Cart abandonment: why 70% leave and the six things that change it

Let me open with the sentence that visibly relaxes the shoulders of whoever hears it. If your online shop loses seven out of every ten people who added something to the cart, you are at the average, not in a crisis. Nothing is broken, and it is not the competitor either.

I have watched the same scene play out more times than I can count. The owner opens the analytics, spots the percentage, and within ten seconds has diagnosed a terminal illness. Then comes the treatment plan, which usually involves a new platform, a new theme, new product photography and, if the evening gets long enough, a new logo. Tell me you have never been there.

The problem is not the percentage. The problem is that half of those who leave do so for reasons that can be fixed in one afternoon, and most owners have no idea which ones. Am I wrong?

So here is what the data says and what we do with it.

Let us start with that famous number

The Baymard Institute calculates an average abandonment rate of 70.22%, as the mean of 50 studies between 2006 and 2025. The page was last updated on 22 September 2025. It is a grand sounding figure, carried to two decimal places so that nobody dares doubt it, and it gets passed around in slide decks and newsletters as if it were a law of physics.

It is not. And there are two clarifications that completely change how you should use it.

First, it is an average of third party studies, not a single measurement. The individual values range from 56.82% to 84.27%. Put bluntly: the spread between the studies themselves is wider than any improvement you will achieve through optimisation. Now think about how many targets have been set, in meetings, on top of that “constant”. How many decks have been built on it. How many working relationships have been judged by it.

Second, your own rate depends on your sector, your average order value, and how much your category invites price comparison. A furniture store will always show higher abandonment than a store selling consumables. Of course it will. A sofa gets discussed at home over dinner; coffee filters do not. And no, that does not mean the furniture store is doing anything wrong.

The useful comparison is not against 70%. It is against yourself last month.

Why people actually walk away

Baymard’s reasons survey, study #GC050 of March 2026, asked US consumers. The first finding governs everything else, so let us take our time with it: 42% answered that they were just browsing and had no intention of buying.

Forty two percent. Almost half. That share cannot be fixed by anything: not by a discount, not by a pop up, not by any tactic promising miracles within seven days. In e-commerce the cart works like a wish list, not like a supermarket trolley. In a supermarket, abandoning a full trolley in the aisle and walking out in front of twenty witnesses takes something serious happening. Online, a phone ringing is enough.

The reasons given by those who did have real intent:

And now the caveat that usually gets left out, because it spoils the story: Baymard does not publish the sample size for this survey, and the respondents are American. Read the figures as a ranking of mechanisms, not as a prediction of percentages for the Greek market.

Let us read that list the way it deserves

Group the reasons and three families appear. Three, not ten. That alone rewrites the list of things you have to do on Monday morning.

Cost surprises. 40% plus 12% plus, in part, the 20% for delivery. Watch the detail here: the customer does not leave because shipping is 4.90 euro. They leave because they found out about the 4.90 euro at step three, having already done different arithmetic in their head. The surprise costs you, not the amount. It is exactly the feeling you get when the hotel remembers the “city tax” at checkout time.

The site gets in the way. 18% plus 17% plus 17% plus 9%. Forced account, long form, technical errors, too few payment methods. These are purely technical and can be fixed without a single commercial decision. No meeting, no budget, not one euro moved on your price list.

Trust is missing. 19% plus 13%. This is not about SSL, everyone has it. It is about whether the shop shows there is a person behind it: a phone number, an address, a real returns policy, names.

Let us count your checkout in blunt numbers

This is where Baymard gives the most practical figures I have seen.

The average US checkout contains 23.48 form elements and 14.88 input fields. An optimised checkout can work with 12 to 14 elements, meaning 7 to 8 fields. That is half. Read it again: half.

And before you tell me that you genuinely need all of yours, let us check that together. How you get to half, in practice:

• One name field, not two. Splitting first and last name serves your database, not your customer.
• A postcode that fills in city and region automatically.
• Billing address same as shipping address, preselected, with a checkbox for the exceptions.
• No separate mandatory field for a second address line.
• No email confirmation field. Real time validation does the job.
• Invoice details in a section that expands, only for those who ask for an invoice. In Greece this alone removes four fields from the retail customer’s flow.

Baymard estimates that a large store can achieve a 35.26% increase in conversions with an improved checkout design, and puts the recoverable amount across the US and EU at 260 billion dollars. And read the wording closely here, because this is where a lot of people slip: that is a modelled estimate, not a measured A/B test result. Their database covers 140 documented causes and 134 guidelines. Serious work, I will grant them that, but an estimate is still an estimate. Do not promise that number to anyone, not even to yourself in the mirror.

Six fixes, in the order they pay off

1. Show shipping on the product page. Approximate is fine, “from 3.50 euro” is fine. The customer does not want a price, they want not to be surprised.

2. Allow guest checkout. No account, no password, no email confirmation. Offer account creation after the order is complete, with the details prefilled. Who turns down an account handed to them for free once they already have what they came for?

3. Cut half the fields. Take your checkout, count the fields, and for each one ask: if this is missing, can I still ship the parcel? If yes, remove it. You will be amazed how many fields went in years ago because “we might need this one day” and that day never came.

4. Put the running total on every step. Products, shipping, any cash on delivery fee, total. Visible, not inside a collapsed panel. A hidden amount is always bigger in the customer’s head than it is in reality.

5. Test for errors in real conditions. 17% leave over a technical problem. Try your checkout on an old phone, on a slow connection, with Greek characters in every field, with an address that has a number and a letter. On your own new phone with the fast connection, you say? I would love to hear about it.

6. Give the shop a face. Phone number visible at checkout, a real address, business name and tax number in the footer, a clear returns policy one click away. That 19% of distrust is not solved with security badges.

And what about those reminder emails

You were waiting for that question, I know. So was I, because it is the first thing anyone asks in this conversation. They are useful and worth doing, but watch two things.

First, they only work for people who gave you an email, meaning people who got far enough. They do nothing about the customer who left at the first step, and that is the majority. It is a bit like posting a card to somebody who never left you an address.

Second, and here I turn serious, in Greece sending them requires a lawful basis for processing and clear notice. A reminder to a customer who did not complete an order is not automatically permissible as commercial communication. I am not giving you legal advice here, so ask your own adviser before you press send. I touch on this in the article on cookies and the GDPR.

And so the cart becomes an order again

Cart abandonment is not a disease. It is the normal behaviour of a channel where adding to the cart costs nothing. The 42% who were “just looking” will never be won, and you should not even try.

What can be won is the other half: the cost surprises, the forced account, the fourteen fields and the errors on an old phone. None of that needs a new platform, a redesign, or a new logo. It needs one Sunday afternoon and a list.

Remember those shoulders that relaxed at the start? Let them stay relaxed. Seven out of ten will keep leaving, and that is not your fault. The goal is that nobody leaves because we ambushed them at step three.

If you would like to go through your checkout step by step and see what can be cut, get in touch.