Shopping cart abandonment statistics can give us a clear sign of how customers interact with and react to your online offers and interface.
Many factors influence a person during the online shopping process. People give up on buying for various reasons. But often those reasons are the same for many and have a clear hierarchy.
Therefore, we decided to take a look at some of the shopping cart abandonment stats and the importance of online shopping cart abandonment. This will help you understand better the hurdles your business is facing as well as the potential buyer.
Top Shopping Cart Abandonment Stats (Editor’s Choice)
- The average cart abandonment rate is 69.57%.
- Men’s clothing is the least affected category with only 26%.
- At the beginning of the pandemic, the shopping cart abandonment rate was at 94.4%.
- Over $4 trillion worth of unpurchased goods is left in carts annually.
- 57% of customers will not wait over three seconds for a page to load.
- You can recover 20.3% of sales by sending a recovery email within 24 hours.
- 55% of all people who abandon a purchase do so because of extra costs.
Shopping Cart Abandonment Statistics for 2021
1. At the beginning of the pandemic, the shopping cart abandonment rate was at 94.4%.
(Today, Statista)
In other words, the situation has made people more careful about their spending, but it also pushed a larger number of customers online. Luckily, in March 2020, the average cart abandonment rate dropped to 88.05%, which is still a higher-than-usual figure.
2. Apparel shopping cart abandonment rate was up 12.2% in 2020.
(Today)
This was one of the highest-growing cart abandonment rates, from 84.3% to 96.5%. Apparel and fashion were directly hit as people started working from home and relaxing into their sweatpants. In addition, the crisis forced more people to save money.
3. Homeware cart abandonment rate was down 1.3% in 2020.
(Today)
Homeware shopping cart abandonment rate in 2020 decreased from 89.5% to 88.2%. At the same time, homeware sales grew, increasing conversion rates significantly. People are spending more time at home and as a result, doing more decoration and renovation projects.
4. Cart abandonment rate compared by industry was the highest in automotive in 2020.
(Statista)
The demand for new cars decreased last year and it showed in cart abandonment figures. On the other hand, the insurance industry showed the lowest rate with 67.92% of all online shopping carts abandoned.
General Cart Abandonment Statistics
5. Across all industries, the average cart abandonment rate is 69.80%.
(Baymard)
As many as seven out of ten buyers will stop at some point in their purchase and will not complete the transaction. The cart abandonment rate in 2020 varied from 57.60% to 84.27% from report to report.
The ecommerce cart abandonment rate for 2018 was 74.58%, while the average cart abandonment rate in 2019 dropped to 69.7%.
6. Companies lose up to $18 billion in sales revenue every year due to cart abandonment.
(Dynamic Yield)
Forrester research on shopping cart abandonment found that 88% of people reported they have at some point abandoned a purchase midway, which currently results in $18 billion of lost revenue in 2018.
Shopping cart abandonment case studies list one indisputable fact:
The unexpected extra costs are the primary reason people give up on proceeding with their order.
And while the fact is very hard to verify, Forrester predicts that the loss of revenue is going to skyrocket to $31 billion globally.
7. The mobile shopping cart abandonment rate stands at 85.65%.
(CodeinWp, Sleeknote)
It has been confirmed many times in the past that the smaller the device and the screen, the higher the abandonment rate. The problem has grown as users have migrated to mobile devices. The trend has prompted companies to improve their UX in order to retain more users and finalize more sales focusing on mobile ecommerce.
Improvements in speed, usability, and cutting back on excessive copy gave results. Overall, online traffic percentage is higher on mobile devices, currently at 64%, while only 29% is viewed on a desktop computer. On the other hand, the number of finalized orders for both categories was similar last year, and it stands at 46%.
Shopping Cart Abandonment Reasons
8. 55% of all people who abandon a purchase do so because of extra costs.
(Walker Sands, CodeinWp, Sleeknote)
Shipping, taxes, and fees are at the top of the list when it comes to giving up on a purchase, says the Baymard Institute research.
With almost 80% of American buyers expecting free shipping, delivery costs are the most likely to turn them away to a competitor.
9. 36% of people give up on a purchase when asked to create an account.
(Baymard)
This is a thing almost everyone has done at some point. We make an impulsive decision to buy, but we’re stopped by the realization that we don’t really need the thing enough to go through all the steps of the registration process.
10. 57% of online buyers will navigate away from a page and not place an order if it takes more than three seconds to load, shopping cart abandonment stats confirm.
(Intechnic)
One second of slow loading will cost a company 27% of online sales lost due to cart abandonment. Pages that load under 2.4 seconds show much better results.
