefits for merchants. You can see increased sales, enhanced customer satisfaction, and a stronger brand reputation.
Where should you start, though? Below, we’ve outlined a few key practices you can adopt today to cut down on card abandonment and grow your customer base without risking fraud and chargebacks.
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How to Calculate & Track Your Cart Abandonment Rate
Your cart abandonment rate is a measure of the share of carts that are created, but which do not ultimately lead to a completed sale, as a percentage of the total number of carts created.
To calculate your store’s cart abandonment rate, you need two figures. Over the same period of time (e.g. a week, month, or quarter), identify the total number of purchases completed by your customers, and the total number of shopping carts created.
Your cart abandonment rate is:
For example, if you record 2,000 carts created over a one-month period, but just 500 completed purchases, then your shopping cart abandonment rate is 75%.
When calculating your cart abandonment rate, make sure to filter out test orders made by staff, bot traffic, and transactions flagged as fraud attempts from both the numerator (i.e. purchases) and denominator (i.e. carts created). Accidentally including these items can skew your results and artificially inflate or deflate your cart abandonment rate.
For more granular insights, you can also consider segmenting your data by different factors, like:
- Device type (mobile vs. desktop vs. tablet)
- Traffic source, including organic, paid, social, email, and SMS
- New vs. returning customers
- Product category
- Price point
- Geographic location
- Time of day, day of week, or season (e.g. holiday season vs. off-season)
Related Metrics to Track Alongside Cart Abandonment Rate
For a fuller picture of your checkout environment, consider tracking the following complementary metrics alongside your shopping cart abandonment rate:
Conversion Rate by Segment
This metric reveals how your conversion rates vary across different groups (e.g traffic source, device type, location), allowing you to highlight for which audience segments your checkout process is optimized (and not as well optimized).
Average Value of Abandoned vs. Completed Carts
Comparing the average order value of carts that were abandoned against those that lead to a purchase can indicate whether higher-value carts are more prone to abandonment due to perceived shipping costs, anxiety, or payment friction.
Checkout Flow Drop-Off Point
This metric helps you identify the exact step in your checkout flow (e.g. shipping, payment, review) where the largest percentage of users exit so that you can pinpoint the most problematic points of friction.
Recovery Rate From Abandoned Cart Emails
This metric, which tracks the percentage of abandoned carts that are successfully converted into purchases after a shopper clicks through a follow-up email, can help you measure how effective your cart recovery efforts are.
Why Mobile Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates are Worse Than Desktop
Shoppers browsing on their phones abandon their carts more often than desktop shoppers, a phenomenon that happens largely because the mobile experience is fundamentally less forgiving for users.
Think about it: a desktop user has a large screen, a full keyboard, and a stable mouse. This means customers will tend to be more forgiving of clunky forms or slow-loading pages. Experience the same problems on a mobile device, though, and those issues suddenly become conversion killers.
Mobile shoppers are likely to abandon their carts if forced to contend with small, hard-to-tap form fields, frustrating keyboard-switching (from letters to numbers to symbols), and aggressive auto-correct errors when entering payment or shipping information. These data entry woes, when combined with websites that aren’t optimized for mobile, spotty network speeds, and other points of friction, mean that mobile shoppers are more likely to simply give up and exit your purchase flow.
To close this gap, you’ll need to make your site mobile-friendly. Consider:
Abandoned Cart Email Recovery Strategies
It’s all too common for an eCommerce site to ghost a customer after they abandon their cart. Needless to say, doing nothing isn’t going to get a buyer to magically convert.
If a customer creates an account and you have their email address on file, you can use a well-timed, personalized email sequence — like the one below — to recover lost sales:
The first email, which you can send 30 minutes to 2 hours after cart abandonment, should act as a reminder rather than a hard sell.
Here, your goal is to address technical issues or distractions while the buyer’s purchase intent is still high. Include clear images of the cart items and include a prominent call to action that links directly back to the shopper’s pre-populated cart.
Dynamic content, which pulls in the actual images, product names, and prices from the user’s cart, can help boost abandoned card recovery rates. You can further personalize the shopping experience by including the buyer’s name in the email subject line, or use browsing history to recommend related items if they’re no longer interested in their original selection.
