Cart abandonment rate

The standard formula is: cart abandonment rate = (1 − completed orders ÷ sessions with an add-to-cart) × 100. If 1,000 sessions added an item to the cart and 280 resulted in an order, the abandonment rate is (1 − 280 ÷ 1,000) × 100 = 72%.

Definitions vary in two important ways. First, some tools count carts created rather than sessions, so a returning visitor who completes a purchase on a second visit may count as both an abandoned and a converted cart. Second, “checkout abandonment” is a narrower measure that starts when a visitor begins the checkout, not when they add to cart. Checkout abandonment is lower than cart abandonment and is more directly influenced by the checkout design. Always state which definition you use when comparing to benchmarks.

Baymard's survey research separates shoppers who were “just browsing” from those who intended to buy, and asks the latter why they left. The recurring reasons are extra costs that appear late (shipping, taxes and fees), being required to create an account, slow delivery, not trusting the site with card details, a long or complicated checkout, not being able to see the total cost up front, website errors, and an unsatisfactory returns policy.

These reasons are notable because most of them are design and policy decisions the store controls. Baymard's large-scale usability testing finds that the average checkout contains more form fields than needed and that many sites still fail basic usability guidelines, which is part of why the global average has barely moved over 14 years of tracking.

The 70.22% benchmark is an average of averages. It is useful as a sanity check — if your rate is 40% you may be measuring differently, and if it is 90% something may be broken — but it is not a target. Mobile traffic usually abandons more than desktop; high-consideration purchases such as travel and furniture abandon more than low-cost repeat purchases; and stores with heavy social-media traffic see more casual browsing.

The most reliable benchmark is your own history. Track the rate weekly by device and traffic source, and measure changes after each checkout improvement. A drop of a few percentage points on a large store can be worth far more than a new acquisition campaign.

Two complementary approaches exist. Prevention improves the checkout so fewer people leave: showing total costs early, offering guest checkout, reducing form fields, displaying trust signals and supporting common payment methods and wallets. Recovery brings people back after they leave: reminder emails for known customers, retargeting ads, and saved carts across devices.

Recovery emails work only when the shopper has given an email address and consent rules allow contact, which in Europe usually means GDPR and ePrivacy requirements apply. Prevention scales to every visitor and is usually the better first investment.

To make the metric meaningful for management, translate it into money. Multiply the number of sessions with an add-to-cart by the average order value and by the percentage-point improvement you expect. For example, a store with 20,000 add-to-cart sessions a month, an average order value of €60 and a two-point reduction in abandonment would gain about 400 orders, or roughly €24,000 a month. State the assumptions explicitly, since this is an estimate rather than a measured result.

The most common mistake is changing the definition halfway through a reporting period, for example switching analytics tools or moving from cart-based to session-based counting. The rate will jump or fall for reasons that have nothing to do with shoppers. Keep a written definition and annotate any tracking change on your dashboard.

A second mistake is reading the rate without volume. If a new social campaign brings many casual browsers, abandonment rises even though the checkout did not get worse, and total orders may actually increase. Always review abandonment next to add-to-cart sessions, orders and revenue.

A third mistake is treating every abandoned cart as lost revenue. Some shoppers return later on another device or buy in a physical store. Recovery and prevention efforts should be judged by the change in completed orders, not by the theoretical value of all abandoned carts.

Add-to-cart rate: the share of sessions in which a product is added to the cart. Checkout abandonment: the share of started checkouts that are not completed. Conversion rate: the share of all sessions that end in an order. Average order value: revenue divided by the number of orders. Guest checkout: buying without creating an account. Recovery email: a reminder sent to a known shopper who left items in the cart, subject to consent rules.

Every number on this page links to the organisation that published it: an independent research firm, an official product or pricing page, a public filing, or official documentation. We do not publish our own estimates as facts, and where a figure is reported by the company it describes, it is labelled company-reported. Prices are taken from official vendor pages and change often, so open the linked source before relying on one. If a widely repeated figure could not be traced to a primary source, we left it out. Entries are reviewed when the underlying sources publish new editions, and the update date at the top of the page shows the latest review.