- About 7 in 10 online shopping carts get abandoned. That's the average across 50 studies tracked by the Baymard Institute.
- Some of that is just browsing. The part you can fix comes down to a few causes: surprise costs, slow delivery, forced accounts, and clunky checkouts.
- Most of the fixes are settings, not redesigns.
- A three-email recovery flow catches a share of the rest, and you can measure all of it.
If you run a Shopify store, here's a number worth pulling up today: your checkout completion rate. Most store owners watch traffic and sales, but the gap between "added to cart" and "paid" is where a surprising amount of revenue goes missing. The shopper already found you and already wanted the product, so this is some of the cheapest revenue you'll ever recover.
How common is cart abandonment?
All four numbers come from the Baymard Institute, which has been running checkout usability research for over a decade (figures last updated September 2025). The takeaway isn't that 70% is a crisis. A good chunk of it is window shopping, and that's normal. The takeaway is that the rest is caused by things you control.
Why shoppers leave at checkout
Baymard asks U.S. shoppers why they abandoned a purchase, setting aside the "just browsing" group. Here's what they say:
| Reason | Share of shoppers | Can you fix it? |
|---|---|---|
| Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees) | 40% | Yes |
| Delivery was too slow | 20% | Partly |
| Didn't trust the site with card details | 19% | Yes |
| The site wanted me to create an account | 18% | Yes |
| Checkout too long or complicated | 17% | Yes |
| Website had errors or crashed | 17% | Yes |
| Returns policy wasn't satisfactory | 13% | Yes |
| Couldn't see the total cost up front | 12% | Yes |
| Not enough payment methods | 9% | Yes |
Look at the first and eighth rows together. Both are about money showing up late, and together they make it the biggest theme on the list: a shipping charge the shopper didn't expect, or a total they couldn't see until the last step. Nobody likes that at a restaurant, and they don't like it online either.
Six fixes, in the order I'd do them
Show the full cost early
- Put shipping rates or a free-shipping threshold on the product page and in the cart, not only at checkout.
- If you can, build shipping into the price and offer free shipping over a set amount. A clear threshold also tends to lift order size.
- Add a shipping estimator to the cart if your rates vary.
Turn on accelerated checkout
- Enable Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal. This removes most of the typing, which is where phone shoppers give up.
- Shopify reports that Shop Pay lifts conversion by up to 50% compared with guest checkout, from a study it ran with a major consulting firm in 2023. That's Shopify's own figure, so treat it as directional, but the logic holds: fewer fields, fewer exits.
Don't force an account
- In Shopify's checkout settings, make accounts optional so guest checkout is always available.
- Offer account creation after the purchase, when it's one click and the shopper has a reason to track an order.
Answer the delivery and returns questions up front
- Show an estimated delivery window on the product page ("Arrives Sept 24 to 26"). You may not be able to ship faster, but you can remove the uncertainty.
- Link a plain-English returns policy from the product page and cart. One or two sentences beat a legal page.
Make the checkout look safe and work every time
- Keep your branding consistent into checkout (logo, colors) so it doesn't feel like a handoff to a stranger.
- Place an order yourself on your phone once a month, with a discount code and each payment method. Apps and theme edits break checkouts quietly.
Cut every field you don't need
- Baymard found the average checkout asks for about 23 fields when 12 to 14 will do.
- Make company name and address line 2 optional or hidden, turn on address autocomplete, and drop any "how did you hear about us" question to the thank-you page.
That figure is for large sites with a lot of checkout problems to fix, so a small Shopify store shouldn't expect the same jump. Shopify's checkout already handles much of the heavy lifting. What's left for most small stores is the list above.
Then recover the carts you still lose
Even a great checkout loses carts. People get interrupted. An abandoned cart email flow brings some of them back, and it runs on its own once it's built.
- 2 to 4 hours later: a friendly reminder with the cart contents and a direct link back. No discount.
- About 24 hours later: answer the likely objection. Shipping cost, returns, reviews from other buyers. Add an offer here only if your margins allow it.
- About 48 hours later: a last note, with similar products or a quick "anything we can help with?"
Klaviyo analyzed more than 143,000 abandoned cart flows and found the average one converts 3.33% of recipients at $3.65 in revenue per recipient. The top 10% convert 7.69%. Those are small percentages of a large, otherwise lost pile.
One caution on discounts: if every abandoned cart gets 10% off, regular customers learn to abandon on purpose. Lead with a reminder and with answers, and save the offer for the second email or for first-time buyers only.
How to measure whether it's working
This is the Claude Hopkins part: change one thing, then look at the numbers.
- In Shopify Analytics, open the online store conversion funnel and write down three rates: added to cart, reached checkout, and completed purchase.
- Make one fix from the list above.
- Give it two to four weeks (or a few hundred checkout sessions), then compare.
- Keep what helped and move to the next fix.
Here's a made-up example to show the stakes. A store with 1,000 checkout sessions a month, a 45% completion rate, and a $60 average order does $27,000. Moving completion to 50% makes that $30,000, which is $3,000 a month with no extra ad spend.
Frequently asked questions
Around 70%. The Baymard Institute's average across 50 published studies is 70.22%. Rates vary by industry and device, and mobile tends to run higher.
Unexpected extra costs. In Baymard's research, 40% of shoppers who abandoned during checkout pointed to shipping, tax, or fees being too high.
Shopify includes a basic abandoned checkout email you can switch on in your settings, and automation tools let you build a multi-email flow. Apps like Klaviyo give you more control over timing, content, and testing.
Not in the first email. Start with a reminder, then address objections. If you use a discount, hold it for the second email or limit it to first-time customers so you don't train shoppers to wait for it.
Three is a common and sensible starting point: a few hours after, about a day after, and about two days after. Test timing and content from there.
- Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics (average of 50 studies, reasons survey, checkout benchmarks; updated September 2025)
- Shopify, Shop Pay checkout conversion study (April 2023)
- Klaviyo, Abandoned Cart Benchmark Report (143,000+ flows)
Want us to look at your checkout?
Send us your store link and we'll place a test order, note where it snags, and tell you which of these fixes we'd start with.
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