There can be a number of reasons for cart abandonment, which is causing e-commerce stores to lose potential sales, and your store could be one trying to defy them.
How can shopping cart abandonment be a problem?
With the average cart abandonment rate standing at 70.19%, this issue causes billions in lost revenue each year for ecommerce store owners and retailers.
The shopping cart abandonment rate can increase behind your back, but cart abandonments are easily preventable when you follow some simple and efficient methods.
This blog helps you understand the top reasons for cart abandonment and actionable strategies to reduce abandoned cart problems for your online store.
Read below to find out what they are.
Recover abandoned carts and lost sales using Retainful’s easy-to-set-up email automation.
Quick Summary: Reasons for Abandoned Carts + Prevention Tips
12 crucial reasons for abandoned carts and their prevention tips are:
- Additional Costs (48% Rate) – Eliminate surprise fees with upfront pricing.
- Compulsory Account Creation (25%) – Streamline access with guest checkout.
- Slower Delivery (23%) – Accelerate fulfillment with faster shipping options.
- Concerns About Secure Payments (19%) – Build trust with safe gateways.
- Long or Complex Checkouts (17%) – Simplify steps to reduce cart abandonment rate.
- Unable To Calculate Total Cost (16%) – Increase transparency with visible pricing.
- Webpage Performance Issues (14%) – Optimize speed and fix checkout bugs.
- Unsatisfactory Return Policies (13%) – Boost confidence with easy returns.
- Payment Limitations (11%) – Expand options with wallets, PayPal, and cards.
- Excluding Social Proof – Leverage reviews, ratings, and testimonials.
- Lacking Discounts or Incentives – Motivate purchases with offers and coupons.
- Window-shopping – Capture future buyers with re-targeting.
What Is Cart Abandonment? Know Why Shoppers Leave
Cart abandonment happens when potential customers browse, add items to their shopping carts, and leave the store without purchasing them. Many customers shop and browse several products online, often resulting in in higher abandoned cart rates across industries like fashion (74%) and travel (81%).
As of 2025, shopping cart abandonment causes an estimated $18 billion loss in revenue annually for ecommerce stores worldwide, significantly impacting sales and growth opportunities.
To avoid such huge losses, you need to convert abandoned carts into sales conversions. To do this, you must know the reasons for cart abandonment and the best abandoned cart recovery methods.
But before that, you need to know how to calculate the cart abandonment rates for calculating their metrics and track progress.
How To Calculate Cart Abandonment Rate (Simple Formula + Example)
Calculating the cart abandonment rate is essential to monitoring lost sales, benchmarking performance, and knowing why, how, and when customers abandon their purchases, causing cart abandonment.
Formula:
Cart Abandonment Rate = (1 – (Number of Completed Purchases ÷ Number of Shopping Carts Created)) × 100
For example, let’s say your e-commerce store had 1,000 shopping carts created in a month. Out of these, 300 resulted in completed purchases.
Cart Abandonment Rate = (1 – (300 ÷ 1000)) × 100
= (1 – 0.3) × 100
= 70% abandonment rate
This means 70% of shoppers left without buying, which matches the global average of 70.19%.
Thus, tracking this number regularly helps you identify patterns and take steps to reduce cart abandonment through checkout optimization, better delivery options, and recovery emails.
Next, let’s look at the reasons for cart abandonment that cause deductions to your sales.
Top 12 Reasons For Cart Abandonment & Impact on Sales
Each reason for shopping cart abandonment can be a barrier to gaining sales, so understanding them is crucial.
Without knowing the causes, you cannot implement abandoned cart recovery tactics effectively.
Without understanding the reasons for cart abandonment, you cannot help abandoned cart recovery.
Here are the 12 top reasons why customers abandon their cart:
- High Additional Costs (48% of Shoppers Quit Here)
- Forced Account Creation (25% of Customers Drop Off)
- Slow or Unclear Delivery Times (23% Abandonment Risk)
- Payment Security Concerns (19% Lose Trust Instantly)
- Complicated, Long Checkout (17% Frustrated Buyers)
- Hidden or Unclear Total Cost (16% Get Confused)
- Website Errors & Performance Issues (14% Abandon Carts)
- Strict or Unclear Return Policies (13% Exit Before Purchase)
- Limited Payment Options (11% Don’t Find Preferred Method)
- Missing Social Proof (No Reviews = No Trust)
- No Discounts or Incentives (Shoppers Seek Better Deals)
- Window-Shopping Behavior (Unavoidable but Manageable)
1. High Additional Costs (48% of Shoppers Quit Here)
High additional or unexpected costs are the top reason for abandoned carts, and they have an increased cart abandonment rate compared to other reasons.
