Guide
Checkout and abandoned carts: what stops shoppers from paying
By Studio Swing
Most shoppers who add to a cart do not buy, and a large share of them never meant to. Baymard Institute, which studies ecommerce usability, reports a 70.22% average documented cart abandonment rate across 50 studies. Baymard also reports that 42% of US online shoppers have abandoned a cart because they were "just browsing / not ready to buy". Among the rest, the biggest reason is a cost the shopper did not expect. Your store can change the second group of reasons: show the full cost early, ask for less, state the delivery date, and make the page feel safe to pay on.
On this page
A shopper with a bicycle light in the basket
Say you sell bicycle accessories. A shopper finds a front light for 25 in your local currency and adds it to the basket. They click Checkout.
A page asks them to create an account, with a password rule they have to read twice. They skip that and find a small link for guest checkout. Then a form asks for sixteen details. After the address, a line appears: shipping 9. A tax line follows. The total is 41, sixteen more than the price on the page. No delivery date is shown. They wanted the light for the weekend, so they close the tab and look for it in a shop nearby.
No single thing was broken. Each step added a little friction or a surprise. Together they cost a sale.
What the research says, quoted as published
All figures in this section are from Baymard's page "50 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics", read on 1 October 2026. Baymard updates it as it adds studies, so check the current page.
70.22% is the "average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate", based on "50 different studies containing statistics on ecommerce shopping cart abandonment."
42% of US online shoppers have abandoned a cart because "I was just browsing / not ready to buy", from what Baymard calls its latest quantitative study of reasons for abandonment.
Baymard then lists the reasons for checkout abandonment, leaving out that "just browsing" group:
| Reason shoppers gave | Share |
|---|---|
| Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees) | 40% |
| Delivery was too slow | 20% |
| I didn't trust the site with my credit card information | 19% |
| The site wanted me to create an account | 18% |
| Too long / complicated checkout process | 17% |
| Website had errors / crashed | 17% |
| Returns policy wasn't satisfactory | 13% |
| I couldn't see / calculate total order cost up-front | 12% |
| The credit card was declined | 10% |
| There weren't enough payment methods | 9% |
| I don't know | 7% |
The shares add up to more than 100%, so shoppers could name more than one reason.
Three cautions apply to these numbers.
1. They come from surveys, not from your store. The page we read did not state the survey's sample size. Baymard's other articles quote slightly different figures from different studies and years. For example, a Baymard article on guest checkout reports 24% for forced account creation from a 2022 survey of 4,384 US adults, and a Baymard blog page quotes 70.19% for the average abandonment rate. Use these numbers for the order of magnitude and the ranking of reasons, not as a forecast for your shop.
2. Abandonment is not lost sales. People use a cart to save a product, compare a total or check delivery. A high rate does not mean seven in ten sales slipped away.
3. Baymard's estimate of what could be recovered applies to large sites. It says the average large ecommerce site could gain a 35.26% increase in conversion rate through checkout design improvements alone. A small shop should not expect that figure.
What a store can change
Show the full cost before the last step
Extra costs are the top reason. Baymard's own recommendation is to show the full order cost in the cart, including all fees. Decide your delivery prices and tax display before the shop is built, and show an estimate on the product page and in the basket. If shipping is free above a threshold, say so, and show how far the basket is from it. Our guide to ecommerce website requirements covers these as decisions to settle first.
Do not make an account the price of a purchase
In the list above, 18% abandoned because the site wanted them to create an account. Baymard recommends offering guest checkout, making it the most prominent option, and delaying account creation until after the order is confirmed. A shopper who just bought can be invited to save their details, with a single click.
Ask for less
Baymard's 2024 checkout research found that the average checkout flow has 5.1 steps and 11.3 form fields, against an ideal it puts at 8 fields, and that 17% of users had abandoned because of checkout complexity. Remove any field you do not need to ship and charge for the order. Does the shopper need to enter a second address line, a company name, a phone number? Make a field optional or delete it. Let the browser fill in what it can.
Say when it will arrive
Delivery speed matters to 20% of respondents. A date answers better than a range of days, and the same promise should appear on the product page, in the basket and at checkout. What makes an ecommerce product page useful covers where the date goes beside the button.
Make payment feel safe
19% abandoned because they did not trust the site with their card. Trust here is a matter of detail: a checkout that looks like the rest of the store, clear contact details, plain returns and privacy pages, a payment form from a recognized provider, and no unexpected redirects. Ask your payment provider how card details are handled, so you can say it accurately.
