The average cart abandonment rate is about 70%. Baymard Institute's running average of 50 studies puts it at 70.22%, which means roughly 7 in 10 shoppers who add something to their cart leave without buying. If your store sits between 60% and 80%, you are in the normal range; what matters more is which way your own number is moving and why.
Below we cover where the 70% figure comes from, how the rate changes by device and industry, why shoppers say they leave, and how to calculate your own rate. Along the way we link real cart and checkout tests from the LiftArchive cart test database, so you can see what changed the numbers for actual stores.
The average cart abandonment rate and where it comes from
Most articles that quote "about 70%" are quoting Baymard. Its cart abandonment list averages 50 separate studies published between 2006 and 2025, and the result was 70.22% when the list was last updated on September 22, 2025.
The individual studies vary a lot. The lowest figure on the list is 55.00% and the highest is 84.27%. Recent entries include:
- 71.72% from Uptain (2025)
- 79.53% from SalesCycle (2023)
- 68.70% from Fresh Relevance (2022)
- 79.30% from Kibo Commerce (2021)
That spread is the first thing to understand about any benchmark. Each vendor measures its own client base, and each defines "abandonment" slightly differently. A list dominated by travel sites or luxury retailers will report a higher rate than one dominated by grocery or repeat-purchase stores.
What the benchmark can and can't tell you
A 70% average is useful as a sanity check. If your rate is 92%, something is probably broken, such as a payment error or a shipping cost surprise. If it is 45%, check whether your analytics are counting carts correctly before you celebrate.
It is less useful as a target. A store selling $900 sofas will always see more abandonment than a store selling $20 refills, because people compare and wait on large purchases. The more useful comparison is your own rate this month versus last month, split by device and traffic source.
Baymard also estimates that the average large ecommerce site could get a 35.26% increase in conversion rate through better checkout design alone. That figure comes from its usability testing of large US and EU sites, so treat it as a sign of how much room most checkouts have, not a promise for your store.
Cart abandonment rate by device and industry
Mobile vs. desktop
Mobile shoppers abandon more often than desktop shoppers in every dataset we reviewed. Statista reports that in the United States, mobile shoppers had a cart abandonment rate about ten percentage points higher than desktop shoppers, with a smaller gap in Great Britain.
The reasons are practical. Typing an address and card number on a phone is slower, people browse on phones during spare moments, and many shoppers add to cart on mobile and then finish on a laptop. That last behavior means part of the mobile "abandonment" is really a device switch, not a lost sale.
If your mobile rate is far above your desktop rate, express payment options are the usual first fix. On LiftArchive, Milos (CROguy_) saw +9.26% revenue per visitor (+$11,970/month) after adding Shop Pay, PayPal and Apple Pay buttons under the product page buy box. For more on the device gap in conversion terms, see our mobile vs. desktop conversion rate benchmarks.
By industry
Good, current industry splits are hard to find for free. Most of the industry tables that circulate online are copied from older vendor reports, often without a date. We left those out rather than repeat numbers we could not trace.
What the available data does show: Statista's April 2025 category data found that sites selling beauty and personal care products had the highest cart abandonment rates of all measured categories. More broadly, categories with higher prices, longer decision times or more comparison shopping (travel, furniture, luxury) tend to sit at the top of any list, while low-price, repeat-purchase categories sit lower.
So if you run a premium store, an abandonment rate in the high 70s may be normal for you. Compare yourself against your own history first, then against stores with a similar price point.
Why shoppers abandon carts: the reasons statistics
Baymard's survey of US online shoppers found that 42% have abandoned a cart because they were "just browsing / not ready to buy". You can't fix that group with checkout design; email and retargeting are the tools for them.
When Baymard set the browsers aside, the remaining shoppers gave these reasons (they could pick more than one):
| Reason for abandoning | Share of shoppers |
|---|---|
| Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees) | 40% |
| Delivery was too slow | 20% |
| Didn't trust the site with credit card information | 19% |
| Site wanted me to create an account | 18% |
| Too long or complicated checkout | 17% |
| Website had errors or crashed | 17% |
| Returns policy wasn't satisfactory | 13% |
| Couldn't see or calculate total order cost up front | 12% |
| Credit card was declined | 10% |
| Not enough payment methods | 9% |
Source: Baymard Institute. Baymard also found that the average US checkout shows 23.48 form elements by default, while an ideal checkout can get by with as few as 12.
What real tests say about the top reasons
Survey answers tell you what shoppers say. A/B tests show what changes their behavior. Here is how the top reasons line up with tests in our database.
