Shopify Cart Abandonment occurs when a consumer shopping online at a Shopify store exits the website before checking out. These are lost revenue opportunities and hence need to be taken seriously by the Shopify stores. This comprehensive guide walks you through the reasons for cart abandonment, how to overcome abandoned cart problems and increase revenue on Shopify, and so on.
Shopify Cart Abandonment Overview
Cart Abandonment Statistics
Here are the top 5 cart abandonment statistics you should be aware of. For more information on these (and their complete list of 15 statistics), check out the 15 Cart Abandonment Statistics article on Drip.
1. 69.57 Percent of Carts Are Left Behind in All Shopping Carts Across the Board
If you Google "shopping cart abandonment rate," you'll find information from different studies that range from 56% to as high as 81%. The Baymard Institute's most recent data seems to be the most reliable because they used data from 41 different studies to figure out that the average rate of cart abandonment is just under 70%. This says that 7 out of 10 shoppers won't finish their purchase, which is a number that many online store owners should find alarming.
2. The Abandonment Rate for Mobile Users Is Even Higher, at 85.65%
Even more scary for store owners is this statistic. Especially because more people are buying things with their phones, it's more important than ever to fully optimize your e-commerce store for mobile users. You can do this by increasing the speed of your mobile site, cutting down your copy to only include the most important information, using "mobile accordions" to organize information well, and keeping the most important parts of your site above the fold.
3. E-Commerce Brands Lose $18 Billion in Sales Every Year Because People Leave Items in Their Shopping Carts
This is a huge number to keep in mind, even though it's just a guess about how much money will be made. At $18 billion per year, it has an astronomical effect on revenue. In fact, over $4 trillion of products will be abandoned in eCommerce carts in just the next year. This issue is something that Shopify merchants can no longer ignore.
4. Optimizing the Checkout Process Can Increase Sales by 35.62 Percent
This is good news! E-commerce brands don't have to sit back and take the hit when people leave items in their carts. Experts say that if you use the right checkout optimization strategies, you can boost conversions by a whopping 35.62 percent. To make these strategic changes, you need to figure out what's going wrong and work hard to improve your e-commerce site's design, promotions, offerings, checkout flow, and so on.
5. Extra Costs Are the Main Reason People Stop Shopping
Extra costs like shipping, taxes and fees were by far the biggest deal-breaker. It is extremely important to be clear about extra costs. 55% of all shoppers state this is why they abandon carts. This number also shows that you should definitely consider making shipping free or at least cheap. When shipping is free, 79% of people are more likely to buy something online. So, if you aren't already doing it, think about using free shipping as an incentive in your cart-abandonment emails if you aren't already.
How To Calculate Cart Abandonment
To understand what you need to do, it’s vital to figure out what your abandoned cart rate baseline is and go from there. Cart abandonment is calculated by knowing the difference between the number of successful sales and the number of visitors who added an item to the cart.
It’s actually a simple calculation - Abandoned Cart Rate = (number of visitors who added item to cart - number of successful sales) / number of visitors who added item to the cart. To get the Abandoned Cart Rate as a percentage, simply multiply the above rate by 100.
In your Shopify admin, go to Analytics > Dashboard. Under the Dates section at the top, select Last 90 Days. When the dashboard reloads, head to the Online store conversion rate, make a note of the number of sessions Added to Cart, and Sessions converted.
Use the following formula to calculate the Abandoned Cart Rate: [(Added to Cart Sessions - Sessions converted) / Added to Cart Sessions] * 100
Top Five Cart Abandonment Reasons
Now, to be fair to the e-commerce industry, a lot of cart abandonments just happen because of how people use e-commerce sites. For example, many people will just look around, compare prices, save items for later, look for gift ideas, etc. These are mostly cart and checkout abandonments that can't be helped.
In fact, 58.6% of US online shoppers have left a shopping cart because "I was just looking around/I wasn't ready to buy" in the last 3 months, according to our most recent study. Most of these people will quit before they even start the checkout process. This habit of “window shopping” became increasingly frequent during the pandemic and is still growing today. That being said, if we take out the people who were "just browsing" and look at the rest of the reasons why people left, we get the following top five reasons for cart abandonment:
#1: Extra Costs (Shipping, Taxes, Fees)
As mentioned above, extra costs are absolutely the top reason for cart abandonment. According to Baymard.com’s research (depending on the survey), anywhere from 48% to 55% of all shopping carts are abandoned due to unexpected extra costs. Shipping is free in many online shopping opportunities, if you do not offer free shipping, you should consider it. Or at least, be upfront about what your shipping fees are. Also, taxes and other fees are also major deterrents.
