Cart abandonment: rate and reasons

In short

Out of 10 people who put something in their cart, about 7 don't order. According to the Baymard Institute's cart abandonment list, the average rate is 70.22%. The figure is the average of 50 studies; the page was last updated on 22 September 2025.

Some abandonment is normal. People use the cart as a wish list, compare prices, put off the purchase. But a large share of the remaining reasons come from decisions in the checkout.

Below I match each abandonment reason with an interface fix. In the middle of the page there's a tool to check your own cart with eight questions.

I cover the checkout rules one by one on a separate page: checkout design. This page focuses on the reasons and the order of fixes.

How to calculate the cart abandonment rate

The maths is simple. Divide the completed orders in a period by the number of carts created and subtract the result from 1. The formula: 1 − (completed orders ÷ carts created).

An example. In one month, 1,000 carts were created and 280 of them became orders. 280 ÷ 1,000 = 0.28, so the abandonment rate is 72%.

Watch two things here. First: how you define the "cart created" event in analytics. Does someone who adds an item and removes it right away count? If the definition changes, the rate changes.

Second: cart abandonment and checkout abandonment aren't the same. Someone who leaves on the cart page hasn't typed anything yet. Someone who leaves at the payment step has written their address and may already be at the card number.

I recommend tracking the two separately. High abandonment in the cart usually points to price and shipping costs. High abandonment in the checkout steps tells you to look at the form itself.

What does 70% mean for you?

Don't read the average as a target. In the individual studies on Baymard's list, the rate ranges from 55.00% to 84.27%. The lowest figure comes from a 2010 Forrester Research study, the highest from a 2020 SaleCycle study.

I think most of that difference comes from industry and measurement method. Compare mainly with your own history. Last month's rate is the yardstick for the next change.

Cart abandonment reasons and UX fixes

According to Baymard's study of abandonment reasons, 42% of US online shoppers left their cart because "I was just browsing / not ready to buy". Baymard keeps this group separate. To Baymard, these abandonments are a natural result of how people browse online stores.

Leaving that group out, the reasons below remain. The third column is my suggestion: what can be done in the interface against each reason.

Abandonment reason	Share	UX fix
Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees)	40%	Show the total in the cart; mention the free-shipping threshold early.
Delivery was too slow	20%	Give the estimated delivery date in the cart and the payment step.
I didn't trust the site with my card details	19%	Set the card fields apart; put the trust signal right next to them.
The site wanted me to create an account	18%	Allow guest checkout; offer the account on the confirmation page.
Checkout too long or complicated	17%	Count and cut fields; show how many steps are left.
Website errors or crashes	17%	Test the flow regularly on real phones; keep data on errors.
Returns policy wasn't satisfactory	13%	Write the returns policy in one line in the checkout.
Couldn't see the total cost up front	12%	Show the amount with shipping on the product page or in the cart.
Card was declined	10%	Give the next step in the message; don't wipe input.
Not enough payment methods	9%	Offer the payment methods your customers expect, and show them before the payment step.
Don't know	7%	No fix of its own. Look for the reason in a usability test.

Source: Baymard Institute, cart abandonment list, as of 22 September 2025. The shares add up to more than 100, but the page doesn't say whether multiple answers were allowed. Sample size and survey year aren't given either. The respondents are US online shoppers.

What design can change and what it can't

I read the table in two parts. Shipping costs, delivery time, returns policy and payment methods are business decisions. A designer can't make shipping cheaper.

But when and where that information appears is a design decision. If users see the shipping cost in the cart, they decide there. If they only see it on the last screen, they feel tricked.

Forced accounts, long forms, errors and the feeling of safety, on the other hand, depend directly on the interface. Fixing them needs neither budget nor new contracts.

Four reasons that often get overlooked

Slow delivery (20%). Even if you can't speed up shipping, you can remove the uncertainty. A date instead of "2–4 business days" answers the question "Will it arrive before the birthday?".

Errors or crashes (17%). This rarely comes up in design meetings, because the team doesn't see the error. If the payment button doesn't respond on some phones, users don't call you; they just leave. I describe how to write error cases in the error message pattern.

Returns policy (13%). Users think about returns mostly when they hesitate, which is right before the payment button. If your policy is good, write it there.

Payment methods (9%). Show the accepted payment methods earlier, not only at the payment step. If users don't find their method after filling everything in, every field was wasted.

Check your cart

Open your shop and answer the eight questions below. They're in the order a shopper meets things: cart first, then account, form and payment.

Every question you answer with no goes into the list below as a fix. The list is sorted by the share of the related abandonment reason at Baymard. It works with the keyboard too: Tab to the button, then Enter or Space.

