What is cart abandonment rate?
How is cart abandonment rate calculated?
Count the carts started. Count the orders completed. Subtract, then divide by carts started.
Two details change the number. First, what counts as a cart: some tools count any add-to-basket click, others only carts that reached checkout. That narrower version is checkout abandonment. Second, the time window: a shopper who buys the next day was counted as abandoned on day one. State the definition next to the number.
Why does it matter for ecommerce brands?
Abandonment is where emails and ads go looking for extra sales. Email automation flows send a reminder when someone leaves a basket. Retargeting shows ads to people who already visited your site.
Both report "recovered carts". But some of those shoppers were coming back anyway. A recovered cart that would have converted without the nudge is not extra. That is the incrementality question: what happened that would not have happened otherwise. For the retargeting side, see is retargeting incremental.
Some abandonment can be fixed. Some carts were never going to be sales. Baymard Institute, a UX research firm that sells research and audits, treats shoppers who were "just browsing" as largely unavoidable abandonment and separates them from fixable causes such as extra costs1. The fixable group is a checkout problem: see checkout optimisation.
A recovered order also only matters once costs are paid. Where that lands in the P&L is covered under contribution margin.
For ZFD: In our view, a low abandonment rate is not the goal. Extra orders at a profit are.
Worked example
Easily confused with
Cart abandonment rate vs Checkout abandonment
Only shoppers who started checkout. A narrower base, so a different number.
Cart abandonment rate vs Conversion rate
Shops usually mean orders divided by sessions. Abandonment starts from carts, not sessions.
Cart abandonment rate vs Bounce rate
People who leave after one page. Many never reach a basket.
FAQ
Is a high cart abandonment rate bad?
Not by itself. Many carts are browsing, not buying. What matters is whether you lose sales you could win back, and at what cost.
Can I compare my rate with other shops?
Only if the definitions match. Carts, checkouts, sessions and time windows all change the result. Baymard's published average, for example, combines many separate studies1. Treat any such figure as context, not a target.
Sources
- 70.19% – average documented online shopping cart abandonment rateIndustry publication
Let’s find what’s actually working.
Next step. See what recovered sales are worth in margin. Use the Is your ROAS real? calculator.