If the first email didn’t convert, the shopper likely abandoned the cart due to a specific objection. The most likely culprit? Price.
To help combat sticker shock, send a second email 24 hours after abandonment and lead with a time-sensitive offer, like “10% Off For 24 Hours” or “Free Shipping, Just for You.” This is also a good time to reinforce buyer confidence by incorporating social proof like product reviews or user-generated video testimonials.
Send a final email 3–7 days after cart abandonment to give buyers one last reminder. Use urgency or scarcity in the headline (e.g. “Your items are almost sold out” or “Your discount expires today!”) to encourage action.
In this last email, you can also suggest alternative products or, if the sale is lost, ask for feedback with a one-click survey to understand why the buyer decided not to complete their purchase.
Other Cart Recovery Tactics Beyond Email
Email is a good start, but relying on a single channel to recover revenue from abandoned carts means that you’re likely still leaving revenue on the table.
Instead, a successful recovery strategy should meet the customer where they are. This means using a multi-channel approach to stay top-of-mind. Consider these tactics:
Testing & Optimizing Your Cart Abandonment Strategy
The most effective cart recovery strategies should be iterative. In other words, you should dynamically incorporate data and tweak your strategy over time based on the quantitative feedback that you’re getting.
For starters, consider systematically A/B testing high-priority elements of your checkout and recovery process. Focus your tests on the areas of highest impact. For instance, test a guest checkout option and see how that compares to a mandatory account signup flow. Or, tweak the copy, color, or size of your main CTA button to see how that impacts conversions.
You should also experiment with different experiences for different customer segments, as opposed to testing one change at a time for all prospective buyers who abandon their carts. For example, mobile users might respond better to a simpler checkout flow, while returning customers might convert higher with one-click payment options. To measure success, look beyond your cart abandonment rate and track a broader set of KPIs, such as your overall conversion rate, any changes in average order value, and the specific revenue recovered from each tactic.
These complementary metrics can provide richer context and help you get a fuller picture of what’s working and what’s not.
High cart abandonment rates can also be indirectly tied to an increase in chargebacks.
Chargebacks happen when a customer disputes a charge on their credit card, resulting in a forced refund conducted at the bank level. If a customer is unclear about your product, pricing, or shipping fees, they might make a purchase without fully understanding the terms. Naturally, confusion like this can result in chargebacks when customers believe they were misled or incorrectly charged.
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10 Tips & Practices to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment
When it comes to mitigating digital shopping cart abandonment, the key is to have a plan.
Now that we’ve discussed why customers may abandon shopping carts on your site, let’s dive into some strategies to prevent the phenomenon from happening in the future:
#1 | Simplify the Checkout Process
You should strive to evaluate your current checkout procedure. Carefully review the process from end to end, identify any unnecessary steps, and simplify the process to make it more user-friendly. This includes reducing the number of form fields and providing clear instructions at every stage of the process.
#2 | Authenticate Buyers Based on Risk
There are benefits to requesting that buyers create an account before completing a purchase. However, many of your customers will prefer to complete purchases without creating an account.
Including a guest checkout option will provide shoppers with the means to choose the payment method that suits them best. You can implement this option in their eCommerce platform to make the process more seamless.
#3 | Be Transparent
Always display your fees, taxes, and shipping costs upfront on your product pages or in the cart summary. This can be done by using real-time shipping calculators or providing estimated costs based on customer location. As mentioned above, leaving things up to your customer’s imagination can end badly for your business in the form of chargebacks and other unpleasant surprises.
#4 | Provide Multiple Payment Options
Integrate multiple payment options into your eCommerce platform to offer different payment methods. Consider other options beside just credit and debit cards; PayPal, digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, BNPL, and even cryptocurrencies are all increasingly popular options.
#5 | Optimize for Mobile
You can ensure that your eCommerce platform and website are mobile-friendly by using responsive design and optimizing the user interface for touchscreens.
#6 | Offer Live Chat Support
You should consider including live chat software on your website to provide real-time support during the checkout process. This helps address any questions or concerns customers may have before making a purchase. When live support is not available, dynamic chatbots can help fill the gap and address simple, common questions.