Check your cart

1. 1. Are shipping and other fees already visible in the cart, before payment?

   If your answer is no: Put shipping and fees in the cart. If the address isn't known yet, show the estimated cost or the free-shipping threshold. Baymard: extra costs 40%, total not visible 12%.

2. 2. Does the cart or the payment step show an estimated delivery date?

   If your answer is no: Give the delivery time as a date, such as “Arrives Thursday, November 6”. Design doesn't make shipping faster, but it can remove the uncertainty. Baymard: slow delivery 20%.

3. 3. Can people pay as a guest without an account?

   If your answer is no: Make guest checkout the most prominent option. Move account creation to the confirmation page as an optional step. Baymard: forced account 18%.

4. 4. Is every field in the checkout form really needed to send the order?

   If your answer is no: Count the fields one by one. If the order can go out without a field, remove it, or make it optional and collapse it. Baymard: long or complicated checkout 17%.

5. 5. Are the card fields separate from the rest of the form, with the trust signal right next to them?

   If your answer is no: Set the card fields apart with a border or a different background. Put the security signal right next to those fields. Baymard: didn't trust the site with card details 19%.

6. 6. When a card is declined, is the data kept and another card or payment method offered?

   If your answer is no: Say in the message what happened and what to do. Don't wipe the address, and let people switch to another payment method with one tap. Baymard: card declined 10%, not enough payment methods 9%.

7. 7. Does the checkout state the returns policy in one line?

   If your answer is no: Write your own returns policy in one sentence near the payment button. A link to the policy on its own isn't enough. Baymard: returns policy 13%.

8. 8. In the last month, have you gone through the checkout as a guest on a real phone, from start to finish?

   If your answer is no: Order in a fresh browser, as a guest, on a phone. Note every point where you get stuck, wait or see an error. Baymard: errors or crashes 17%.

The questions are about things you can check in your own shop. Every question you answer with no goes into the result list as a fix. The list is sorted by the shares in Baymard's list of abandonment reasons. The tool doesn't estimate revenue or losses.

The order follows how often a reason is named. In your shop it may look different. If you have analytics data, put the step that loses the most people first.

Look at the cost of a fix too. Writing the returns policy into the checkout takes an hour. Cheap, quick fixes can be done in the first week, even if they're lower on the list.

How to reduce cart abandonment

Reducing cart abandonment is less a design project than a matter of order. Here's how I go about it:

1. Measure the flow step by step. Track separately how many people reach cart, account, delivery, payment and confirmation. Look first where the biggest drop is.

2. Separate the browsers. People who add something to the cart and never go to payment in the same session are a different group. You won't win them back with a better form.

3. Go through the flow yourself. Order on a phone, in a fresh browser, as a guest. Analytics tells you where people drop; this run shows you why.

4. Count the form. According to Baymard, an ideal checkout can get by with 12 to 14 form elements. US checkouts show 23.48 form elements by default on average.

5. Change one thing at a time. If you allow guest checkout and change the button colour in the same week, you won't know what worked. If your traffic is enough, measure with an A/B test.

Baymard has one more finding on forms: in most checkouts the number of form elements can be cut by 20% to 60%. I describe how to label and group fields in the form design pattern.

How much gain can you expect? By Baymard's calculation, an average large online store can raise its conversion rate by 35.26% by fixing the usability problems in its checkout. According to the same page, the average store among the 60 leading online stores has 39 possible checkout improvements.

These figures are general calculations about large, leading stores. They're no promise for your own shop. But they show one thing: what needs fixing is usually the sum of small problems.

What not to do

Don't pressure users to lower abandonment. A fake countdown or a guilt-tripping exit pop-up seems to work for a while. Those are dark patterns, and they cost trust. Trust is already on the list, at 19%.

A reminder email doesn't replace the fix either. If the shipping cost only appears on the last screen, the user who comes back from the email gets the same surprise again.

For the other page types, from the home page to product listings, read the e-commerce UX guide. A well-known example of forced accounts is the story of the $300 million button.

My note

The cart abandonment reason I see most in audits: the shipping cost only appears on the last screen. The product page shows one amount, the checkout another. The team doesn't notice, because test orders are always above the free-shipping threshold.

In second place: the team never uses the flow itself. With a saved account, on desktop and with a full address book, everything feels easy. A customer on their first visit doesn't see that flow.

That's why I don't start a shop audit on the home page but in the cart. The eight questions above are the ones I ask myself in the first round. If you can answer all of them with yes, the next step is the drop-off point in the data.