It could happen at the very last moment when they are just one click away (“Place order”) from purchasing.
If a customer moves to check out and sees additional charges applied to the product cost, such as shipping charges, taxes, delivery fees, handling costs, etc., it can displease them immediately.
When added to the product cost, these costs appear more than expected and are not very pocket-friendly for customers.
2. Forced Account Creation (25% of Customers Drop Off)
This is one of the reasons for abandoned carts, which is a turn-off for customers’ online shopping experience, as some ecommerce stores insist on mandatory account creation.
It’s like restricting customers from their very first shopping experience in your store.
You might do this to collect emails or other communication details from customers, but this reason fuels for abandoning shopping carts.
And this method backfires you, leaving your ecommerce store with cart abandonments.
Customer details can be collected in many other methods, and mandatory account creation is not one of them. The primary thing to count on is letting the customers use the service and get a satisfactory user experience.
So, it’s one of the reasons for cart abandonment that sits on top.
3. Slow or Unclear Delivery Times (23% Abandonment Risk)
Slow delivery is one of the reasons for cart abandonment, which makes customers instantly visit another store to resume their shopping.
This creates hesitation in the customer’s place. The longer it takes to deliver the product to customers, the more likely you are to lose conversions.
Slow product delivery leads to customer loss and provides opportunities for them to purchase elsewhere that offer faster delivery.
Another thing to consider is providing accurate delivery time once the customer reaches the checkout page.
When customers are unsure about the estimated delivery time, it triggers second thoughts and encourages shopping cart abandonment.
4. Payment Security Concerns (19% Lose Trust Instantly)
Concerns about secured payments are one of the cart abandonment causes, which priorly happens when an ecommerce site appears to be “insecure” about shopping and purchasing.
If your e-commerce store has an outdated or very simple design, does not have an SSL Certificate, or has mistakes in its webpage, your customers may feel suspicious about it.
So, they feel unsafe sharing their credit/debit card information to purchase from your store because of how it appears to the customers.
5. Complicated, Long Checkout (17% Frustrated Buyers)ts (17%)
A complex and lengthy checkout process results in purchase abandonment because it consumes much time of the customer.
This is one of the top reasons for purchase abandonment, where customers need to put so much effort into placing an order by filling in a bunch of details.
It frustrates the customer and causes them to leave the items in their carts as they are, resulting in increased cart abandonment rates.
6. Hidden or Unclear Total Cost (16% Get Confused)
The primary thing a customer checks for while purchasing something online is the cost of the product.
Abandoning the shopping carts hikes when customers can’t properly find the exact pricing or total cost involved upfront, which makes them confused and unsure about how much to spend.
This cart abandonment causes them to reach the point of “let’s check somewhere else” only because they can’t find the pricing near the product or displayed only on the checkout page.
7. Website Errors & Performance Issues (14% Abandon Carts)
Shopping cart abandonment reasons, such as choppy websites with performance issues like crashes, bugs, and errors, won’t work correctly to fulfill the customers’ shopping needs.
Such things deter customers from using your site by giving them an unsatisfactory shopping experience.
An ecommerce webpage with poor functionality and maintenance makes it one of the top reasons for abandoning shopping carts.
8. Strict or Unclear Return Policies (13% Exit Before Purchase)
Obviously, customers will look for all necessary details about the product, and return policies are a prime factor that customers will consider more.
Specifically, first-time visitors to your store might not be aware of your shopping services or policies, so they might consider the circumstances in which they will choose to return the product even before making a purchase.
One of the shopping cart abandonment causes is strict or complex return policies that encourage customers to leave products in their carts.
9. Limited Payment Options (11% Don’t Find Preferred Method)
Payment limitations are one of the top reasons for cart abandonment in ecommerce. Not every customer uses the same type of payment method.
Payment is an essential step in the marketing funnel for both the customer and you.
Each customer prefers different payment types, so if your store provides only a few payment gateways, customers won’t decide to make a purchase in your store.