Fix errors and declines
17% abandoned because the site had errors or crashed, and 10% because a card was declined. Test your checkout on a phone and a desktop with different cards, an address with an apartment number, and a discount code. Shopify's help center recommends placing a test order to check your checkout process and your settings for order processing, inventory, shipping, email notifications and taxes, and notes that you are not charged for test orders placed through its test gateways. The same principle applies on any platform. Write helpful error messages: say what is wrong with a field and how to fix it.
State your returns policy where shoppers look
13% said the returns policy was not satisfactory. Put a plain summary near the buy button, and link the full policy from checkout.
Offer the payment methods your customers use
9% said there were not enough payment methods. Ask your customers, or look at the methods your competitors in your country offer, before you choose.
Finding where your own shoppers leave
Do not guess from industry averages. Look at your own steps.
In Shopify's reports, "added to cart rate" is the share of online store visits where items were added to the cart, and "reached checkout rate" is the share that reached checkout, each relative to total visits. Comparing them with your conversion rate (the share of visits that ended in a sale) shows where the drop is largest.
In Google Analytics 4, the recommended ecommerce events view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout and purchase record each step, when they are set up correctly.
Read the abandoned checkouts yourself if your platform lists them. Look for patterns: one country, one delivery option, one payment method, one device.
Ask the people who did buy what almost stopped them.
Counts from different tools often disagree, because they define a session and a visit differently. Shopify's help center notes that changes in how sessions are measured can alter numbers without any change in shopper behavior. Our guide to ecommerce KPIs explains which few numbers to read.
About abandoned cart emails
Many shops send a reminder to shoppers who left items in a cart after entering an email address. Shopify's store setup checklist includes customizing abandoned cart emails. They can recover some orders. They do not fix the reasons above, and they depend on having consent to email, which the law in your country may regulate. Ask a local adviser before you switch them on.
What fixing checkout will not do
It will not make browsers into buyers. The 42% who were just browsing will keep browsing. It also will not repair a store whose prices, delivery or products do not match what customers want. And a better checkout can only be proven by watching your own numbers over time, since a short stretch of data on a small shop can easily mislead.
A checklist you can use without us
Checklist
- Delivery cost and an estimated tax appear before the last step.
- A delivery date appears on the product page, in the basket and at checkout.
- Guest checkout is the most obvious option.
- Every checkout field is needed to ship and charge for the order.
- The checkout looks like the rest of the store and shows contact details.
- I have placed test orders on a phone and a desktop, including one with a failing card.
- Error messages say what to change.
- My returns summary is near the buy button.
- I know my added to cart, reached checkout and completed purchase numbers.
- Abandoned cart emails, if I use them, respect the rules where my customers live.
Where to go next
Our ecommerce website service covers what we build for online shops. For the page before the basket, read what makes an ecommerce product page useful.
When you want to talk about your own shop, you can discuss your project. More guides are in the Learn library.
Sources
1. Baymard Institute, 50 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics (average rate, the just browsing share, reasons for checkout abandonment, estimate for large sites): https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate
2. Baymard Institute, Make "Guest Checkout" Prominent (24% forced account creation, 2022 survey of 4,384 US adults): https://baymard.com/research-articles/make-guest-checkout-prominent
3. Baymard Institute, Checkout Optimization: Minimize Form Fields (5.1 steps, 11.3 fields in 2024, ideal 8): https://baymard.com/research-articles/checkout-flow-average-form-fields
4. Baymard Institute, Checkout usability report and benchmark (70.19% quoted on that page): https://baymard.com/blog/ecommerce-checkout-usability-report-and-benchmark
5. Baymard Institute, How to Reduce Cart Abandonment (recommendations on total cost, guest checkout, delivery, form fields): https://baymard.com/blog/reduce-cart-abandonment
6. Shopify Help Center, Placing a test order: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/checkout-settings/test-orders
7. Shopify Help Center, Analytics fields (added to cart rate, reached checkout rate, conversion rate): https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/reports-and-analytics/shopify-reports/report-types/analytics-fields
8. Shopify Help Center, Session measurement update: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/reports-and-analytics/discrepancies/session-measurement-update
9. Shopify Help Center, Store setup checklist (abandoned cart emails): https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/initial-setup/new-to-shopify-checklists/general-checklist
10. Google Analytics Help, Recommended events (ecommerce): https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9268036