Abandoned Cart Statistics and What They Mean for Shopify Stores

Checked 19 September 2026. Every figure below carries its source, and the Baymard meta analysis updates as new studies are added.

Key Takeaways

• The famous 70.22% is a meta analysis of 50 separate studies, not one measured rate, so it proves abandonment is widespread rather than setting your target (Baymard).
• 42% of recent abandoners were just browsing or not ready to buy, which is normal shopping behaviour you cannot design away (Baymard).
• Among the rest, extra costs lead at 40%, followed by slow delivery at 20%, trust at 19%, forced account creation at 18%, and long checkouts and site errors at 17% each.
• Cart abandonment and checkout abandonment are different problems. The second group is far closer to buying.
• The average checkout shows 23.48 form elements when a well designed one can work with 12 to 14.
• Shopify measures the funnel in four stages and offers open and closed funnel views, with the closed funnel better for abandonment analysis (Shopify).
• Klaviyo can trigger recovery on added to cart as well as checkout started, which reaches people who never began checkout (Klaviyo).
• There is no useful universal recovery rate, and Klaviyo publishes revenue per recipient by revenue band instead, which is a better comparison.

Quick Answer

The widely quoted cart abandonment rate of 70.22% comes from Baymard’s meta analysis of 50 studies, and it is not a benchmark your store should aim to beat. Around 42% of abandonment is people browsing or not yet ready to buy, which no redesign removes. The actionable part is what remains: extra costs, slow delivery, trust, forced accounts, long checkouts and errors. The practical approach is to measure your own funnel in stages, work out whether you lose people before checkout or inside it, and fix the specific friction that shows up rather than chasing a published percentage.

Table of Contents

• Why the Headline Rate Misleads
• Cart Abandonment Against Checkout Abandonment
• What Is the Average Cart Abandonment Rate?
• Why Customers Abandon Carts
• Every Reason Mapped to a Shopify Fix
• How to Measure It on Your Own Store
• Recovery Emails and What the Figures Show
• Where the Benchmark Is Useless
• Why Matters Perspective
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Final Thoughts
• Related Articles

Cart abandonment is the most quoted statistic in ecommerce and one of the least useful as usually presented. The number is real, the research behind it is good, and almost every article that repeats it draws the wrong conclusion. This one explains what the figure actually measures, what it cannot tell you about your store, and what to do with the part that is genuinely actionable.

Why the Headline Rate Misleads

Baymard’s current figure of 70.22% is not the measured abandonment rate of one enormous store. It is an average derived from 50 separate cart abandonment studies (Baymard), conducted in different years, on different stores, across different industries, with different customer populations, different analytics systems and potentially different definitions of what counts as abandonment. That makes it a meta analysis finding: useful evidence that abandonment is widespread, and not the correct target for your store.

The more important point is that a large share of abandonment is normal behaviour. Baymard’s research found 42% of US shoppers who had abandoned a cart in the previous three months were simply browsing or not ready to buy, which covers comparing stores, checking final prices, considering gift ideas and saving products for later. You cannot redesign that away, which is why a team setting out to cut abandonment from 70% to 20% has started with the wrong objective. The useful goal is to find the abandonment caused by genuine friction and reduce that.

Cart Abandonment Against Checkout Abandonment

These two terms get used interchangeably and should not be, because they describe different losses with different causes.

The first group left before reaching checkout, which can mean price reconsideration, delivery costs appearing in the cart, poor cart design, discount code hunting, product uncertainty or somebody saving an item for later. The second group reached checkout and did not finish, and they are considerably closer to buying, which is why we would normally investigate checkout abandonment before treating everybody who touched a cart as a recoverable sale.

Shopify measures this properly. Its conversion rate breakdown report covers all sessions, sessions with cart additions, sessions that reached checkout and sessions that completed checkout, with open and closed funnel views available (Shopify). For abandonment work the closed funnel is usually better, because it only counts sessions that completed the preceding stages in sequence.

What Is the Average Cart Abandonment Rate?

Baymard’s published figure is 70.22%, drawn from 50 underlying studies, checked 19 September 2026. Those studies vary considerably between themselves, which is another reason not to treat the average as a hard benchmark. A rate of 68% is not automatically good and 75% is not automatically bad, because the answer depends on what counts as an abandoned cart, your traffic source, category, order value, device split, and whether buyers are new or returning. The overall figure tells you that abandonment exists. Your own funnel tells you where yours happens.

