Infographic: Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate and Statistics
For eCommerce sites, knowing why a customer abandons their shopping cart is at the top of their list. In what is typically the last step toward a conversion, the average shopping cart abandon rate is approximately 65%, a number that should concern any business.
While the reasons for a customer abandoning their cart after adding products to it ranges from user to user, eCommerce best practices provide us with some of the more obvious reasons as to why this event occurs. Among the most common reasons are High Shipping Costs (44%), a customer not being ready to make the purchase (41%) and a high product price (25%).
⚡ Speed Run Notes
- Cart abandonment is misdiagnosed as price sensitivity when it is actually commitment anxiety. Users abandon because the final page forces a decision, and the decision feels heavy. Lower prices help marginally; lowering the perceived weight of the decision helps dramatically. The psychology is the opportunity.
- The single biggest recoverable chunk comes from removing the account-creation requirement. Forced signups double abandonment. Guest checkout recovers most of that loss instantly. Brands still forcing signups are trading a one-time database entry for thousands of dollars in foregone orders — every day.
- CD8 (Loss Avoidance) is the drive that actually closes carts. The subtle framing that “you'll lose this if you leave” converts better than any discount. Saved carts, restock alerts, price-drop reminders — all CD8 plays. Used honestly they work. Used manipulatively they poison the brand.
- Shipping cost surprises are the number-one abandonment cause and the number-one fixable one. Users expect a number and see a bigger one. The shock, not the amount, is what kills the sale. Showing shipping early in the flow preserves the sale even if the number is identical. Transparency converts.
- The deepest move: turn abandonment into a two-way conversation instead of a one-way recovery email. A “tell us why you didn't buy” option recovers more data than revenue, and the data makes the next hundred checkouts better. The highest-impact abandoned-cart email is the one that asks a question instead of making an offer.
Table of Contents
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
Top 10 Checkout Conversion Problems
In the following infographic, another important area highlighted are conversion optimization problems during the checkout process. The top 10 reasons for this in no particular order are:
- Insecure checkout
- Requiring unnecessary information
- Not displaying visitor’s progress in the checkout process
- Losing customer input when a submission causes an error
- Not allowing for “Guest Checkout”
- Displaying website navigation during the checkout process
- Layout page design that conflicts with the eye flow
- Displaying discount code box late in the checkout
- Using cross-sells and up-sells during the checkout process
- Multiple calls to action buttons with the same design and in close proximity
Infographic
Key Takeaways
In reviewing the infographic, some things to keep in mind are the following:
How does your site match up against the check-list of items?
Is your site falling behind in areas that are pointed out as common reasons for conversion problems? Use the infographic not only as an informative resource, but as a tool to improve your own website.
Are you optimizing?
As search engines are often the biggest driver of traffic and conversions, making sure that your website is search engine optimized is crucial for success. Ignoring SEO early on can have severe consequences long-term as it will become harder to improve the search engine readiness of your site as time passes.
In addition, making sure your site is optimized to lead to conversions is something that shouldn’t be ignored. This includes where ‘buy now’ buttons are as well as items like where to put newsletter sign-ups.
Is your site ready for the future of eCommerce?
Aside from search engines, social networks are a major driver of traffic to eCommerce sites and conversions. Whether you are starting a brand new eCommerce site or working with a pre-existing one, consider how your site will fare in the next 6 months, as well as the next 2 years. Are you ready for social integrations or is the current eCommerce platform you use limited in growth potential?
What kind of statistics are you seeing in regards to customer drop-offs? How are you improving your shopping cart abandonment rate? Let us know in the comments below.
Infographic credit to Invesp
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- What is Gamification? Definition, Examples & Framework
- Top 10 Marketing Gamification Cases
- Top 10 eCommerce Gamification Examples
- 90+ Gamification Examples & Cases with ROI Stats
- Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges & Leaderboards
