Cart Abandonment Rate: The Formula and How It Hits Revenue

Carts fill up almost every day. And yet most of them are left behind, never bought. If you run an ecommerce store, "cart abandonment" is something you've worried about at least once. Across the world, there's data showing that about 70% of items added to carts end up unpurchased (Baymard Institute).

Looking at that "70%," most people panic: "I've been losing that much—I need to fix it now." But the first thing this article wants to offer is a slightly different view. Not all cart abandonment is "lost revenue." And more important than chasing a single rate is seeing this: which entry point did people come from, at what moment, and where are the ones who genuinely meant to buy dropping off? We'll start with the formula and the industry average, then move through why it happens and how it actually affects revenue.

What this article covers#

• Cart abandonment rate = the share of people who added items to a cart but didn't complete the purchase. The global average is about 70% (Baymard). But that figure mixes in browsing, price comparison, and automated programs (bots)—not all of it is a "failure."
• More than the rate being high, what matters is whether people drop off at the "cart stage" (just wanting to check shipping) or the "checkout stage" (leaving mid-entry). The recoverable one—where intent is already set—is the latter.
• The effect of tactics like showing shipping costs or sending reminders is confirmed by whether conversion rate (CVR) and revenue moved in the end. Staring at the rate alone won't tell you whether anything worked.

1. What is cart abandonment rate | the formula and the industry average#

Cart abandonment rate is the share of shoppers who added an item to their cart but left without completing the purchase. The formula is simple.

Cart abandonment rate (%) = (1 − completed purchases ÷ carts created) × 100

For example, if 100 carts are created and 30 of them lead to a completed purchase, then (1 − 30 ÷ 100) × 100 = 70% is your cart abandonment rate.

The part that trips people up is what to use as the denominator (the number you divide by). The basic choice is "the number of carts created." A similar-but-different metric uses "the number that proceeded to checkout" as the denominator—a "checkout abandonment rate"—and the number changes even on the same site. First decide for your own store that you'll use "carts created" as the denominator, and measure on the same basis every month. If the basis drifts, comparing month over month becomes meaningless.

The figure most often cited as the industry average is about 70% from Baymard Institute, a research firm on user behavior[1]. Roughly, the feeling is "even when something is added to a cart, five out of seven aren't bought."

But it's too quick to take that ~70% straight as "lost revenue." Adding an item to a cart often includes stages where the decision isn't made yet: "just want to check shipping," "comparing prices with another store," "waiting for payday." On top of that, in recent years automated programs (bots) testing stolen card details flood carts and checkouts in large numbers, making the cart abandonment rate look higher than reality. In other words, 70% is a combined value of genuine drop-off, browsing, and bots. If anything, a fair amount of cart abandonment is the flip side of something healthy—that people are reaching the cart at all.

2. Why it happens | "cart stage" and "checkout stage" fail differently#

Cart abandonment sounds like one thing, but the place people drop off splits into two. One is the "cart stage"—adding items to the cart and checking shipping and the total. The other is the "checkout stage"—dropping off midway through entering name, address, and card number. These two are completely different in nature.

Most people who leave at the cart stage haven't decided to buy yet. They see the shipping cost and feel "that's higher than I thought," or they step away meaning to buy later. People who reach the checkout stage, on the other hand, have largely made up their minds. When their hand still stops mid-entry, it's because of an "almost there" snag. So even within cart abandonment, the ones easier to win back through tactics are those who hesitated at the checkout stage.

Among the many reasons, the most common is shipping. When shipping isn't visible on the product page and is tacked on right before payment, people leave in droves. Put the other way: simply showing shipping at the product-page stage can cut abandonment considerably. Other reasons follow—requiring account creation drives off about one in four shoppers, too few payment options (deferred payment, mobile wallets, and so on), and long, confusing entry forms[2].

But trying every one of these tactics blindly isn't wise. Showing shipping, sending reminders, adding payment methods—they all look promising, but whether they actually worked can only be told by whether "the share of people who reached purchase" went up. The next section lays out how to see that.

3. "Where they drop off" matters more than "the rate" | how it hits revenue#

As we've seen, the single number that is cart abandonment rate lumps together drop-offs of different natures into one combined value. So chasing the rate itself downward won't reveal where to act. If you genuinely want to move revenue, you need to shift your angle from "the rate" to "where they drop off."

At the center of that is conversion rate (CVR, the share of people who visited and actually bought). If cart abandonment rate is "the share who didn't buy," conversion rate is its flip side—"the share who did." It's the same thing seen in reverse, but conversion rate has a big advantage: you can break it down by entry point (channel) and by page.