Why Customers Abandon Carts

Baymard separates the browsers from the customers who abandoned for actionable reasons. Once the 42% who were browsing or not ready to buy are removed, this is what remains.

Two qualifications matter. These describe US online shoppers rather than Shopify merchants or UK customers specifically, and they identify likely causes rather than the exact distribution on your store. Use them to know what to look for, then confirm it in your own data.

Every Reason Mapped to a Shopify Fix

This is where the research becomes useful, because every major reason maps to something you can check.

1. Extra costs, 40%. The largest avoidable reason. Show delivery costs and thresholds early, ideally on the product page and in the cart rather than at the final step, and check what your threshold actually does to contribution, as our product page guide covers.
2. Delivery too slow, 20%. State delivery times where the decision happens, offer a faster option even if few people take it, and make cut off times explicit.
3. Trust, 19%. Visible policies, contact details, reviews, recognisable payment marks and a professional checkout all matter more than trust badges bought from an app.
4. Forced account creation, 18%. Offer guest checkout. If accounts matter to your retention programme, invite account creation after the order rather than before it.
5. Checkout too long, 17%. Baymard’s benchmark found an average of 23.48 form elements displayed by default when an ideal flow can work with 12 to 14 (Baymard).
6. Website errors, 17%. Test checkout on real devices, watch for app conflicts, and treat speed as part of this rather than a separate project, as our speed guide explains.
7. Returns policy, 13%. Make it findable before checkout and write it in plain terms, because an unclear policy reads as a risky one.
8. Total cost unclear, 12%. Let people see the full cost, including delivery and any duties, before the final step.
9. Declined cards, 10%. Shopify records payment events on abandoned checkouts, including card declines, incorrect details, failed 3D Secure and processing errors, which makes this diagnosable rather than guesswork (Shopify).
10. Too few payment methods, 9%. Shopify Payments in the UK supports cards plus Apple Pay, Google Pay and Shop Pay, with Klarna available as a local method for eligible customers (Shopify), and our payment gateways guide covers the cost side. If your checkout needs theme or app changes to fix these, our Shopify developers can make them.

How to Measure It on Your Own Store

Shopify publishes the definitions, so use them rather than inventing your own. Added to cart rate is sessions with cart additions divided by total sessions. Reached checkout rate is sessions that reached checkout divided by total sessions. Checkout conversion rate is sessions that completed checkout divided by sessions that reached checkout (Shopify). Measuring all three separates a product page problem from a cart problem from a checkout problem, which our conversion rate guide covers in more detail.

Two practical notes. Use the closed funnel for cleaner comparison, since sessions entering midway distort the open view. And watch for a quirk Shopify documents: checkout counts can exceed cart additions when customers buy through channels such as Instagram Shopping or Facebook Shops without visiting the cart page, which can make abandonment look artificially low. Segment before changing anything, because mobile against desktop and new against returning customers usually behave very differently, as our mobile first guide argues.

Recovery Emails and What the Figures Show

Shopify treats a checkout as abandoned when the customer has provided their email and not completed payment, after roughly ten minutes, and can automatically send a recovery email containing a link back to the checkout, marking it recovered once the order completes (Shopify, Shopify). Its newer automations live in Shopify Messaging, with separate flows for abandoned product browse, abandoned cart and abandoned checkout (Shopify).

Klaviyo offers something Shopify’s legacy system does not: recovery before checkout begins. Its default Shopify flow triggers on checkout started, while a separate flow triggers on added to cart to reach people who never got that far, which requires the app embed and behavioural tracking to be enabled (Klaviyo, Klaviyo). One UK specific caveat matters: depending on your Shopify customer privacy settings, onsite events for visitors in the UK, EU, EEA and Switzerland may not be tracked without consent (Klaviyo), so consent configuration directly affects how many people your flow can reach.

On performance, there is no useful universal recovery percentage, because it depends on traffic, category, price and trigger. Klaviyo publishes benchmarks as revenue per recipient by revenue band and average order value, drawn from aggregated data across thousands of customers (Klaviyo). For stores between $1 and $1 million in revenue with an order value of $44 to $83, that ranges from $0.86 at the 25th percentile to $2.91 at the 75th. The equivalent range for $1 to $5 million stores is $1.12 to $3.03, and for $5 to $20 million stores $1.30 to $2.88, which is worth noting: bigger does not automatically mean better per recipient. Our email benchmarking guide explains why attribution settings change any figure like this. Recovery flows are among the best performers we see, and our email marketing agency builds them in Klaviyo on your Shopify data.

