A Detailed Guide with Research Statistics on Cart Abandonment

An “abandoned cart” is what happens when a client leaves an online business without paying for their purchases. This is typically brought on by the consumer running out of time to finish the transaction, becoming sidetracked, or running into a website fault. Even if the majority of abandoned carts are never finished, they can still be a significant source of lost sales for online retailers.

WooCommerce is unfortunately not immune to experiencing online shopping cart abandonment, just like any other e-commerce business. WordPress says that up to 80% of carts for WooCommerce may be abandoned. Additionally, the overall cart abandonment rate for Ecommerce sites (not just WooCommerce) is about 70%. There is a tremendous amount of unrealized profit there. So, controlling cart abandonment is essential if you want to optimize your sales and keep your business growing.

Understanding Cart Abandonment

What is Cart Abandonment?

Cart abandonment is one of the main issues that online retailers encounter. When a consumer adds some items to their basket but does not complete the checkout process or cancels their transaction in the middle of it, this is known as cart abandonment. Instead, while consumers browse and compare costs, they are utilizing their basket more as a “wishlist.” 2022 had an average global cart abandonment rate of 69.57%.

The number of goods that are abandoned after being put in the shopping basket is shown by the cart abandonment rate. It is determined by dividing the total amount of transactions that were begun by the total amount of transactions that were completed.

Because a high abandonment rate may indicate a bad user experience or a difficult checkout process, the cart abandonment rate is a crucial measure for online shopping platforms.

Why does Cart Abandonment Occur?

Why does Cart Abandonment Occur?

Sadly, eCommerce businesses frequently suffer from abandoned carts. What causes this to occur? Shoppers may leave their trolleys empty for a number of reasons, including:

  • A decline in interest in the goods added to the cart.
  • The client discovered a more affordable offer on a rival website.
  • Added or unexpected expenses, such as shipping charges, taxes, etc.
  • The consumer had difficulties throughout the checkout procedure.
  • The shipping and handling costs at a store are excessive.
  • The consumer had doubts about the store’s reliability.

Understanding Abandoned Cart Recovery

ELEX WooCommerce Abandoned Cart Recovery with Dynamic Coupons plugin

It’s not the end of the world if a consumer abandons their shopping basket in your WooCommerce store. In reality, there are a number of techniques to get those carts back and make the sale, including the ones listed below:

Approximately 69.99% of shoppers leave their carts on average across all industries. However, one effective approach to lower this number is by adding plugins and tools to your business.

  • Retargeting techniques and email marketing campaigns can increase your chances of a conversion by bringing back 3 out of 4 visitors to your website.
  • According to WooCommerce, following up with a brief email may help their business recover up to 30% of lost transactions.
  • A little over 45% of cart abandonment notifications are viewed, and 21% of those click-throughs result in visitors returning to the page.
  • A purchase is subsequently made by 50% of users who click on a cart abandonment advertising or email.

In addition, tools for profit and revenue analysis and cart abandonment trackers can assist you in identifying your most “at-risk” consumers and pinpointing the elements of your business that might be contributing to cart abandonment.

Cart Abandonment Recovery Email Statistics

A consumer indicates they were thinking about making a purchase when they take the time to add anything to their online shopping cart. Simply put, something was keeping them from following through. Sometimes all it takes to get someone to think twice is a little nudge.

Retailers have had success reminding these shoppers to finish their purchases with cart abandonment emails. The fact that they are delivering to a very engaged audience and that the email content is relevant, dynamic, and highly tailored with a focus on a particular product and individual messaging for each contact may be credited to their success.

Email marketers may succeed by focusing on these elements. Purchase rates from cart abandonment emails are higher than 10%.

Even with a 10% conversion rate, it still leaves 90% of users who receive an email reminder but don’t complete their transaction. If you send one or two more follow-up emails, your chances will rise. According to research, sending three cart abandonment emails instead of just one increased revenue by 69%.

However, it’s crucial to know when to stop trying. When you email a customer more than three times, you run the risk of overloading them.

Total Recoverable Amount

The typical large-sized e-commerce site may achieve a 35.26% boost in conversion rate through improved checkout design, if they solely concentrate on checkout usability issues that have been shown to be solvable throughout the previous large-scale checkout testing at Baymard Institute for a decade. And this is in spite of evaluating the checkout procedures on major US and European e-commerce websites like Walmart, Amazon, and many more.

The potential for a 35.26% increase in conversion rate amounts to $260 billion in missed orders that can only be recovered through a better checkout flow and design when we consider the combined e-commerce sales of the US and EU, which total $1103 billion.

This information is surprising, in order to understand the full width of the issue, let us take a look at a few cart abandonment statistics that are important to know.

Average Abandoned Cart Rate

Average Abandoned Cart Rate Statistics

Search for “shopping cart abandonment rate” on Google to discover data from a wide range of research. The average rate across all industries is 69.57 percent. These rates are subject to change and may range from 56 to 81 percent.

