- The average documented cart abandonment rate is 70.22% (Baymard Institute, 50 studies). Most of the reasons shoppers name are things a shop can change.
- The top reasons are extra costs (40%), slow delivery (20%) and no trust in card details (19%). Show the total cost early, state the delivery time and make returns clear.
- Ten best practices: six that prevent abandonment on the cart page and four that recover carts after the visitor left.
- Measure abandonment per step in GA4 and test every change before you roll it out.
The best practices for abandoned carts fall into two groups: prevent and recover. To prevent, show the total cost early, allow guest checkout, state the delivery time, explain returns, offer familiar payment methods and save the cart. To recover, send a reminder email, use a message at the moment of exit, make the cart available across devices and retarget with ads.
The Baymard Institute reports an average documented cart abandonment rate of 70.22%. This page starts with the reasons behind that number, lists ten ways to prevent and recover lost sales, names two habits to avoid, and shows how to measure abandonment per step in Google Analytics 4. The last section explains how to test each change before you roll it out.
How big the problem is
The Baymard Institute reports an average documented cart abandonment rate of 70.22%, calculated across 50 studies (retrieved October 20, 2026). In other words, about seven in ten carts never turn into an order. Some of those visitors were only browsing. Many were not, and they name reasons the shop can influence.
Baymard asked US shoppers why they abandoned a cart at checkout. Shoppers could name more than one reason, and the list leaves out “just browsing”:
- Extra costs (shipping, tax, fees) too high: 40%
- Delivery too slow: 20%
- Did not trust the site with card details: 19%
- Had to create an account: 18%
- Checkout too long or complicated: 17%
- Errors or crashes: 17%
- Return policy not satisfactory: 13%
- Could not see the total order cost up front: 12%
Source: Baymard Institute, 50 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics, retrieved October 20, 2026. Shares are US shoppers who abandoned a cart and named the reason.
The first fixes below follow this list from the top. Cost and clarity come first, then trust and effort. The ten ways are split into two groups: six that prevent abandonment on the cart page and four that recover carts that were left behind.
Prevent: 6 fixes on the cart page
These six fixes sit on the cart page and in the steps that lead to it. They address the reasons in the list above:
- Show the total cost early. Extra costs are the top reason for abandonment, and not seeing the total cost up front is another. Show shipping, taxes and fees on the product page or in a cart preview, so the total holds no surprise. Where an exact figure depends on the address, show a clear range or a link to the shipping rules. If free shipping starts at a minimum order, state that amount early; the page on the free shipping threshold shows how to set it.
- Offer guest checkout. Being forced to create an account is a documented reason to leave. Let visitors buy first, and offer an account after the order, with one click.
- State the delivery time. Slow delivery is the second most common reason. Show the expected delivery date or a delivery window next to the buy button and again in the cart.
- Make returns clear. Put the return terms in plain words close to the cart, with a short summary and a link to the full policy. Visitors who cannot tell what happens if the product does not fit will hesitate.
- Offer the payment methods your visitors expect. Check the payment methods that your best customers use, and show the logos in the cart. Place a short security note or a trust badge near the card fields, since mistrust of card details is a documented reason too.
- Save the cart. A cart that survives a closed tab, a phone call or a restart gives visitors a way back. Keep the items for a sensible time and keep prices and stock current.
Where each fix goes on the cart page matters. Total cost, delivery time and return terms belong in the order summary, because that is where visitors compare. Payment logos and security notes belong next to the button that leads to payment. Guest checkout belongs first, above any login form.
Checkout form steps, field order and error messages are a separate topic with their own guide to checkout optimization. This page stays with the cart page, cost clarity and recovery.
Recover: 4 recovery tactics
Even a good cart page loses some visitors. These four tactics bring part of them back. They continue the numbering from the previous section.
- Send a reminder email. If the visitor entered an email address, a short message a few hours later can bring them back to the cart. Show the products, the cart link and the key reassurance, such as delivery time or easy returns. Keep the tone helpful and send a small number of messages. Whether a reminder pays off in your shop is a question for a test.
- Use a message at the moment of exit. When a visitor moves the mouse toward the browser bar, a layer can answer the last open question, for example delivery time, returns or a way to save the cart. The Varify Campaign Booster Exit Intent Layer is built for this.
- Make the cart available on every device. Many visitors start on a phone and finish on a laptop. A cart tied to the customer account, or a link that restores it, removes a reason to give up.
- Retarget with ads. Showing the abandoned product to people who left it can remind them of the purchase. Keep it limited in frequency and make sure it respects your consent setup.
Recovery works best on top of a clean cart page. If a reminder leads back to a cart with the same hidden costs, the visitor leaves again. Fix the causes first and recover afterwards. For peak sales periods, see how to reduce cart abandonment on Black Friday.
What not to do
Three habits can hurt more than they help:
- Using a discount as the default recovery. If every abandoned cart gets a code, visitors learn to leave a cart to get one. That trains buyers to wait and cuts into your margin. Try clearer costs, delivery information and reassurance first, and use discounts selectively.
- Pressure without a reason. A countdown or a low-stock label that does not reflect real facts damages trust. Use urgency only where it is true, for example a real end date or real stock. Rules for such messages differ by country, so have the wording checked legally before the start.
- Too many reminders. A long chain of emails looks like pressure and raises the share of people who unsubscribe or mark messages as spam.
A simple test for any tactic: would you be comfortable explaining it to the visitor? If the answer is no, drop it.
Measure: abandonment rate per step
You cannot reduce abandonment without measuring it by step. The rate at each step is the share of visitors who reach the step and do not move on to the next one:
Cart abandonment rate (%) = (1 − orders ÷ carts) × 100
Count carts as sessions with an add_to_cart event and orders as sessions with a purchase event, both from the same period. Add begin_checkout to split the loss between the cart page and the checkout:
- Cart to checkout: (1 −
begin_checkout÷add_to_cart) × 100. A high value points to cost, delivery or guest checkout on the cart page. - Checkout to purchase: (1 −
purchase÷begin_checkout) × 100. A high value points to the checkout form, payment methods or errors.
In Google Analytics 4 you can show this as a funnel exploration. Split it by device and by source, because phone visitors and visitors from different channels behave differently. Always compare periods of equal length and the same season. The Baymard average of 70.22% is a documented average across many studies, so use it as a loose reference only.
Test before you roll it out
Every fix on this page is a hypothesis about your visitors. Some will work, and some will not, and a change that helps one shop can hurt another. Test it before you roll it out to everyone.
With Varify.io you can run each of the changes above as an A/B test:
- Describe the cart change in plain language. With Prompt-Based Experimentation (PBX) the AI builds the variation, for example a moved order summary, a delivery note or a new button text, and sets up the experiment without a developer. See PBX examples.
- Find the next test. The AI CRO Audit takes the URL of your cart page and returns insights, recommendations and ten test ideas you can use directly as A/B tests.
- Show hints with the Information Bar. The Campaign Booster Information Bar adds a sticky note such as shipping or delivery time to the page.
- Measure purchase and revenue. With Shopify, purchase and revenue goals can be imported directly into Varify. See Shopify conversion data. All GA4 events are available as goals, so you can also measure
begin_checkout. - No cookies. Varify stores the variation assignment in localStorage, without personal data. More on cookieless A/B testing.
Plan the runtime before you start with the free test runtime calculator.
Test your cart changes before you roll them out.
Describe the cart change, let the AI build it, measure purchases in your own GA4 and see which fix recovers more orders.