Cart abandonment is when a shopper adds products to their cart but leaves without buying. About 70% of online carts are abandoned, according to Baymard Institute's average of 50 studies. Most of those shoppers are just browsing, but among the ones who meant to buy, the biggest reasons are surprise costs, slow delivery, low trust and a clunky checkout, and each of those can be fixed and tested.
This guide explains how abandonment is measured, why shoppers leave, and which fixes held up in real A/B tests from our database of cart tests. It ends with email and SMS recovery for the shoppers you still lose.
What cart abandonment is and how it is measured
The cart abandonment rate is the share of shopping carts that never become orders:
Cart abandonment rate = (1 - completed orders / carts created) x 100
If 1,000 sessions add something to the cart and 280 of them place an order, your abandonment rate is 72%.
Two details change the number a lot, so check them before you compare yourself to anyone:
- Cart vs checkout abandonment. Cart abandonment counts everyone who added to cart. Checkout abandonment only counts people who started checkout, so it is always lower. Shopify reports the second kind: it counts a checkout as abandoned when it stays incomplete for more than ten minutes after the shopper enters their email.
- Session vs user. Many shoppers add to cart on mobile and buy later on desktop. Session-based analytics count that as an abandoned cart plus a separate order, which pushes the rate up.
Track it in the same tool, with the same definition, every month. The trend matters more than the absolute figure.
Top reasons shoppers abandon carts: costs, trust and friction
Baymard's survey of US shoppers found that 42% have abandoned a cart because they were "just browsing" or not ready to buy. You can't fix that group with design, though you can recover some of them later by email. Among shoppers who left for other reasons, Baymard lists these as the most common:
| Reason for abandoning during checkout | Share of shoppers | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees) | 40% | Cost |
| Delivery was too slow | 20% | Cost / expectations |
| Didn't trust the site with card details | 19% | Trust |
| Site wanted them to create an account | 18% | Friction |
| Checkout too long or complicated | 17% | Friction |
| Website errors or crashes | 17% | Friction |
| Returns policy not good enough | 13% | Trust |
| Couldn't see the total cost up front | 12% | Cost |
| Not enough payment methods | 9% | Friction |
The pattern is clear. Shoppers leave when the price changes late, when they're unsure the store is safe or the product can go back, and when checkout asks for too much work.
Baymard also estimates that the average large ecommerce site could raise its conversion rate by 35.26% through better checkout design alone. That's a modeled estimate, not a promise, but it shows how much room most stores have.
On-site fixes that tested well
Surveys tell you why people say they leave. A/B tests tell you what actually changes their behavior. Below are results from our database, grouped by the three causes above. All numbers come from the practitioners who ran the tests.
Remove cost surprises
The single biggest reason is a price that grows at the end, so the first job is to make the final cost clear early.
- Dave Diederen saw +14.49% conversion rate after removing "Shipping calculated at checkout" from a product page on a store that already offered free shipping. The line made shoppers expect a fee that didn't exist.
- In another test, Dave Diederen changed the cart copy from "Free shipping will be applied at checkout" to "Congrats! You unlocked FREE shipping!" and conversion rate rose 11.08%.
- Showing free shipping as a line-item discount next to a crossed-out original price in the cart was worth an estimated +$15,242/month for Dave Diederen.
- Pre-ticked add-ons count as surprise costs too. Dave Diederen hid a pre-ticked shipping protection checkbox in the cart and conversion rate rose 6.39%.
Free shipping isn't always the answer, though. Dave Diederen found that a $9.49 shipping fee beat the control by +43.81% revenue per visitor, and removing the free-shipping threshold on another store lifted revenue per visitor by 9.17%. What shoppers punish is the surprise, not the fee itself. Test your shipping price as a pricing decision, and see our guide to free shipping thresholds before you change yours.
Make delivery speed concrete
Slow delivery is the second biggest reason, and vague promises like "fast shipping" don't answer it. Dave Diederen added a "Ships by Tomorrow" line under the checkout button in the cart drawer and saw +9.04% revenue per visitor. Oliver Kenyon's cart test that added a delivery window line (together with arrows on the cart upsells) was worth an estimated +$127,867/month.
Add trust where the money changes hands
Trust signals work best right next to the checkout button, where the shopper is about to commit.
- Oliver Kenyon added a dispatch, returns and payment block under the checkout button in the cart drawer, along with a size dropdown, and saw +23.8% revenue per visitor.
- A "30-day money-back guarantee" line under the checkout button was worth an estimated +£68,640/month for Dave Diederen. It speaks directly to the 13% who leave over return policies.
- Dave Diederen saw +7.37% conversion rate from payment method icons directly below the checkout button in the cart.
- Inside checkout, customer reviews on the checkout page lifted conversion rate by 17.96% for Dave Diederen, and three trust USPs in the checkout banner and below the main button raised checkout conversion rate by 20%.
