Cart Abandonment Rate

Cart abandonment rate measures the percentage of shoppers who add items to an online cart but leave without completing the purchase. The global average sits around 68-72% across e-commerce, a surprisingly high figure that partly reflects normal shopping behavior, comparing prices, saving items for later, or calculating total cost including shipping, rather than indicating something is necessarily broken in the checkout process.

Reducing cart abandonment is a common focus area for e-commerce optimization, since even modest improvements can meaningfully increase revenue without needing to drive more traffic. Common culprits include unexpected costs revealed late in checkout, mandatory account creation, and overly complicated checkout flows.

Cart Abandonment Rate (%) = (Carts Created − Completed Purchases) / Carts Created × 100

An online store sees 10,000 shopping carts created in a month, with 2,800 resulting in a completed purchase.

• Abandoned carts: 10,000 − 2,800 = 7,200
• Cart abandonment rate: (7,200 / 10,000) × 100 = 72%

This sits right at the global average, suggesting the store's checkout experience is roughly in line with typical e-commerce benchmarks, though further diagnosis of specific abandonment points in the funnel could still reveal targeted improvement opportunities.

• High abandonment rates are the norm, not necessarily a red flag. The 68-72% global average reflects widespread browsing and comparison-shopping behavior, not universally broken checkout experiences.
• Unexpected costs at checkout are among the most common triggers. Shipping fees, taxes, or other charges revealed only at the final step frequently cause shoppers to abandon after seeing the total.
• Recovery tactics can reclaim meaningful revenue. Retargeting ads and abandoned cart email sequences often recover a real percentage of otherwise lost sales without needing new traffic acquisition.
• Mobile abandonment typically runs higher than desktop. Screen size, checkout complexity, and cross-device browsing habits all contribute to this common pattern.
• Should be interpreted alongside conversion rate, not in isolation. Reducing abandonment through friction (like blocking easy checkout exit) can backfire on overall customer experience even if the raw metric improves.