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Cart Abandonment Statistics, and What Each Reason Costs to Fix
The 70% figure is the most quoted statistic in eCommerce and one of the most misunderstood. It is an average across fifty studies with different definitions, it includes people who were never going to buy, and on its own it tells you nothing about your own store. The reasons underneath it are far more useful, and every one of them has a fix.
FIGURES
12 figures
SOURCES
3 primary sources
LAST REVIEWED
September 2026
NEXT REVIEW
March 2027
Abandonment is a symptom. The reasons underneath it are the diagnosis.
- The headline
The rate, and what sits inside it
Three numbers you need together. Quoting the first without the third is how this statistic gets misused.
70.22%
average documented cart abandonment rate, averaged across 50 separate published studies.
SOURCE
Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics
Aggregate of studies 2006–2025, retrieved 2026 · Mixed geographies · studies 2006–2025 · rolling average
50
separate studies sit behind that average, which is why it is stable and also why it is blunt.
SOURCE
Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics
Aggregate of studies 2006–2025, retrieved 2026 · Mixed geographies · 2006–2025 · study count
42%
of US shoppers said they abandoned simply because they were browsing and not ready to buy — a segment excluded from the reasons below.
SOURCE
Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics
Aggregate of studies 2006–2025, retrieved 2026 · United States · browsing-only abandonment
- Read it properly
Why 70% is not a target and not a problem statement
A shopper adding something to a basket is not the same as a shopper deciding to buy. In eCommerce the basket doubles as a shortlist, a price check and a wishlist.
Roughly four in ten abandonments are people browsing rather than buying, by their own account. That behaviour is not recoverable and it is not a defect. Chasing it with discount emails trains customers to abandon deliberately, which is the one outcome worse than the original abandonment.
- Your own rate matters; the industry average does not
- Segment by device and by new versus returning before reading anything into it
- Compare your rate to your own last quarter, not to a published figure
- The recoverable portion is the shoppers who intended to buy and hit an obstacle
- Every obstacle below is fixable without a discount
Different platforms also define a cart differently, which is why two stores can report rates twenty points apart while behaving identically.
The useful question is not how many abandoned, but how many intended to buy and could not.
- The reasons
Every stated reason, ranked
From shoppers who abandoned for a reason other than browsing. Note how many are operational rather than persuasive.
40%
abandoned because extra costs — shipping, tax and fees — were too high. The largest single stated reason, by a wide margin.
SOURCE
Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics
Aggregate of studies 2006–2025, retrieved 2026 · United States · excludes browsing-only abandonment
20%
abandoned because delivery was too slow.
SOURCE
Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics
Aggregate of studies 2006–2025, retrieved 2026 · United States · excludes browsing-only abandonment
19%
did not trust the site with their card details.
SOURCE
Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics
Aggregate of studies 2006–2025, retrieved 2026 · United States · excludes browsing-only abandonment
18%
abandoned because the site required them to create an account.
SOURCE
Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics
Aggregate of studies 2006–2025, retrieved 2026 · United States · excludes browsing-only abandonment
17%
found the checkout too long or too complicated.
SOURCE
Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics
Aggregate of studies 2006–2025, retrieved 2026 · United States · excludes browsing-only abandonment
17%
hit website errors or a crash during checkout.
SOURCE
Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics
Aggregate of studies 2006–2025, retrieved 2026 · United States · excludes browsing-only abandonment
- What each one costs
Reason, fix and the realistic effort
Five of the six leading reasons are fixed by changing what the store does, not by changing what it says.
Stated reason
What actually fixes it
Effort
Extra costs too high (40%)
Show delivery cost and threshold on the product page, and set the threshold against real carriage cost by weight and zone
Low to medium
Delivery too slow (20%)
Quote by lane and product type rather than nationally, and state a date you can actually hit
Medium
Did not trust the site with card details (19%)
Specific trust signals: a real phone number, a named returns window, visible reviews. Not a wall of badges
Low
Required account creation (18%)
Offer guest checkout with equal visual weight to registration
Low
Checkout too long or complex (17%)
Remove every field you do not use, and count the steps
Low
Website errors or crashes (17%)
Test the decline path and the error states, on a mid-range phone on mobile data
Medium
Effort ratings are judgements based on the work we do on client stores, not measurements. They assume an existing platform rather than a rebuild.
- What to do
The four interventions that address most of the list
Between them these cover the reasons accounting for the large majority of stated abandonment.
Move cost and timing earlier
- Delivery cost visible on the product page, not at the final step
- An estimated date, quoted by postcode where you can
- Progress toward the free delivery threshold shown in the basket
- Addresses the two largest stated reasons at once
Remove the account wall
- Guest checkout offered with the same visual weight as registration
- Account creation offered after the order, not before
- One of the cheapest fixes available on most platforms
- Still present on a surprising number of stores
Earn trust with specifics
- A real phone number and a findable contact route
- A stated returns window near the buying decision
- Genuine reviews, including the critical ones
- Generic security badges do very little on their own
Test the unhappy paths
- Complete a purchase with a card that declines
- Check every error message says how to fix the problem
- Test on a mid-range phone on mobile data, not office wifi
- Most teams have never seen their own failure states
The eCommerce CRO checklist works through all four as part of a forty-point pass over product page, basket and checkout.