The Baymard Institute’s most recent data, however, depicts the situation most accurately. The average cart abandonment rate is just around 70%, according to calculations made using data from 41 separate research. Therefore, about seven out of ten customers won’t finish their transaction.

Average Abandoned Cart Rate for Mobiles

Average Abandoned Cart Rate for Mobiles Statistics

A Higher Abandonment Rate of 85.65% is common among Mobile Users. According to a study by Barilliance, the smaller the screen size, the more likely a buyer is to not make a purchase.  This is worrisome because for the first time ever, most online shoppers will shop on smartphones rather than on PCs.

This highlights how critical it is to thoroughly optimize your e-commerce site for mobile customers, which can be achieved using the following strategies:

  • Increasing the speed of your mobile site.
  • Designing your site content to only contain what is absolutely necessary.
  • Using Mobile Accordions (vertical menus containing the navigation) to efficiently organize information and preserve the most important information above the fold.

In order to continuously improve the mobile experience and make it as fluid as possible, it is also crucial to start developing a systematic A/B testing practice.

Average Revenue Loss for Brands Due to Cart Abandonment

Average Revenue Loss for Brands Due to Cart Abandonment

Due to cart abandonment, e-commerce businesses lose $18 billion in yearly sales revenue. Given that the US online retail business has an annual value of $905 billion, the impact on revenue is rather significant.

Cart abandonment has grown to be a critical problem that e-commerce companies can no longer afford to ignore, with around $5 trillion in goods estimated to be left unpurchased in digital carts alone next year.

Average Revenue Increase After Site and Checkout Optimization

The fact of the matter is that cart abandonment is not predestined to destroy e-commerce businesses. It causes temporary damage, but is fixable.

By employing the proper checkout optimization tactics, experts predict that conversions might rise by a staggering 35.62 percent. While it’s not simple, it is definitely possible to attain this amount.

Understanding what’s wrong and making a serious effort to enhance e-commerce site design, promotions, products, checkout flow, and other factors are ultimately what it comes down to.

Additional Costs are the Main Reason for Cart Abandonment

Additional Costs are the Main Reason for Cart Abandonment

The Baymard Institute also conducted an in-depth analysis to identify the causes of cart abandonment.

While there are a number of different considerations, shipping, taxes, and other additional expenditures were by far the largest turnoff.

This was identified as the cause for cart abandonment by 55% of survey respondents. Hence, it is crucial for businesses to be transparent about the cost of their services/products.

Mandatory Account Creation is the 2nd Reason for Cart Abandonment

The second most common cause of account abandonment is being compelled to create one. Cart abandonment was highly influenced by an eCommerce site requiring the creation of an account in order to checkout, according to 34% of respondents.

Especially if they just want to place a single order, no sensible individual would relish having to go through the needless procedure of registering an account. It appears that almost a third of online buyers share this sentiment.

Therefore, we strongly advise providing guest checkout so that customers may quickly make a purchase without going through the hassle of creating an account.

Free Shipping Plays a Huge Role in Combating Cart Abandonment

One of the most efficient ways to minimize shopping cart abandonment is to provide free delivery. If customers reach the checkout stage only to discover that an extra shipping price has been imposed, the majority of individuals are likely to abandon their carts.

The cost of any product’s shipping can occasionally exceed the price of the item itself. Why would a savvy online customer make a purchase from that merchant? You may either highlight free shipping on your product pages or offer it just to consumers who have abandoned their carts by sending an email to them.

When free delivery is offered, 79% of individuals are more likely to purchase online.

Website Loading Time Makes a Huge Difference

If a page doesn’t load in three seconds, 57% of users will leave the site.

We definitely don’t need to inform you that the majority of online buyers these days are a little antsy. However, this number reveals the precise amount of time you have before the bulk of potential clients depart your website.

Even more alarming is the fact that 80% of these consumers are one-time only, meaning they will not return to your website. Most people will avoid your website, once they discover it is slow.

In order to keep page loads under three seconds for all pages, you must work very hard to increase site performance.

Keep the Website and Checkout Process Simple and Minimalistic

Other important elements that affect the chance of someone making a purchase are shopping cart complexity and duration.

According to research by the Baymard Institute, almost a quarter, or 26% of customers abandon their shopping carts because the checkout procedure is either too long or too difficult.

According to other data from the Baymard Institute, new non-account consumers to e-commerce sites typically had 14.88 form fields and 23.48 form components.

However, experts claim that this is excessive and causes friction throughout checkout. When doing testing, they found that consumers were frequently scared and overwhelmed by a large number of form fields and choices.

The top e-commerce sites, however, have around half as many form fields and components and fully streamlined checkout routines (around 12 form elements and 7 form fields).

