Cart abandonment calculator
An abandonment rate on its own is a statistic. What matters is the revenue sitting behind it, and what a realistic few points of recovery is worth once margin is taken into account. This calculates both, and defaults to the published benchmark rather than a flattering one.
INPUTS
Five
DEFAULT RATE
70.22% (cited)
EMAIL REQUIRED
No
FORMULA
Printed below
Recovering three points of abandonment is a realistic year of work. Recovering thirty is a sales pitch.
- The calculator
What are your abandoned checkouts worth?
Measured from checkouts started, not basket additions — the two produce very different numbers and only one of them is comparable to the benchmark.
Formula: abandoned = checkouts started × abandonment rate. Extra orders = checkouts started × improvement in points. Recovered contribution = extra orders × order value × 12 × contribution margin. The revenue-at-stake figure is deliberately separated from the recoverable figure, because almost none of it is actually recoverable.
- Reading it
The revenue at stake is not the prize
The two large numbers on this page mean very different things, and conflating them is how abandonment projects get approved and then disappoint.
Revenue at stake is the gross value of every checkout that did not complete. It is a big, satisfying number and almost none of it is available. People abandon because they were comparing, because they were never going to buy, because they were checking delivery cost, or because they intended to come back on a laptop. No amount of optimisation recovers that.
What is available is a few percentage points. Three is a realistic outcome for a focused year of work on cost transparency, checkout length and payment options. The recovered contribution figure — not the revenue figure — is the one that belongs in a business case, because it is the only one that survives cost of goods and delivery.
- Measure from checkout started, or the rate is not comparable
- Compare against 70.22%, the published average, not an industry blog
- Judge the project on contribution, not on revenue at stake
- Getting it wrong
Four ways this gets overstated
All four inflate the business case, which is why abandonment projects so often underdeliver against their approval.
Measuring from basket additions
Basket-to-order abandonment runs far higher than checkout-to-order, because adding to a basket is browsing behaviour. Use it and your rate looks alarming and your benchmark comparison becomes meaningless.
Treating revenue at stake as recoverable
It is the ceiling, not the target. Presenting it as the opportunity is the single most common overstatement in conversion proposals, including ones we have been asked to compete with.
Reporting revenue instead of contribution
A recovered order still carries cost of goods, delivery and a return risk. On a thin-margin catalogue the difference between the two figures on this page is the difference between a good project and a pointless one.
Crediting recovery emails with everything
An abandonment flow gets the credit for customers who were returning anyway. Without a holdout you cannot separate the two, and the flow will look two or three times more effective than it is.
The stated reasons people give for abandoning — and how often each is given — are published with their source on our cart abandonment statistics page.
- Questions
Cart abandonment FAQs
What is a normal cart abandonment rate?
The most defensible benchmark is 70.22%, averaged by Baymard Institute across 49 separate studies. It is the default in the calculator above. Anything quoted without a source and a sample size should be treated as marketing rather than data.
Should I measure from add-to-basket or from checkout?
From checkout started. Basket abandonment includes browsing behaviour and produces a much worse number that cannot be compared to any published benchmark. Measuring the wrong one is the most common mistake with this metric.
How much improvement is realistic?
Around three percentage points over a focused year, from cost transparency, fewer checkout steps, guest checkout and more payment options. Claims of ten or twenty points usually come from a site that was broken rather than merely average.
Why does the tool ask for contribution margin?
Because recovered revenue is not recovered money. A recovered order still carries its cost of goods, its delivery cost and its return risk. The contribution figure is the one that belongs in a business case.
Will abandonment emails fix this?
They recover some of it, and they will also take credit for customers who were coming back anyway. Run a holdout so you know which is which — most stores have never done this and are overstating the flow’s value substantially.
What actually reduces abandonment most?
Showing the full cost, including delivery, before the final step. Unexpected extra cost is the most frequently stated reason people abandon. Verdano Foods is the worked example, and their conversion rose after the quoted delivery window got longer.
- Next
Related tools and reading
STATISTICS
The rate, every stated reason, and what each costs to fix — each figure with its original source and year.
CHECKLIST
Forty checks across product page, basket, checkout, trust and measurement.
CALCULATOR
The return on ad spend you have to beat before a campaign makes money rather than revenue.
Know the number. Now find out why.
The calculator sizes the problem. Finding which step is losing people, and whether it is worth the engineering, is what the free audit does in five working days.