Placement matters as much as content. If you want help picking which trust elements to test first, Oliver Kenyon has run many of the cart drawer tests in our database.
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.
Cut friction, but test it
Fewer steps usually help, but not always. Express payment buttons are a safe start: Milos saw +9.26% revenue per visitor (+$11,970/month) after adding Shop Pay, PayPal and Apple Pay buttons under the product page buy box. Small cuts count too. Oliver Kenyon removed a single line of copy from the cart page and saw an estimated +$40,413/month.
Removing a whole step is riskier. When Dave Diederen skipped the cart and sent shoppers straight to checkout, conversion rate fell 10.23%. The cart is where shoppers check their order and see the reassurance listed above, so cutting it removed more than friction. See our cart drawer guide for what a good cart should contain.
Be careful with checkout urgency
Countdown timers are a common abandonment tactic, and our data shows they can go either way. Dave Diederen saw +3.16% revenue per visitor from a checkout countdown timer on one store and -7.1% revenue per visitor from the same idea on another. Kasper Dolk removed a checkout countdown timer and saw conversion rate rise 25.61% and revenue per visitor rise 26.18%. Treat urgency as something to test, never something to install by default.
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.
Email and SMS recovery
On-site fixes reduce abandonment. Recovery messages win back some of the shoppers you still lose, including many "just browsing" visitors who come back when they're ready.
On Shopify, you can send automatic abandoned checkout emails with the Shopify Messaging app and choose how long to wait before the email goes out. It only works once the shopper has entered an email address at checkout, and it won't send in some cases, such as when the items are out of stock. Dedicated email and SMS tools add multi-step flows, cart-level (not just checkout-level) triggers, SMS and segmentation.
What realistic results look like: across Omnisend users in 2025, abandoned cart emails had a 35.75% open rate and a 1.51% conversion rate, earning $2.54 per email delivered. Omnisend's suggested timing for a three-email flow is:
- Email 1, 30 to 60 minutes after abandonment. A reminder with the cart contents and a link straight back to checkout.
- Email 2, after 24 hours. Answer the likely objection: shipping cost and speed, returns, reviews.
- Email 3, after 72 hours. A last reminder. If you use a discount, save it for this one so you don't train shoppers to abandon on purpose.
Use the same objections from the on-site section in your emails. If a guarantee or a delivery date lifted conversions in your cart, it belongs in the recovery email too. Our guide to cart abandonment emails covers copy and subject lines in more depth.
SMS can be faster than email, but in the US marketing texts generally need the shopper's prior express written consent under the TCPA. Collect consent explicitly, and keep texts short: one reminder with a link usually works better than a sequence.
Omnisend is one tool built for this. It has a free plan for up to 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, and paid plans priced by contact count, as of November 2026. SMS is billed separately with credits, so costs grow quickly if you text a large list. It suits small and mid-sized Shopify stores that want email and SMS in one place. It's not for brands that already have a working email stack and only need a simple reminder, which Shopify's own tool can handle. Compare it with Klaviyo in our Omnisend vs Klaviyo comparison, or see more options in cart abandonment software.
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.
Cart abandonment benchmarks
Baymard's 70.22% average is a useful reference point, but rates vary by device, industry, traffic source and how each tool defines a "cart." Mobile visitors abandon more often than desktop visitors, and stores with a lot of paid social traffic tend to see more browsing-only carts.
For rates by industry and device, and how to compare your own number fairly, see our cart abandonment rate benchmarks. To find the fixes most likely to work on your store, start with the cart tests linked at the top of this guide.
Questions
What is a normal cart abandonment rate?
Baymard Institute's average across 50 studies is 70.22%, so roughly 7 in 10 carts are abandoned. Your own rate depends on how your analytics tool defines a cart, your device mix and your traffic sources, so track your trend over time rather than chasing a single benchmark.
How do I reduce cart abandonment?
Fix the top reasons in order: show the full cost early with no surprise fees, make delivery dates concrete, add trust signals such as guarantees and payment icons next to the checkout button, and offer express payment options. Then test each change, because some popular tactics, like checkout countdown timers, have both won and lost in real tests.
Why do shoppers abandon their carts?
Many are just browsing. Among the rest, Baymard's research finds the most common reasons are extra costs such as shipping and taxes (40%), slow delivery (20%), not trusting the site with card details (19%), forced account creation (18%) and a long or complicated checkout (17%).
How does Shopify handle cart abandonment?
Shopify counts a checkout as abandoned when it stays incomplete for more than ten minutes after the shopper enters their email. You can send automatic recovery emails through the Shopify Messaging app, or use an email and SMS tool such as Omnisend or Klaviyo for multi-step flows and cart-level triggers.
When should I send abandoned cart emails?
Omnisend suggests a three-email flow: the first email 30 to 60 minutes after abandonment, the second after 24 hours and the third after 72 hours. Keep any discount for the last email so shoppers don't learn to abandon on purpose.