Cart abandonment (or checkout abandonment) occurs when a visitor adds products to a shopping cart or begins checkout and then leaves the site without paying.
Why it matters
Each abandoned cart is a nearly won sale, so reducing abandonment is often cheaper than finding new traffic. Causes include unexpected shipping costs, forced account creation, slow pages, limited payment options and technical errors. Recovery tactics include reminder emails, saved carts, transparent shipping costs, guest checkout and more payment options. Each should be tested, because the real cause differs between stores.
Example
In a month 1,000 shoppers add to cart and 300 complete the order. The abandonment rate is (1,000 minus 300) divided by 1,000, which is 70 percent. If a guest-checkout option brings 40 more orders, abandonment falls to 66 percent.
Common mistakes
- Blaming price when errors or slow loading are the actual cause.
- Sending recovery emails without fixing the checkout problem.
- Counting people who were only browsing as lost sales.
Related
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