Following the best practices for form design should thus be a top priority if you want to reduce cart abandonment.  Here are a few methods to achieve it:

  • Use a “complete name” form rather than a first and last name field, 
  • Ask users to input their street address on a single line, and get rid of any optional entries that aren’t absolutely required.
  • Ask for a single type of verification rather than two or more (either phone number or email).

Save Customer Details such as Payment and Shipping Information

If they must enter their shipping or credit card information again, 55% of customers will abandon their shopping cart. This figure demonstrates how conversion rates are also severely impacted by any significant duplication in the checkout process.

According to Statista, 25% of customers and 30% of consumers, respectively, will abandon an online purchase if they are required to provide their shipping information again. Therefore, you must ensure that users of your website do not experience this problem.

Making the default value for these fields the customer’s billing information is an easy method to solve the problem with shipping information.

This can save time as several users will share the same billing and shipping information.

Non-Valid Coupon Codes can Reduce the Conversion Rate 

90% of customers utilize coupons, and 75% of consumers anticipate receiving coupons from retailers.

Without a question, this is a successful strategy for attracting new consumers and retaining those who already have them.  Conversion rates might go up when discount codes are made available.

However, nearly half of the customers, or 46% will abandon their purchase when they experience problems with a discount code that doesn’t function.

The key takeaway is that providing promotional codes is a smart move. But you must take care to make sure everything functions properly. Otherwise, there would be a lot of distrust, which will hurt conversion rates.

Optimize the Website for Mobile Users

A significant problem that causes nearly four out of ten mobile users, or 39%, to abandon their basket is difficulty entering their information throughout the checkout process.

Small buttons and an excessive amount of form fields, which I already highlighted, are the main causes of this. You’ll need the following to fix this problem:

  • A mobile-friendly layout for your online business.
  • To utilize big, easy-to-tap buttons to avoid mistakenly tapping another element.
  • Make information forms brief.

Retargeted Ads can help Recoup Lost Customers and Sales

When a shopper goes astray and leaves the site and cart abandoned, it feels like all hope is lost, but that’s not the case. Retargeted advertisements have been shown to be a successful method of attracting quality leads back to your shop.

Retargeted advertising is noticed by three out of four users, which is an impressive figure given how many users just shut off irrelevant ads. Over a quarter or 26% of those customers will click on the retargeted ad and visit your website again.

As a result, it is a strategy that is very effective and merits consideration.

Facebook and Google Display are Effective Tools to Retarget Customers

The Google Display Network reaches an astounding 90% of all Internet users, while Facebook only reaches 51% of all Internet users.

Facebook receives one trillion visits per month, compared to 180 billion for the Google Display network. So when retargeting cart abandoners, these are unquestionably the key platforms you should pay attention to.

You may recoup a sizable amount of lost sales with the proper strategy.

Cart Abandonment is at its Highest During the First Three Quarters of the Month

Cart abandonment tends to decline after the 25th of every month, according to patterns based on the day of the month. After then, it usually begins to pick up again towards the beginning of the second week of the next month.

This has a really straightforward explanation. Customers just browse for items to buy once they have been paid during the month (or from the 7th to the 25th). Therefore, it’s a good idea to set up your email drip campaign such that reminders are issued again after the 25th of each month if you’re utilizing cart abandonment emails, which you should certainly do.

The Travel Industry Suffers the Most Cart Abandonment

The Travel Industry Suffers the Most Cart Abandonment

Depending on the device being utilized, the typical cart abandonment rate can range from roughly 65% to 80%, but it also varies greatly by industry. However, the tourism industry has the greatest percentage of cart abandonment. According to SaleCycle’s eCommerce Stats Trends Report, it may reach 87%.

Travelers typically look for deals, which is one of the reasons behind this. Additionally, they often wait until the optimal day to reserve their lodging or flights. In order to obtain a better rate, numerous websites actually advise readers to book their flights on particular days or at particular times.

According to data provided by SaleCycle, the necessity for passengers to consult their fellow travelers before booking a trip is another major factor in this industry’s high rate. Other factors cited by SaleCycle were problems with the website’s functionality, a lack of payment choices, and a convoluted procedure, all of which also affected other sectors.

And with this, we complete our guide to the most important factors and statistics that play a huge role in cart abandonment and loss of revenue.

If you wish to learn ways to combat these issues, we recommend checking out, the 10 Best Abandoned Cart Recovery Strategies to Improve Your Sales.

Conclusion

The average cart abandonment rate concerns store owners since it is so substantial. It is unnerving to consider that the majority of your customers will abandon items in their shopping cart, which implies that e-commerce site owners have their job cut out for them.

But it’s undeniably a problem that can be fixed. These data on cart abandonment highlight some of the main causes of customer abandonment as well as the key areas where marketers should concentrate their efforts.

By addressing these crucial issues, you should be able to lower your cart abandonment rate and divert a sizable part of the customers who first decide not to make a purchase.

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