Why 70% of Carts Get Abandoned, and What Actually Fixes It
Roughly 7 out of every 10 shoppers who put something in a cart never buy it. That number has held steady for years. Baymard Institute puts the average cart abandonment rate at 70.22%, pooled across 50 separate studies, and it's only crept up by about half a point since 2020.
The stability is the interesting part. This isn't a problem that's getting worse. It's a problem most sites have simply stopped trying to fix, because "cart abandonment is just high" has become an accepted fact rather than a diagnosis.
The reasons people actually leave
Baymard's research breaks the top reasons down clearly, and none of them are mysterious:
- Extra costs at checkout. Shipping, taxes, or fees that only appear at the final step. This is the single biggest reason people give, cited by 47% of respondents.
- Being forced to create an account. A quarter of shoppers abandon rather than register just to buy one thing.
- Slow delivery estimates. Cited by 24% of respondents.
None of these are about price. They're about being surprised, or being asked for more commitment than the moment warrants. That's a friction problem, not a pricing problem, and friction problems are the ones you can actually test your way out of.
Why this matters more than it looks like it does
Baymard estimates $260 billion in recoverable revenue sits behind better checkout design across the US and EU alone. On the flip side, they've found the average large ecommerce site can gain a 35.26% increase in conversion rate simply by fixing checkout usability issues, no redesign, no new product, no discount required.
That's the part worth sitting with. A 35% lift from fixing what's already broken is a bigger number than most acquisition campaigns will ever return.
Where to actually start
If you're looking at your own checkout and wondering where the leak is, don't guess. Show the total cost (shipping included) earlier in the flow than you currently do. Offer guest checkout as the default, not an afterthought link. And get delivery estimates in front of the customer before they've committed time to filling in a form.
Then test it. Not because the direction is uncertain, Baymard's data on this is about as solid as CRO research gets, but because how much it moves your specific funnel is something only your own data can tell you.
If you want a second pair of eyes on where your checkout is actually losing people, that's exactly what a free consultation is for.