# Why Shoppers Abandon Their Cart (and How to Stop It)

> Between 60% and 80% of carts in an online store get abandoned before checkout, and it's almost always for the same handful of reasons. Here's why it happens, what it really costs you, and how to reduce it step by step.

_Author: Jhon Michael Garcia · Published: 2026-08-25 · Web version: https://cruslar.com/blog/cart-abandonment-online-store_

Someone lands on your store, browses a few products, adds one to the cart… and disappears. No purchase, no message, no return visit. It happens to almost every online store, and it's not a fluke: **on average, somewhere between 60% and 80% of carts get abandoned** before checkout finishes. This guide covers the real causes of **cart abandonment**, what it actually costs your business, and what you can change today to bring it down.

## What is cart abandonment, and how is it measured?

Cart abandonment is when someone adds one or more products to their cart but leaves without completing payment. It's different from simply leaving your site: here, there was already real purchase intent, and something along the way stopped it.

The formula is: **(carts created − completed purchases) / carts created × 100**. If a store creates 500 carts in a month and completes 140 purchases, the abandonment rate is 72%. Any standard store platform (Shopify, WooCommerce, PrestaShop) gives you both numbers in its analytics dashboard.

## Why cart abandonment costs more than it looks like

It's not just the sale you lose in that moment. Every abandoned cart is traffic you already paid for, through ads or through the time spent on SEO, and it got all the way to the final step without converting. It's the most expensive leak an online store has, because the customer had already decided to buy: you didn't need to convince them of anything, you just needed to not put an obstacle in the way.

**Idea:** an abandoned cart isn't a customer saying "no". It's almost always a "yes, but not like this" — the interest was real, and something specific in the process killed it.

## The most common reasons carts get abandoned

Studies that aggregate data across thousands of stores (the most cited is Baymard Institute's) point to a fairly consistent pattern. It's almost never a single cause: it's usually a combination of two or three.

### Costs that show up at the end, not upfront

By far the number one reason: close to half of all abandonments come down to shipping costs, taxes or fees that only appear at the very last step of checkout. The shopper had mentally accepted a price, and that price changes right when they're about to pay. It doesn't read as a surprise, it reads as something being hidden from them.

### A checkout that's too long or confusing

Every extra step is another chance to leave. Asking for the same information twice, not making it clear which step of the process the customer is on, or adding fields that aren't needed for that purchase all add friction without giving anything back.

### Forcing account creation to buy

For a large share of shoppers, this alone is reason enough to leave. It's not laziness: creating an account means a commitment (email, password, future marketing emails) they're not willing to make for a one-off purchase. **Guest checkout** exists precisely for this.

### Not giving enough confidence to pay by card

Before entering payment details, someone who doesn't know your store looks for signs it's legitimate: a visible secure-connection padlock, recognisable payment logos, real reviews, a visible address or phone number. Their absence doesn't register as an error, but it slows the final decision just as much as a technical bug would.

### Too few payment or delivery options

If your only payment method isn't the one the customer normally uses, or if the delivery timeframe doesn't appear until very late in the process, they'll go find a store that made both clear from the start.

### The site is slow, breaks, or the stock isn't real

A payment that errors out, a page that's slow to load on the final step, or a product that turns out not to be available after all — any of these slam the door shut. And unlike the reasons above, this one doesn't just lose the sale: **it leaves the customer feeling they can't trust buying there again.**

| Reason for abandonment | How much it weighs | What to do |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Hidden costs until the last step | ~48% | Show the total, with fees, from the cart |
| Forced account creation | ~25% | Offer guest checkout |
| Not enough trust to pay | ~25% | Visible payment badges and reviews |
| Unclear or slow delivery | ~23% | Show delivery time on the product page |
| Long or confusing checkout | ~22% | Cut steps and form fields |

## What happened to us when "in stock" wasn't true

This past summer we needed an air conditioning unit fast, with the heat already on us. After comparing options, we found an online store that had it **in stock**, with delivery in three days. We bought it without a second thought: the site said so clearly, and there was no friction at checkout.