Extra costs. The obvious answer is free shipping, but tests don't always agree. Dave Diederen tested shipping price levels on one store and found that a $9.49 shipping fee beat the control by +43.81% revenue per visitor. On another, removing "Shipping calculated at checkout" below the add-to-cart button on a product page that already promised free shipping lifted conversion rate +14.49%. The lesson: surprise costs hurt more than known costs. Our free shipping threshold guide covers the trade-offs.
Slow delivery. Clear delivery promises help even when the delivery time doesn't change. Dave Diederen saw +9.04% revenue per visitor from a "Ships by Tomorrow" callout under the cart's checkout button.
Trust and returns. Adding a "30-day money-back guarantee" line under the checkout button earned one of Dave Diederen's clients an estimated +£68,640/month. Oliver Kenyon got +23.8% revenue per visitor by adding a dispatch, returns and payment block under the checkout button in a cart drawer.
Want results like this on your store?
Dave Diederen at Syntra Labs. Dave builds and tests Shopify stores at Syntra Labs, and shares most results in public.
Long checkout. Fewer steps is not automatically better. When Dave Diederen skipped the cart and sent shoppers straight to checkout, conversion rate fell 10.23%. The cart page was doing useful work, like confirming the order and showing reassurance, that shoppers missed.
For a full list of fixes ordered by reason, read our guide to reducing cart abandonment, or run through the checkout checklist.
Want results like this on your store?
Oliver Kenyon at Conversionwise. Oliver co-founded Conversionwise and has spent 13 years helping ecommerce brands turn clicks into customers.
How to calculate your cart abandonment rate
The formula is simple:
Cart abandonment rate = (1 − completed orders ÷ carts created) × 100
A "cart created" is a session or visitor that added at least one item to the cart. A "completed order" is a purchase from that same group, in the same time period.
Worked example
Say your store had 2,400 sessions with an add to cart last month and 720 of them ended in an order.
- 720 ÷ 2,400 = 0.30
- 1 − 0.30 = 0.70
- 0.70 × 100 = 70% cart abandonment rate
That is right on the benchmark average. If your average order value is $80 and you cut abandonment to 67%, the same 2,400 carts would produce 792 orders instead of 720. That's 72 more orders, or about $5,760 in extra revenue for the month.
Tips for getting a number you can trust
- Count sessions, not clicks. One shopper who presses add to cart three times should count as one cart.
- Separate cart from checkout abandonment. Checkout abandonment counts only people who started checkout. It will be lower, and it points to different problems.
- Split by device and source. A blended rate can hide a mobile problem or a low-intent ad campaign.
- Use the same date range for both numbers, and avoid comparing a sale week with a normal week.
Your add-to-cart rate is the other half of the picture. A store with a high add-to-cart rate often has a higher abandonment rate too, because more casual shoppers make it into the cart.
Recovering the carts you still lose
Even a well-built checkout loses most carts, mostly to the "just browsing" group. An automated abandoned cart email is the standard way to bring some of them back. Omnisend reports that its users' abandoned cart emails had a 35.75% open rate and a 1.51% conversion rate in 2025, and that abandoned cart and welcome emails together accounted for 76% of automated orders on its platform.
Omnisend's free plan includes abandoned cart workflows but is capped at 500 emails and 250 contacts a month, and paid plans start at $11.20/month billed monthly as of November 2026. It is a good fit for small and mid-size Shopify stores that want email and SMS in one tool. It is not the best fit for stores that already run complex flows in Klaviyo, since switching costs time and the gains may be small. Our Omnisend vs. Klaviyo comparison and abandoned cart email guide go deeper.
Tools mentioned here
You only need one A/B testing tool to copy this result. Here's where we'd start.
Some of these are affiliate links. We only list tools practitioners actually use to run tests like these.
Questions
What is the average cart abandonment rate?
About 70%. Baymard Institute's average of 50 studies puts it at 70.22% (last updated September 2025), meaning roughly 7 in 10 shoppers who add items to a cart leave without buying.
What is a good cart abandonment rate for an ecommerce store?
Anything between about 60% and 80% is within the normal range seen in published studies. Stores with higher prices or longer buying decisions tend to sit higher. Track your own trend by device rather than chasing a single target.
How do you calculate shopping cart abandonment rate?
Divide completed orders by carts created in the same period, subtract the result from 1, and multiply by 100. For example, 720 orders from 2,400 carts gives (1 - 0.30) x 100 = 70%.
Is cart abandonment higher on mobile?
Yes. Statista reports that US mobile shoppers had a cart abandonment rate about ten percentage points higher than desktop shoppers. Some of that is shoppers switching devices before they buy.
What is the main reason for cart abandonment?
Among shoppers who weren't just browsing, Baymard found 40% left because extra costs such as shipping, tax and fees were too high. Slow delivery (20%) and not trusting the site with card details (19%) came next.