Cart Abandonment Rate: What's Normal and How to Improve Yours
The average cart abandonment rate is 70-75%. Learn what's driving yours, how to benchmark against your industry, and the two-part strategy to bring it down.
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TL;DR
- The global average cart abandonment rate is 70-75%, according to Baymard Institute's meta-analysis of 50+ studies.
- Mobile cart abandonment rates (76-80%) are consistently higher than desktop (60-65%).
- Cart abandonment rate varies by industry: travel and luxury are highest (80-85%); food and grocery are lowest (55-65%).
- Improving your cart abandonment rate has two components: reducing preventable abandonment through checkout optimization, and recovering unavoidable abandonment through email flows and identification tools.
- The most impactful single metric is not abandonment rate — it is how much of the abandonment that does happen you're recovering.
What is cart abandonment rate?
Cart abandonment rate measures the percentage of shopping cart sessions that did not result in a completed purchase.
Formula: `` Cart abandonment rate = (1 − (completed purchases ÷ total cart additions)) × 100 ``
Or equivalently: `` Cart abandonment rate = sessions with cart additions that didn't convert ÷ total sessions with cart additions × 100 ``
Example:
- 1,000 shoppers add to cart this month
- 300 complete their purchase
- Cart abandonment rate = (1 − 300/1,000) × 100 = 70%
Cart abandonment rate benchmarks (2026)
Overall
| Metric | Rate |
|---|---|
| Global average cart abandonment rate | 70-75% |
| Baymard Institute average (50+ studies) | 70.19% |
| Mobile abandonment rate | 76-80% |
| Tablet abandonment rate | 70-72% |
| Desktop abandonment rate | 60-65% |
By industry
| Industry | Approximate abandonment rate |
|---|---|
| Travel and accommodation | 80-85% |
| Luxury goods and jewelry | 75-80% |
| Consumer electronics | 74-78% |
| Fashion and apparel | 68-72% |
| Health and beauty | 65-70% |
| Home and garden | 70-75% |
| Food and grocery | 55-65% |
Why do rates differ by industry? Higher-consideration purchases (travel, electronics, luxury) have naturally higher abandonment rates because the decision cycle is longer and shoppers are more likely to be in a research phase when they add to cart. Lower-consideration purchases (food, everyday consumables) have lower abandonment rates because the shopper is typically ready to buy.
Checkout abandonment rate
Checkout abandonment rate (shoppers who start checkout but don't complete it) is different from cart abandonment rate and typically lower:
| Metric | Rate |
|---|---|
| Checkout abandonment rate | 15-25% of checkout starters |
| Checkout abandonment primary cause | Unexpected costs at final step |
What is a good cart abandonment rate?
There is no universal "good" cart abandonment rate — the right benchmark depends on your industry, AOV, and traffic sources.
As a general framework:
| Cart abandonment rate | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| Above 80% | Significant checkout friction — prioritize prevention |
| 70-80% | Average — both prevention and recovery matter |
| 60-70% | Well-optimized checkout — recovery ROI is high |
| Below 60% | Excellent — focus primarily on recovery and LTV |
A more useful metric than absolute abandonment rate: abandoned cart recovery rate (how much of your abandonment value you're recovering through email and retargeting). A store with 75% abandonment rate and 8% recovery rate generates more retained revenue than one with 65% abandonment rate and 2% recovery rate.
What drives cart abandonment rate
Preventable factors (checkout friction):
| Cause | % of abandoners affected | Priority fix |
|---|---|---|
| Unexpected shipping costs | 48% | Show shipping on product page |
| Forced account creation | 26% | Enable guest checkout |
| Too-long checkout process | 22% | One-page checkout |
| Couldn't see total cost | 21% | Show totals before checkout |
| Didn't trust the site | 17% | Add trust signals |
Non-preventable factors:
| Cause | % of abandoners |
|---|---|
| Just browsing / not ready | 34% |
| Comparing prices | 27% |
| Changed their mind | 15% |
Non-preventable abandonment is a permanent feature of ecommerce. The goal is not to eliminate it but to recover it.
Two strategies to improve cart abandonment rate
Strategy 1: Reduce preventable abandonment
Focus on the top friction causes:
- Display shipping costs before checkout (addresses 48% of abandonment)
- Enable guest checkout (26%)
- Simplify checkout to one page (22%)
- Show full order total including tax before checkout (21%)
- Add trust signals and payment method options (17%)
Realistic improvement: From ~72% to ~58-64% abandonment rate.
Strategy 2: Recover what remains
For the ~60% of abandonment that isn't preventable:
- Build a Klaviyo abandoned cart flow (3-email sequence)
- Fix your flow trigger rate — if Klaviyo only reaches 14% of abandoners natively, Attribuly ReCapture can expand that to 55%+
- Add checkout abandonment flow (faster timing, higher intent)
- Sync identified contacts to Meta/Google for retargeting
The counterintuitive insight: A store with a 70% abandonment rate and strong recovery infrastructure recovers more total revenue than a store with a 60% abandonment rate and no recovery infrastructure. Abandonment rate and recovery rate are separate variables — optimizing both, rather than just one, produces the best outcome.
How cart abandonment rate affects your revenue
Use this formula to understand your current abandonment cost:
``` Monthly cart abandonment value = monthly cart additions × average cart value × abandonment rate
Recovery potential = cart abandonment value × (target trigger rate - current trigger rate) × flow conversion rate ```
Example:
- 2,000 monthly cart additions × $75 average cart value × 70% = $105,000 in monthly cart abandonment
- Current trigger rate: 14%, target: 40%
- Recovery potential: $105,000 × (40%-14%) × 5% conversion = $1,365/month in incremental recovery from trigger rate improvement alone
Next step
Calculate your current cart abandonment rate and compare against your industry benchmark. Then check your Klaviyo recovery trigger rate (flow entries ÷ cart additions) — that's the number that most directly determines how much of your abandonment you're actually capturing.
→ Start free trial → Learn how ReCapture improves trigger rate
About Attribuly
Attribuly helps DTC brands recover abandoned cart revenue. We identify anonymous visitors and existing subscribers your ESP (like Klaviyo) missed, enrich their profiles, and feed the signals back — so your abandonment flows fire and your retargeting audiences grow, and you recover at least 15% more revenue. Shopify featured app, Klaviyo tech partner. Trusted by 20,000+ brands. Guaranteed 4× ROI.