What is Cart Abandonment Rate
Cart abandonment rate is the percentage of users who add a product to their shopping cart but don’t actually buy it. It tells you how many potential customers are walking away at the final step, after showing a clear intent to buy. It’s a key ecommerce metric for spotting drop-offs in your checkout process.
Examples
To calculate cart abandonment rate, divide the number of completed purchases by the number of shopping carts created, subtract from 1, then multiply by 100:
Cart Abandonment Rate = [1 − (Completed Purchases ÷ Shopping Carts Created)] × 100
| Shopping carts created | Completed purchases | Cart abandonment rate |
| 500 | 150 | 70% |
A brief history
As ecommerce took off in the 2000s, it became clear that not all “adds to cart” were leading to sales. Cart abandonment became one of the first real signs that something in the checkout process might be wrong.
Tracking this metric helped retailers see how much money was being left on the table. Over time, it’s become a standard metric for finding friction points in the online buying experience, like unexpected shipping costs, clunky forms, or slow load times.
Good to know
Cart abandonment rate is a useful metric, but it’s even more helpful when it’s viewed alongside other metrics like conversion rate (how many people complete a purchase) or add-to-cart rate (how many product page viewers add something to their cart).
Together, these metrics help you figure out where you’re losing high-intent shoppers. For example, if your add-to-cart rate is strong but your cart abandonment rate is high, it’s a clear sign the issue is in the checkout experience, not the product pages.
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