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Abandonment issues: why shopping carts get left behind (and what to do about it)

From hidden shipping costs to an overly complicated checkout process, there are many reasons online shoppers ditch their carts without completing a purchase.

While abandoned shopping carts are common for many ecommerce brands, they don't have to be. By understanding why people abandon their carts, you can address these common cart abandonment reasons in advance, enabling you to optimize your ecommerce site, win happy customers, and make more sales.

Last updated

21 Feb 2023

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6 min

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This article covers the top cart abandonment reasons that could be driving potential buyers away, how to identify whether they’re affecting your online store, and what you can do about them.

Help abandoned carts find their way home

Want to understand why, when, and where customers abandon their carts? Sign up for a free Hotjar account to get user insights that will help you improve conversions.

What is cart abandonment and why is it a problem?

‘Cart abandonment’ is a term used to describe any online purchase that is started but left incomplete (or abandoned) before the customer checks out. It happens when someone adds items to their online shopping cart, but doesn’t complete the purchase—and the cart gets left behind.

If it sounds sad, that’s because it is. 

While cart abandonment is a natural part of online shopping, a high cart abandonment rate can be particularly frustrating for ecommerce businesses, especially when you’ve invested heavily in getting those people to your site in the first place. 

A high cart abandonment rate can cause problems for ecommerce businesses because, simply put, it represents potential customers who chose not to become customers. Abandoned carts are lost sales—and lost sales equals lost revenue.

But abandoned carts can also be a symptom of a bigger issue. A high abandoned cart rate may indicate there’s something wrong with:

  • Your product

  • The perception of your brand

  • The customer experience you’re providing

  • The user experience of your site or app

  • How you stack up against competitors

  • Your ecommerce funnel

Whatever the cause, if left unexamined—and untreated—the issues behind abandoned carts can compound, leading to lower profits, more budget spent trying to regain customers’ attention with retargeting, and frustrated customers who may turn to competitors.

How to calculate your cart abandonment rate

To understand your cart abandonment rate, you need to first understand your cart conversion rate.

Your cart conversion rate is the number of completed purchases divided by the number of carts opened, multiplied by 100 to get the percentage.

Your cart abandonment rate is the inverse of that. That is, if you have a 15% cart conversion rate, that means that 85% of carts did not result in a purchase. In this case, your cart abandonment rate is 85%.

When we dug into cart abandonment statistics, we found research from the Baymard Institute that shows the average cart abandonment rate is almost 70%. But if yours is higher than this, don’t panic just yet. Keep in mind that cart abandonment rates can vary due to factors such as industry, product type, and even the devices used to browse, so you may want to do some extra research to make sure you’re using the right benchmarks for your business.

5 common cart abandonment reasons

There are many cart abandonment reasons that could be behind those left-behind carts, but without knowing which ones are at play, it’s almost impossible to fix them.

Luckily there are a few good places to start. Here are five common cart abandonment reasons—and what to do about them.

1. Extra costs, such as shipping and taxes

According to Baymard’s research, ‘extra costs too high’ (think: shipping costs, tax, and fees) is the biggest cart abandonment reason, and was responsible for 48% of abandoned carts in 2022.

It makes sense: getting to the end of a checkout flow only to find that the total amount is more than you expected can be a nasty surprise, so try to ensure customers have all the information they need before they reach that ‘Pay now’ button.

#British luxury department store Liberty uses a banner to reassure people that duties are already included in the price, which is especially important to note post-Brexit.
British luxury department store Liberty uses a banner to reassure people that duties are already included in the price, which is especially important to note post-Brexit.

Is your cart at risk?

Is information about shipping costs, taxes, and other fees (such as customs and duties) easy to find, or do people have to add items to their cart and start the checkout process to see how much their order is really going to cost?

 2. Forcing buyers to create an account

Needing to create an account to complete a purchase can be off-putting. Whether it’s because creating an account is a multistep process that’s overly complicated, the customers don’t have time right now, or you simply haven’t earned their trust yet, the Baymard Institute’s research suggests almost a quarter (24%) of abandoned carts happen because the site wanted customers to create an account.

#LEGO offers multiple checkout options so shoppers can create an account or continue as a guest.
LEGO offers multiple checkout options so shoppers can create an account or continue as a guest.

Is your cart at risk?

Do people need to create an account to check out? And if so, how long is that process? Are customers exiting the checkout page instead of entering their payment details?