10. Missing Social Proof (No Reviews = No Trust)
Excluding social proofs and testimonials is one of the main reasons for abandoned carts, as it does not affirm customers to continue their shopping.
Customers will believe in an online store and its products only when it has reviews or ratings from previous customers.
As a result of this shopping cart abandonment reason, your ecommerce store lacks reliability and fails to earn the trust of your customers.
11. No Discounts or Incentives (Shoppers Seek Better Deals)
A main reason for abandoned carts is the absence of discounts and offers.
Providing discounts is crucial. They’re like perks that quickly make customers overcome their hesitations about purchasing.
Customers who can’t find any offers or price deductions are more likely to check some other store for discounts.
This is one of the reasons for abandoning shopping carts, which results in customer loss.
12. Window-Shopping Behavior (Unavoidable but Manageable)
Confusion and uncertainty about where to buy are causes for such purchase abandonment. They might just be comparing the prices in different stores or adding items to their carts for future purchases.
While some customers only browse, you can still send abandoned cart emails to re-engage and nurture them.
These are the possible reasons for cart abandonment that troubles your ecommerce business. Next, let’s unpack the best ways for cart recovery to help you lead sales.
Set up abandoned cart recovery email sequence that converts more with Retainful’s automation workflow.
Best Ways To Prevent & Reduce Cart Abandonment – 12 Actionable Fixes
Here are the 12 Actionable Fixes to reduce abandoned cart rates and recover lost revenue:
- Display total costs upfront so your customers’ hesitation is reduced and increases completed purchases.
- Simplifying the checkout process can make shopping faster and increase conversions.
- Save entered details and autofill to prevent frustration if errors occur while shopping, and thus improve cart recovery.
- Ask only essential details to shorten checkout and reduce drop-offs.
- Allow guest checkout without account creation to improve the first-time experience and encourage account creation later.
- Provide fast delivery options in order to increase satisfaction and repeat purchases.
- Maintain the website regularly to ensure smooth performance and a better user experience.
- Offer multiple payment methods so customers can pay their way and lower abandonment.
- Show testimonials and reviews, thus building trust and reassuring hesitant buyers.
- Create easy return policies that reduce risk perception for customers and encourage purchases.
- Send abandoned cart emails to recover lost sales and remind customers to complete orders.
- Offer discounts or incentives to give customers the final push to finish checkout.
These practices can be followed to reduce purchase abandonments and increase abandoned cart recovery.
Send personalized emails for cart recovery and reduce abandoned cart rates with Retainful.
Final Word
Cart abandonments can be a setback for your ecommerce store, but preventing and reducing abandoned cart rates is 100% possible by following these proven methods.
Now, you would have known the top reasons for cart abandonment and how to reduce abandoned cart issues effectively with recovery strategies.
When done correctly, you can reduce cart abandonment, increase conversions, and recover lost sales automatically.
Also Read
- How to Reduce Shopify Abandoned Carts? – Strategies + Apps
- WooCommerce Abandoned Cart – An Ultimate Guide
- 11 Best WooCommerce Abandoned Cart Plugins to Recover Lost Sales
Frequently Asked Questions
Unexpected costs sit on top of cart abandonment reasons, with a 48-50% rate.
The average cart abandonment rate is 70%, and nearly three-fourths of the sales aren’t converted.
Customers might consider factors like secure payments, shipping, return policies, etc.
It is triggered when customers add an item to their shopping carts and end up leaving without purchasing it.
1. Cart abandonment – When a customer leaves the store after adding products to their cart
2. Checkout abandonment – When a customer proceeds to the checkout page but does not complete the purchase
Improve checkout conversions by,
1. Showing social proof
2. Providing discounts
3. Provide guest checkout
4. Provide multiple payment options
5. Develop a simple checkout process
Measuring the cart abandonment rate will give you the percentage of visitors who visit but don’t complete a purchase (conversion rate).
Yes, cart abandonment emails can win back nearly 20% of abandoned carts.
You can say a set of things that leads to conversion, like
1. Reminding the customers about the products
2. Insisting to make the purchase with discounts
3. Using Fear of Missing Out, etc.
By using an email marketing tool, you can have clear data about every process of an abandoned cart. Retainful is a powerful tool for recovering abandoned carts.