- Context
Three numbers that change how you read the rate
Abandonment does not sit on its own. These put it in proportion.
2.26%
average conversion rate across UK and Irish stores on one platform. An abandonment rate near 70% is arithmetically unremarkable at conversion rates like this.
SOURCE
IRP Commerce, eCommerce Market Data, July 2026
July 2026 · UK & Ireland · July 2026 · one platform’s merchant base
19.3%
of completed online purchases were returned. Abandonment is not the only place revenue leaves after it looks won.
SOURCE
National Retail Federation, Consumers Expected to Return Nearly $850 Billion in Merchandise in 2025
Published 15 October 2025 · United States · 2025 · survey of 2,006 consumers and 358 merchants
4,400+
participant sessions of usability testing sit behind the qualitative side of this research, alongside 344 benchmarked sites.
SOURCE
Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics
Aggregate of studies 2006–2025, retrieved 2026 · Mixed geographies · Baymard research programme
- The sources
Every source behind this page
What each organisation measured, how, and what it does not cover.
1
Baymard Institute
Published: Aggregate of studies 2006–2025, retrieved 2026
Method: Rolling average of 50 separate published studies, alongside their own programme of 25 rounds of usability testing across 4,400+ participant sessions and 12 quantitative studies totalling 20,240 participants.
What it does not cover: An average across studies with different definitions of a cart and different sectors. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not as a target for your own store.
2
IRP Commerce
Published: July 2026
Method: Aggregated operational trading data recorded within the IRP platform, using consistent attribution across the merchant network rather than survey responses.
What it does not cover: UK and Ireland, and one platform’s merchant base. Conversion rate varies enormously by sector, price point and traffic mix, so this is context rather than a benchmark.
3
National Retail Federation and Happy Returns
Published: Published 15 October 2025
Method: Two surveys: 2,006 US consumers who had returned an online purchase in the previous twelve months, and 358 eCommerce professionals at US merchants above $500 million in revenue.
What it does not cover: United States. Return rates vary so widely by category that the headline figure tells you little about apparel or furniture specifically.
Cite the original rather than us. Each title links to the publisher.
- Questions
Cart abandonment FAQs
What people ask once they have the numbers.
What is a good cart abandonment rate?
The question has no useful general answer, because platforms define a cart differently and categories behave differently. Your own trend, segmented by device and by new versus returning customer, tells you far more than any published average. If your rate is stable and your revenue per session is rising, the rate itself is not the problem.
Why is the average rate around 70%?
Partly because baskets are used as shortlists and price comparisons rather than as purchase commitments. Around four in ten abandonments are people who said they were browsing rather than buying. At typical eCommerce conversion rates, a figure near 70% is arithmetically ordinary rather than alarming.
Do abandoned cart emails fix this?
They recover some revenue and they do not fix the cause. If people abandon because delivery cost appears at the final step, you are paying to email them about a problem you could remove once. Keep the programme, fix the cause. The abandoned cart flow structure covers what a recovery programme should and should not be asked to do.
Which single change usually helps most?
Showing delivery cost and an estimated date earlier in the journey. It addresses the two largest stated reasons at once, it requires no discounting, and on most platforms it is a configuration and template change rather than a rebuild.
Should we discount to recover abandoned baskets?
Sparingly, if at all. Regular discount-on-abandon programmes teach customers to abandon deliberately, which raises your abandonment rate and lowers your margin simultaneously. If a discount is the only thing recovering the basket, the underlying objection is usually price or delivery cost.
Is the 70% figure still current?
It is a rolling average across studies from 2006 to 2025, so it moves slowly by design. That stability is a feature for a benchmark and a weakness for a diagnosis, which is why the reasons underneath it matter more than the headline.
How do I measure abandonment properly on my own store?
Define it once and keep the definition: baskets created versus orders placed, over the same window, segmented by device. Then watch revenue per session alongside it, because a change that lowers abandonment by removing small baskets is not automatically a win.
Can you find where our checkout is leaking?
Yes. The conversion review inside the free eCommerce audit walks your actual checkout on a phone, including the decline path, and reports what it found against your own funnel data.
- Keep reading
Related resources
Where to go once you know which reason applies to you.
CHECKLIST
Forty checks across product page, basket and checkout, ordered by where revenue usually leaks.
INSIGHT
What a recovery programme should contain, and which basket problems it should never be asked to solve.
STATISTICS
Market size, growth, device share and returns, each with its original source and year attached.
Want to know your own abandonment reasons?
A free eCommerce audit walks your checkout on a phone, including the paths that fail, and reports what it found against your funnel data rather than against an industry average.