What Is Cart Abandonment?
Cart abandonment happens when a customer adds items to their basket but doesn't complete checkout. Recovery is one of the highest-ROI activities in eCommerce.
Key Takeaways
- Average cart abandonment rate across eCommerce is around 70%.
- Most abandonment happens at checkout due to unexpected costs or friction.
- Abandoned cart email sequences recover 5–15% of abandoned baskets.
The scale of the problem
On average, around 70% of shopping carts are abandoned before purchase. If your store has 1,000 sessions per day and a 2.5% conversion rate, that means 25 people buy — and roughly 72 people added something to their cart but didn't complete. These are warm prospects, not cold traffic.
Why customers abandon
The most common reasons: unexpected shipping costs revealed at checkout, required account creation, a lengthy or confusing checkout process, concerns about payment security, and simply browsing or comparing without intent to buy immediately. Unexpected shipping costs are the single biggest driver — which is why free shipping thresholds are so powerful.
Cart abandonment recovery
Email sequences sent within one hour of abandonment, with a reminder at 24 hours and a final nudge at 72 hours (often including a small discount) recover 5–15% of abandoned baskets on average. For a £50 AOV business recovering 100 baskets per month, that's £250–750 in additional revenue from emails that cost almost nothing to send.
Structural fixes
Offer guest checkout. Show shipping costs early — on product pages if possible. Minimise form fields. Display security badges prominently. Save basket contents for returning visitors. These structural changes reduce abandonment rates rather than just recovering abandoners — which is ultimately the higher-leverage activity.