How to reduce cart abandonment

A shopper fills a cart, reaches the last screen, and leaves. It happens to about seven in every ten carts. Baymard Institute puts the average at 70.19%, drawn from years of checkout research across the industry.

Some of that is browsing, and browsing is fine. But a large share leaves for reasons you can name: a shipping cost that showed up too late, a forced account, a checkout that asked for too much. This is the work that clears those reasons, in the order it pays off.

Where the number comes from

The 70.19% is an average, and it moves with the device. Phones carry most of the traffic and lose the most of it.

That last row is where the money is. Baymard estimates the average large store can lift its checkout conversion by about a third through checkout design alone. Most of this post is that work.

Why people leave

Baymard asked shoppers who abandoned a cart, for reasons other than just looking, why they stopped. They could pick more than one. The answers repeat from store to store.

Source: Baymard Institute, reasons for abandonment. Read the top of the list again. The first four are all cost and effort at the checkout, and they’re the four you have the most control over.

The fixes, in order

Ranked by how much of that list they clear, and how little they cost you to ship.

1. Put every cost on the page before the last screen

The most common reason people leave is a cost they didn’t expect. Shipping, tax, and fees that only appear at checkout read as a bait and switch, even when they aren’t. Put them on the product page and in the cart, early. If you can, set a free-shipping threshold and show how close the cart is to it. A shopper a few euros short will often add the item that gets them there.

It looks like this:

Cart3 items

Free shipping unlocked

Sweater ‘Jamila’

Added to clear the €3.10 gap

€27.92

Shipping€4.90€0.00

Cart saved€69.82

2. Let people buy as guests

A quarter of shoppers stop when a store makes them create an account first. Nobody wants a new password to check out once. Make guest checkout the default, then offer the account after the order, as one line: save these details for next time. You keep the sale and still get most of the sign-ups.

3. Keep the checkout to three or four steps

A checkout that runs long, or asks for the same thing twice, loses people. Baymard’s benchmark is three to four steps. Show a progress indicator, autofill the address, and cut every field you don’t truly need. That 35.26% a large store can regain lives mostly here.

4. Answer the one question holding the cart

Plenty of carts stall on a single unanswered question. Does this arrive before Friday. Will the code still work. Can I return it if the size is off. The shopper doesn’t want a form or a help center at 11pm. They want the answer, right there, while the cart is still open.

This is where Linra sits. It reads your catalog, your shipping rules, and your policies, and it answers in the chat before the tab closes. Not a deflection widget, a copilot that knows the order and can act on it. Once the question is answered, the checkout tends to finish itself.

5. Offer the payment methods people expect

One in ten shoppers leaves because the method they wanted wasn’t there. Cover the basics, cards and PayPal, and the wallets that skip the typing on a phone: Apple Pay, Google Pay. For a larger basket, a pay-later option like Klarna splits the cost into a few payments and keeps the shopper who’d otherwise balk at the total.

6. Make the phone checkout thumb-friendly

Phones lose more carts than anything else, at 85.65%. Most of it is friction that only shows up on a small screen: buttons too small to tap, forms that fight the mobile keyboard, a total you have to pinch to read. Test the checkout on a real phone, not a resized browser window, and lead with the wallet buttons so most people never type an address at all.

7. Show the return policy where the decision happens

A weak or hidden return policy costs about one cart in eight. If returns are free or easy, say so on the product page and in the cart, not only in the footer. Taking the what-if-it-doesn’t-fit hesitation off the table is often worth more than the returns themselves cost.

8. Earn trust at the payment step

Around one in six shoppers won’t hand a card to a site they don’t quite trust. Near the pay button, show the padlock, the card and wallet logos, and a real way to reach you. Reviews and a plain company name help. For customers in the EU, being clear about where their data sits earns the same trust.

9. Bring back the carts that still leave

Some carts leave anyway. A short follow-up brings a good share of them back. Send the first message about an hour out, while the intent is warm, a second the next day, and a third after about three days. A text tends to get read faster than an email. Hold any discount for the last message, so you don’t train people to abandon for a coupon.

Where to start

You don’t need all nine at once. In order of return for the effort:

1. Put costs on the page and turn on guest checkout. Both are quick, and together they speak to most of the reasons above.
2. Trim the checkout to three or four steps, then test it on a phone.
3. Add the wallets and a pay-later option.
4. Put Linra on the questions that stall a cart in real time, then set up the follow-up sequence for the ones that still slip.

Write down your current rate before you change anything. Abandonment rate is one minus completed orders over carts started, times a hundred. If a thousand carts start and three hundred check out, that’s 70%. You can’t tell what worked without the before.

The short version

Seven in ten carts get left, and most of them go for a handful of reasons you can read off a list. Show the full price early, don’t force an account, keep the checkout short, answer the question that’s holding the cart, and follow up on the rest. None of it is clever. All of it adds up.