#7 | Retarget & Remarket
Setting up retargeting and remarketing campaigns using tools like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or email marketing platforms is a great idea. These campaigns should be personalized to remind customers of the items they left in their carts.
Far from alienating customers, these targeted remarketing campaigns are appreciated by most buyers. Shoppers love a customized experience.
#8 | Display Trust Badges
You want to quickly — yet subtly — signal to buyers that your site is safe and secure. Displaying trust badges is a good way to accomplish this.
Display SSL certificates, payment security logos, and PCI compliance icons on your website, particularly during the checkout process. This will help to reassure customers that their data is secure.
#9 | Clarify Your Return Policy
Besides being good for business, clear return policies also help to prevent cases of return fraud and other unpleasant circumstances. Transparent return policies should be easily accessible on your website. They should also communicate the policy during the checkout process and ensure that it is flexible and customer-friendly.
#10 | Declutter Checkout
You don’t need customers to fill long, painstakingly drawn-out forms at checkout. Try to eliminate redundant fields wherever possible. You can simplify the process in a few ways, including:
- Auto-Populating Addresses: There’s no need for a customer to enter a street address, city, state, and ZIP code. Once a person starts typing, a drop-down can provide address options using data from Google.
- Address Matching: Customers’ billing and shipping addresses are often the same. Why make them enter that information twice? Give the option to simply check a box for the same address.
- Numeric Keypads: Keying a 16-digit number using tiny mobile keyboard buttons is tedious and error-prone. Replace the keyboard at the payment information stage with a numeric keypad.
Need Help?
As we’ve demonstrated, taking charge of your checkout process can save you loads of time and money. That said, providing excellent customer service is perhaps the most important thing to note when trying to eliminate shopping cart abandonment.
Not sure where to start? You’re not alone.
If you’re experiencing a high number of abandoned shopping carts, there is usually a reason. While many consumers might simply be browsing, that still leaves a hefty percentage of abandoned carts that you can convert to sales with a few tweaks.
There is no need to reinvent your business to fight the dreaded abandoned cart syndrome. Nothing you do will get rid of the problem entirely. But, you can increase your final sales figures and improve your bottom line by paying close attention to your user experience, and taking a more holistic, comprehensive approach.
Mitigating online shopping cart abandonment is just one part of an overall strategy. Click below to learn more about creating a comprehensive strategy to grow your revenue and your business.
FAQs
Why is cart abandonment bad?
An abandoned shopping cart occurs when a shopper selects and adds an item to their cart but never finishes the purchasing process. For whatever reason, they liked your product enough to select it from your listings but just couldn’t seem to cross that final threshold to a full sale.
Why are people abandoning checkout?
Unexpected costs or unnecessary friction during the checkout process — like the need to create an account — can lead to cart abandonment.
How do you fix a shopping cart abandonment?
As we see, most shopping cart abandonment occurs before customers even make it to checkout. So, one of the best ways to snag that final sale is to give shoppers a reason to finalize their purchase. “On the fence” popups and special offers are just two methods that may encourage a customer to complete a purchase. You can also use targeted emails to try and recapture abandoned sales.
What is a good abandonment rate for a cart?
Since the average cart abandonment rates rest between 69-75%, anything below that can be considered “good.” However, you can increase conversion rates by 30% by optimizing your site with simple tweaks.
What is the average cart abandonment rate in 2023?
The global average rate of cart abandonment is 75.6%, as of this writing.
What makes people abandon shopping carts online?
There are a variety of factors that could lead consumers to abandon shopping carts. It could be that the buyer is simply doing some comparative shopping and never intended to continue on through checkout. Or, it might be because of a faulty mobile app interface, shipping costs, or even hidden fees.
What is the formula for cart abandonment?
Your cart abandonment rate can be calculated as the total number of abandoned carts divided by the total number of shopping carts created. In other words:
Abandonment Rate = (1 - [Purchases ÷ Carts Created]) x 100.
Is abandoned cart recovery worth it?
Abandoned cart recovery emails can be worth it because it helps drive incremental revenue that your business would otherwise lose out on.