3. Lack of trust

Customers will only give you their credit card details after you've earned their trust. For 18% of respondents in the Baymard Institute’s survey, not trusting the site with their financial information was enough for people to abandon their carts. 

But how can you build trust? Customers are looking for signals like a consistent brand, SSL certificates, multiple payment methods, clear and accessible security information, and upfront information about returns policies. Research has also shown that incorporating social proof throughout your ecommerce store—with customer testimonials, ratings and reviews, and user-generated content—is incredibly impactful, potentially increasing the conversion rate by up to 380%.

#Clothing brand Lucy and Yak incorporates social proof on every product page in the form of an aggregated rating calculated from a clear number of customer reviews.
Clothing brand Lucy and Yak incorporates social proof on every product page in the form of an aggregated rating calculated from a clear number of customer reviews.

Is your cart at risk?

Are your policies clearly stated and easy to find? Do you accept multiple payment methods? Do you have authentic customer reviews and ratings?

4. Poor user experience or technical errors

There are many factors that contribute to a poor shopping cart user experience. Maybe it’s an overly long or complicated checkout process, which Baymard’s research lists as the fifth most common cart abandonment reason. Or maybe it’s too many pop-ups, long load times, missing content, photos or descriptions that don’t load correctly…the list can—unfortunately—be endless.  

And then there are website bugs and glitches.

According to Baymard, errors and crashes are responsible for 13% of cart abandonments during checkout. But technical errors don’t just cause a poor user experience and lose a sale in the moment; they can erode trust and put people off trying again later. Luckily, a few small tweaks to your site can help you get back on track.

#Healthy food company Wyldsson used Hotjar’s Heatmaps and Recordings to understand where users were having issues, allowing them to quickly fix them and increase sales by 30%.
Healthy food company Wyldsson used Hotjar’s Heatmaps and Recordings to understand where users were having issues, allowing them to quickly fix them and increase sales by 30%.

Is your cart at risk?

Is the user experience consistent across both desktop and mobile? When was the last time you did a full technical check on your site—particularly the journey from product page to checkout?

5. They’re just browsing

Sometimes, a browse is just a browse, and a full shopping cart can be more of a daydream than an actual commitment.

It’s a natural part of the equation for online retailers, and many customers abandon their carts before they even make it to the checkout flow. But that doesn’t mean you can’t turn at least some of these window (or browser) shoppers into repeat customers with a few clever tactics.

#Accessories retailer Chunks sends a cart recovery email highlighting their playful brand while making it easy to return to your cart and complete your purchase.
Accessories retailer Chunks sends a cart recovery email highlighting their playful brand while making it easy to return to your cart and complete your purchase.

Is your cart at risk?

Yes! Every cart is. Sorry—but it’s not all bad news. This presents an opportunity for you to do some customer analytics, turn your insights into action, and boost your conversion rate optimization.

Why teams can’t rely on guesswork

The easiest and most effective way to address common cart abandonment reasons is to understand your users and their behavior.

Sometimes people can tell you why they abandoned their shopping cart—The delivery times were too long! The shipping costs were too high!—but at other times, it’s only through observing their behavior and asking the right questions that you can get to the root cause of your shopping cart abandonment rate.

For web design agency NerdCow, one simple question helped them almost triple conversions for one of their clients in just two weeks:

After spotting in session recordings that people were adding items to their cart but not checking out, agency owner Tomasz Lisiecki ran a survey to ask users what stopped them from buying. 

The surprising answer he didn’t even consider? They simply forgot.

With this insight, Tomasz and team quickly addressed the problem by setting up an abandoned cart sequence to email people who didn’t finish checking out, and they added a reminder to the website so returning visitors would get a notification that they still had items in their cart waiting for them. This tailored solution helped nudge people in the right direction, leading to almost three times as many sales.

Understanding cart abandonment reasons is the first step to fixing them

Your customers’ actions speak just as loudly as words, so if they’re bouncing before completing a purchase, it’s probably a sign that there’s room for improvement somewhere along the buyer's journey.

Knowing why people are leaving their carts behind is crucial to reducing your cart abandonment rate and boosting sales. By identifying the top reasons behind abandoned carts and optimizing your UX to address them, you can delight your customers all the way to checkout—again and again.

Turn abandoned carts into sales

Sign up for a free Hotjar account to get user insights that can help you improve your ecommerce site and reduce cart abandonment rates.

FAQs about cart abandonment reasons