An abandoned cart in e-commerce occurs when a shopper adds items to their online cart or starts the checkout process, but leaves the site before completing the purchase. In other words, the cart is created, but no order is placed, resulting in a missed sale and potential lost revenue. What is an abandoned cart?
In e-commerce, an abandoned cart occurs when a potential customer selects products, adds them to a virtual shopping cart, and then exits the site or app without completing the purchase. This behaviour is
common across online stores and is tracked as a key performance indicator because it shows how many high‑intent shoppers drop out at the final steps.
Abandoned carts can occur at different stages: some users leave after adding just a few items, while others abandon their carts during checkout when they are asked to provide shipping details or payment information. In all cases, the items remain in the cart but are never converted into a completed transaction.
How the cart abandonment rate is calculated The cart abandonment rate measures the percentage of shopping carts that do not result in a purchase. For example, if 1,000 carts are created and only 250 result in orders, 750 are abandoned, and the cart abandonment rate is 75% .
Many benchmarks indicate global averages in the 70% range, meaning that roughly 7 out of 10 online shopping carts are abandoned. Why shoppers abandon online carts Research from Baymard Institute , Statista, and other analytics providers points to a cluster of recurring reasons behind high cart abandonment rates…