For example, it's common for people who arrive from ads to have a low conversion rate while those who arrive from search have a high one. Ads bring in many "clicked on a whim, low intent to buy" visitors. Even within the same cart abandonment, the browsing from ad traffic and the genuine drop-off from search traffic call for completely different moves. Break conversion rate down by entry point, and "which entry point's people are dropping off despite meaning to buy" finally comes into view.

And after you run a tactic like showing shipping or sending reminders, you check whether that entry point's conversion rate actually rose. If the cart abandonment rate happens to drop but revenue hasn't grown, it's meaningless. Whether a tactic worked is judged by the "results"—conversion rate and revenue. That's the decisive difference from analysis that only stares at the rate.

The idea itself isn't hard. What's hard is keeping it up every month—broken down by entry point and by page, compiled by hand. Traffic data, purchase data, and revenue data all live in separate places, and just re-combining them every time can drain you before you reach the decision that matters. A simple idea, yet the longer you keep it up, the heavier it gets.

RevenueScope solution

When you try to grasp cart abandonment through revenue, you keep hitting the same wall. You want to know "which entry point and which page has a low conversion rate," but the numbers for that are scattered across multiple places, and you can't see them unless you re-combine them every time.

RevenueScope consolidates those scattered numbers onto a single screen and lines up the conversion rate (CVR) and revenue for each entry point (channel) (figures are demo data).

The thing to read in this table is that the entry point with the most visits, Ads (Meta), has the lowest conversion rate at 1.2%. Plenty of people arrive, but they drop off just short of buying. Email, meanwhile, has few visits but a high conversion rate of 5.2%. So if you're going to put effort into cart abandonment, the ad entry point comes first. Try moves like showing shipping on the product page and adding payment methods—aimed precisely at the ad-sourced people who drop off just short of buying—then check whether the ad conversion rate moved from 1.2%. That sequence comes into view. Instead of doing everything blindly, you can play the single most effective move first.

Let's be clear about one thing. What RevenueScope does is show conversion rate (CVR) and revenue, broken down by entry point and by page. It does not produce the cart abandonment rate itself, or a stage-by-stage breakdown of "what percent dropped at the cart stage and what percent at the checkout stage." What it produces is the share of people who bought (CVR) and where they came from. It assembles the material for deciding what to fix first—but the decision of which tactic to run is yours to make.

FAQ#

Frequently asked questions#

Q. What cart abandonment rate should I aim to stay under?

A. There's no single "you're safe at this number." It varies widely by industry and price point—higher-priced products get considered longer, so the rate runs higher. What matters is the trend, not the absolute value. First get a read on your own rate, then watch whether it has suddenly risen compared with last month or the month before. And rather than chasing one rate, seeing "which entry point's people dropped off after reaching the checkout stage" reveals the move to make.

Q. How are cart abandonment rate and conversion rate (CVR) different?

A. They're two sides of the same coin, seen in reverse. If cart abandonment rate is "the share who added to cart and didn't buy," conversion rate is "the share who visited and bought." The difference is that conversion rate can be broken down by entry point (ads, search, email, and so on) and by page. Cart abandonment rate is a single number rolled up for the whole, so it won't tell you where to act. When you want to confirm whether a tactic worked, conversion rate and revenue are the practical lens.

Q. I ran tactics but the cart abandonment rate won't drop. Why?

A. Cart abandonment rate includes not just genuine drop-off but also browsing, price comparison, and automated programs (bots). Those can't be reduced by tactics, so the overall rate barely moves. That's exactly why, instead of watching the rate go up and down, you confirm the effect by whether the conversion rate at the entry point you acted on rose and whether revenue grew. Even if the rate is flat, if the conversion rate of the people who genuinely meant to buy went up, that tactic is working.

Summary#

Cart abandonment rate is the share of items added to a cart but not bought, and the global average is about 70% (Baymard). But that figure is a combined value of genuine drop-off, browsing, and bots—a high rate isn't a failure in itself. If anything, it's the flip side of something healthy: people are reaching the cart.

What matters isn't chasing a single rate, but seeing whether people drop off at the "cart stage" or the "checkout stage," and "which entry point's people dropped off despite meaning to buy." The recoverable one is checkout-stage drop-off, and the biggest cause is shipping shown late. After you run a tactic, confirm its effect by whether conversion rate (CVR) and revenue moved. First measure your own cart abandonment rate once, clearly, then shift your eyes to conversion rate by entry point. Once that comes into view, tactics you used to play on gut feel turn into moves backed by evidence.

Related articles#

• 30 checklist items to lift ecommerce conversion rate (CVR)
• How to build an ecommerce revenue dashboard: the metrics to watch and the design
• Narrow ecommerce KPIs down to five: choosing from too many metrics

References#

• [1] Baymard Institute, "Cart & Checkout Abandonment Rate Statistics" 2024
• [2] Baymard Institute, "E-Commerce Checkout Usability Research" 2024