11. 41% of shoppers abandon the online buying process at the checkout stage.
(SaleCycle, Statista, Sleeknote)
Optimizing the user experience during the checkout process can raise the conversion rates by 35.62% by improving the checkout flow, reducing the number of steps, including a progress tracker, and eliminating repetition.
12. 39% of people will not finalize a transaction if they are faced with filling in too many forms.
(Barilliance)
What’s more, 30% of people will not want to re-enter their credit card number information, and 25% will leave if asked to fill out the shipping information once more.
In fact, any excessive amount of forms that need to be completed will lead to customers turning away. A full 39% will give up on the purchase and raise your checkout abandonment rate if they encounter issues while trying to provide personal information.
And finally, if you offer a discount code or a coupon that doesn’t work, almost half of all customers, 46%, will decide against continuing with the transaction.
13. A company can recover 20.3% of sales if it sends an abandoned cart email within the first 24 hours.
(Barilliance)
If you are wondering how to reduce shopping cart abandonment, here’s what you can do:
The first of the cart abandonment solutions is creating a series of well crafted and properly timed recovery emails. The second is shopping cart abandonment retargeting .
Now:
Sending recovery emails is one of the best shopping cart abandonment hacks, as it can help you recover one-fifth of the loss.
Additionally, 46.1% of buyers who abandoned their purchase opened cart abandonment emails. 13.3% click on the provided links, and 35% of those who do buy something after all.
Conversion rates for cart abandonment recovery go from 18% to 40%.
The Importance of Online Shopping Cart Abandonment
If you want to know how your UX is doing and how optimized your web page is, shopping cart abandonment statistics will give you pretty good insight. If that number is too high for comfort, you might want to look at your checkout setup, as this is the point where most people decide to give up on the purchase.
The thing is:
The average user is impatient and won’t tolerate bad loading speed and unresponsiveness or suffer through multiple forms and buttons and fields. And if they need to write in their personal info twice, they will walk away with an empty cart, dragging your sales and revenue down. Often, they will not want to create an account.
Bottom line:
Listening to buyers’ needs and wants and creating a UX around them will lower your shopping cart abandonment stats and give your sales a boost. If not, start writing those cart abandonment emails to retrieve some of the revenue, do it right, and some of the runaway customers will finalize their transactions.
FAQ
Q: What is a good shopping cart abandonment rate?
The range of the shopping cart abandonment rate goes from 60% to 80%, with the current average being 69.57%. With the best UX and optimization, you can achieve an abandonment rate of 20% in segments such as clothes and footwear. But depending on the industry, anything up to 50% can be considered good, especially if travel or airlines are in question.
Q: What is an abandoned cart?
The term abandoned cart is used for a situation in which a potential customer stops the purchase process without completing the transaction, leaving the item in the cart. A high cart abandonment rate can indicate a bad user experience or a fault in the sales funnel.
Q: What are abandoned cart emails?
That’s a recovery of sales tactic that uses an automated email reminder or a series of precisely timed and crafted emails, sent to a potential buyer who has previously left the website without completing the purchase after adding items to their shopping cart. The company does this in the hope of finalizing the initiated sale.
Q: How do I stop shopping cart abandonment?
Shopping cart abandonment is most effectively stopped by resolving issues that lead to it. The primary causes of cart abandonment are hidden costs of shipping, additional fees, and taxes. The company needs to provide a shopping experience with no surprises in the financial part of the process.
A brand can also bring down the abandonment rate by reducing the amount of time customers spend on entering personal information, by offering a “check-out as guest” option, and a short personal info form.
Finally, the company can improve the loading speed and responsiveness of its website since today’s online buyers are willing to give a website only three seconds before they navigate away from the page.
Q: What is the average cart abandonment rate?
The average cart abandonment rate across all industries is 69.57%. In 2020, however, shopping habits changed and cart abandonment statistics placed the rate at 88.05%.
Q: What effect does shopping cart abandonment have?
The effects of shopping cart abandonment negatively influence online stores because they can signal a poor user experience or a dysfunctional sales funnel. It’s an important metric for ecommerce businesses, and cart abandonment can cost retailers up to $4.6 trillion a year.
Sources:
- Barilliance
- Barilliance
- Baymard
- Business
- Business Insider
- CodeinWp
- Dynamic Yield
- Forrester
- Intechnic
- Medium
- Moosend
- Optimizely
- SaleCycle
- Sleeknote
- Statista
- Statista
- Statista
- Today
- Walker Sands
