Reduce cart abandonment: what keeps shoppers in the cart

1 Know the reasons before you act

Averaging 50 studies, Baymard puts the abandonment rate at 70.22%. Not all of those are lost sales: 42% of surveyed US shoppers had abandoned a cart because they were just browsing. Baymard leaves that group out of the reasons.

Among the rest, extra costs that are too high lead with 40%, followed by slow delivery, not trusting the site with card details, and being forced to create an account.

2 Show the full cost before the cart

One reason is easy to fix: 12% of those who abandon told Baymard they couldn't see or calculate the total cost up front. In an older Baymard study, 64% of users already looked for shipping costs on the product page.

So state shipping costs or the free-shipping threshold right by the buy button. In the EU, price display rules also require you to say whether shipping costs apply.

3 Set a reachable threshold and show the distance

You can set up free shipping over a set order amount in Shopify without an app, through shipping rates or a free-shipping discount. Baymard recommends not stating the threshold only in a banner, but telling shoppers in the cart how much is left, updated live.

Research on the goal gradient suggests why that could work: in a café rewards program, customers bought faster the closer they got to the free coffee. The study was about stamp cards, not carts, so the effect in a cart is plausible but hasn't been measured.

4 Don't force an account

18% of those who abandon name forced account creation. There's a hidden side effect in Shopify too: if you require sign-in before checkout, Shopify hides express buttons like Apple Pay in the cart. Keep sign-in optional, and check what's set under your checkout settings.

5 Offer the payment methods shoppers expect

In Baymard's survey, 9% of those who abandoned said there weren't enough payment methods. Preferences differ by market: in Germany, for example, PayPal and pay by invoice together accounted for more than half of online revenue in 2024, according to EHI.

Also show accepted payment methods early, in the footer or on the product page, so nobody finds out at the last step.

6 Give a delivery date instead of "3 to 5 business days"

20% of those who abandoned found delivery too slow. Sometimes it isn't slow, just badly explained: Baymard watched users do mental math or open a calendar at "3 to 5 business days". 41% of the stores studied gave no delivery date.

Add transit times to your shipping rates and Shopify shows them at checkout. A date on the product page needs a theme that supports it, or an app.

7 Shorten the form

An average US checkout shows 23.48 form elements, according to Baymard (14.88 if you count only the form fields); 12 to 14 elements would be ideal. In Shopify you can set company name, address line 2 and phone to "Don't include" or "Optional". Careful: if company name is required, some express payment options like Apple Pay disappear.

8 Turn on the reminder email, without a discount by default

Shopify counts a checkout as abandoned when the customer entered their email and the purchase stays open for more than ten minutes. The automatic reminder runs through Shopify Messaging and is free. By default it goes only to customers who agreed to marketing emails, which is the cautious choice in many markets.

Baymard explicitly lists discount offers under what doesn't work: they only treat the symptom. On top of that, customers who get a code in every reminder can learn to wait for the email before buying.