#2: Account Creation Required
Consider offering a “guest checkout” option. 24% of all shoppers abandon their carts if they are required to create an account to make a purchase. Shoppers do not like having to take the time to create an account, especially if they do not think they will become repeat shoppers.
#3: Slow Delivery
If an item that a shopper is buying will take too long to be delivered to them, 22% of shoppers will abandon their cart. Chances are fairly good they will find the item elsewhere with faster (and likely, free delivery)
#4: Lack of Trust with Company and Payment Information
Admit it, we’ve all been there. Clicked on an ad for something that you really want to buy but get to the site and it seems untrustworthy. There’s just an overall feeling of “this site is not safe.” Not to worry though, even though 18% of all shoppers abandon their carts because of feeling the site is not trustworthy, there are ways to leverage this potential issue on your site. There are a lot of ways to make people trust your site more.
The easiest way to show customers that your store can be trusted is through different types of social proof. The process of optimizing product pages should include this step. Use what customers have said. Use reviews of products. Use a trust badge. Use endorsements. Give your full contact information, like a phone number, as well as pictures and bios of you and your employees. All of these things show your customer that they are working with a real person who cares about their experience and will keep their personal information safe.
#5: Long and Complicated Checkout Process
This reason for cart abandonment is similar to number 2 (creating a new user account).
Long and confusing checkout processes are annoying to customers. Oftentimes, unnecessary forms contribute to nervousness and can even become confusing. All of this contributes to a poor experience, resulting in 17% of shoppers abandoning their carts.
The solution is to minimize form elements. Only ask for necessary information. Also, streamline your site's navigation. Reducing the "number of screens" from initiation to completion is a wonderful way to reduce time.
How To Reduce Shopify Cart Abandonment and Increase Revenue
Offer Low Cost or Free Shipping
Again, this is the number one reason for abandoned carts across the board. If you don’t offer free shipping, you should.
Simplify Checkout Process as Much as Possible
The easier it is to checkout, the faster the customer gets their order. It is all connected.
Increase Trust Using Social Proof
Consider using an app that helps create social proof for shoppers. One such app is NextSale. They offer social proof for customers to see to increase confidence as a form of social proof.
Remove All Mandatory Account Registration Steps
Seriously consider making a guest checkout option. This will help customers sell through their checkout without committing to account creation. Alternatively, you can offer account registration with the least amount of required fields possible.
Offer More Payment Options
The payment options today are endless, but you need to stay on top of what your competitors are offering.
Offer a Flexible Shopify Return Policy
Customers can be unsure if they will be happy with what they buy, especially clothing and shoes.
If you have a flexible Shopify return policy with an effortless way to process returns, then you can reduce your cart abandonment.
There are several apps that help simplify this process, such as Rich Returns -which is a returns solution built to power this post-purchase experience and to help you and your customers to grow better.
How to recover Shopify Abandoned carts
Make Use of Shopify Cart Recovery Tools
Consider using some of Shopify’s cart recovery tools such as SMS, emails, and messenger notifications for customers who may have abandoned their carts. Sometimes you can even offer discounts in the notifications if they come back. The possibilities are vast with this option.
Use retargeting ads
Sometimes people are not ready to commit, they are just browsing, but a bit of a reminder in the form of a video ad or display ad on their favorite website or social media platform can push them over the finish line and commit to purchasing from you.
Shopify Abandoned Carts FAQ
How do I stop cart abandonment on Shopify?
We covered many steps you can take above, but another idea would be to make sure you not only offer coupon codes, but you make them clearly and easily accessible. Up to 8% of shoppers have admitted to abandoning carts due to not finding a coupon code.
Overall, the statistics speak for themselves, but the answers are much easier to implement with the steps we’ve suggested in this article. Calculate your store's cart abandonment rate and then start implementing some of these steps and watch your abandonment rate go down.