Almost at the end of the delivery window, while we were already expecting the order, an email arrived: no stock, refund on its way. The refund didn't land that day, or the next. We had to buy the unit elsewhere, **fronting the money a second time**, with the first payment still tied up. We haven't gone back to that store.

This wasn't a cart abandoned in the classic sense — we did complete the payment. But the mechanism is the same one that stops someone else from paying at all. The catalogue wasn't connected to the warehouse, so the site promised something it couldn't deliver on. And a store that can't guarantee what it shows in the cart is, without saying so, exactly why the next person doesn't finish their purchase either: distrust gets built from stories like this one, and it shows up in everyone's checkout, not just ours.

## How to reduce cart abandonment (the fix)

1. **Show the full price as early as possible.** Shipping, taxes and fees, visible from the cart, not on the last step.
2. **Turn on guest checkout.** Offer account creation as an option after buying, never as a requirement before.
3. **Trim the process down to what's essential.** Fewer fields, fewer clicks, a progress bar if there's more than one step.
4. **Put trust signals right where payment is decided.** Recognisable payment methods, a visible secure connection, a couple of real reviews.
5. **Offer more than one payment and delivery option.** The more common ones you cover, the fewer people leave to find them elsewhere.
6. **Connect real stock to what the site shows.** Promising availability you don't have costs more than saying "out of stock" on time.

## What your store needs depending on its stage

Not every store needs the same thing, and the same criterion we always apply at Cruslar shows up here too: the fix depends on where you are, not on "best practice" in the abstract.

- **If you just launched or are still validating the business:** start with what's free — turn on guest checkout, show shipping costs on the product page, add a couple of payment security badges. That alone usually recovers a good chunk of the most obvious abandonment.
- **If you're already generating revenue with steady paid traffic:** every point you shave off abandonment is worth more money. Here it's worth running a full checkout audit, A/B testing the payment flow, and if your platform can't connect real-time stock, considering a custom store instead of patching the template further.

## How to measure whether it's working

The main metric is the cart abandonment rate, calculated as above, tracked month over month after each change. Also check which specific step people drop off at: if overall abandonment falls but stays high right at the shipping step, that's still where the problem is. And always compare by device: mobile abandonment tends to run notably higher than desktop, so a fix only tested on a laptop might not show up where it's needed most.

## Frequently asked questions

### What's a normal cart abandonment rate?

Somewhere between 60% and 80% is considered typical, depending on the sector. Rather than comparing yourself to the average, it's more useful to track your own rate month by month and by device.

### Do abandoned cart emails actually work?

They help recover part of the lost sale, but they don't fix the cause. If the problem is shipping costs surprising people at the last step, they'll keep surprising the next person until the process itself is fixed, not just the follow-up email.

### Is cart abandonment the same as checkout abandonment?

They're often measured together, but there's a nuance: a cart is abandoned before checkout even starts; checkout is abandoned once someone is already inside the payment flow. Telling them apart helps you know whether the problem is price or form friction.

### Do I need a custom store to fix this, or does my current template work?

Most of these fixes (showing costs upfront, guest checkout, trust badges) can be done on any standard platform. A custom build only becomes worth considering if your current platform won't let you touch the checkout flow or connect real-time stock.

## Want to know where your store is losing sales?

We can review your checkout flow step by step and tell you, with data, exactly where people leave before paying. Check out our [online store service](https://cruslar.com/services/tienda-online), read [which payment gateway to choose](https://cruslar.com/blog/payment-gateway-for-your-online-store) if the bottleneck is at the payment method, or if you're building the store from scratch, see [how to build an online store that sells](https://cruslar.com/blog/how-to-build-an-online-store). Prefer to talk it through? [tell us about your case](https://cruslar.com/contact).