Where the Benchmark Is Useless

Five situations where the benchmark tells you nothing. High consideration purchases, where carts function as shortlists and abandonment is part of the research. Products needing consultation, where the cart is a starting point for a conversation. Subscription products, where the first order commits to a series and the decision is weightier than the basket suggests (subscriptions guide). Seasonal periods, when browsing and gift research inflate cart activity. And stores with unusual traffic mixes, where paid social traffic behaves nothing like returning email traffic.

Why Matters Perspective

The cart abandonment statistic has survived for years because it is alarming and easy to quote. It is also the statistic we see used to justify the most pointless work: exit popups, discount codes offered to people who were never going to buy, and recovery emails sent to shoppers who simply saved an item for later.

The useful version of this research is narrower. Around four in ten abandonments come from people who were browsing, and the rest is mostly cost, delivery, trust and checkout friction. So find out where your own funnel leaks, look at checkout before the cart, and fix the specific things Baymard has been documenting for years. Then set up recovery properly, with consent handled correctly, and judge it on revenue per recipient rather than a recovery percentage, as our email marketing guide sets out.

Why Matters is a Shopify Select partner with Verified Skills across development and marketing. Our pricing is published, retainer clients are billed one month in arrears and never tied into long contracts, and every development project carries a 3 month guarantee. See our Shopify packages or email us to talk through your store.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average cart abandonment rate?

Baymard's current meta analysis puts it at 70.22%, drawn from 50 separate studies. It is evidence that abandonment is widespread rather than a target, because the underlying studies used different stores, industries, years and definitions.

Why do customers abandon shopping carts?

Baymard found 42% of recent abandoners were simply browsing or not ready to buy. Among the rest, extra costs lead at 40%, followed by slow delivery at 20%, not trusting the site at 19%, forced account creation at 18%, and long checkouts and site errors at 17% each.

What is the difference between cart abandonment and checkout abandonment?

Cart abandonment covers people who add something and never reach checkout. Checkout abandonment covers people who reach checkout and do not complete. The second group is much closer to buying, so it is usually where to look first.

What does Shopify count as an abandoned checkout?

Under Shopify's legacy definition, an abandoned checkout is an incomplete checkout where the customer provided their email and did not complete payment, treated as abandoned after roughly ten minutes.

How do I calculate cart abandonment on Shopify?

Use the conversion rate breakdown report, which shows all sessions, sessions with cart additions, sessions that reached checkout and sessions that completed checkout, then compare the stages. Shopify also publishes an added to cart rate, a reached checkout rate and a checkout conversion rate.

Can Klaviyo send abandoned cart emails for Shopify?

Yes. Klaviyo's default Shopify flow triggers on checkout started, and a separate flow can trigger on added to cart to reach people who never began checkout, which needs the app embed and behavioural tracking enabled.

What is a good abandoned cart email recovery rate?

There is no universal figure, because recovery depends on traffic, category, price and how the flow is triggered. Klaviyo publishes benchmarks as revenue per recipient by revenue band and order value, which is a more useful comparison than a recovery percentage.

Can cart abandonment ever be too low?

Yes, and it usually means something is wrong with measurement rather than brilliant with the store. Check whether cart additions are being tracked properly, or whether most traffic arrives through channels that skip the cart entirely.

Final Thoughts

Abandoned cart statistics are worth knowing mostly so you stop misusing them. The 70% figure is a meta analysis, not a target. Four in ten abandonments are normal browsing. The actionable reasons have been consistent for years, and every one of them maps to something you can check on a Shopify store this afternoon. Measure your own three rates, work out whether the loss happens before or inside checkout, fix what the research points at, and use recovery flows for the people who genuinely intended to buy.

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• Why Your Shopify Conversion Rate Matters and How to Measure It
• Best Shopify Payment Gateways for UK Stores
• How to Benchmark Your Shopify Email Revenue
• How to Optimise Your Shopify Email Marketing
• Shopify Speed Score: How to Measure and Improve It
• Mobile First Shopify Design: Why It Matters More Than Desktop
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