In short
Cart abandonment refers to the process in which a customer places items in the basket of an online shop but then does not complete the purchase and leaves the shop without ordering.
What does cart abandonment mean?
The term describes one of the central metrics in e-commerce. As soon as someone has put a product in the basket, a clear intention to buy has been signalled. If an order still does not follow, this is called cart abandonment. Aggregated over many sessions, this gives the cart abandonment rate (in German Warenkorbabbruchrate), i.e. the proportion of baskets created that do not turn into a completed order.
The metric is so important because it is directly linked to money. An abandoned basket is not an anonymous visitor who only saw the home page but a prospect who was already far along in the purchase process. Every percentage point you win back here turns into revenue without you having to buy a single additional click through advertising. That is exactly what makes optimising the basket and checkout one of the most economical levers a shop has at all.
A clean distinction is important: not every abandonment is a problem you can solve. A considerable proportion of users deliberately leave products in the basket as a reminder, for price comparison or as a wish list and were never close to buying. This group can hardly be eliminated. The really interesting abandonments are those where someone wanted to buy and still dropped out during the process because something got in their way.
In B2B trade, the metric takes on a colour of its own. Orders there are often larger, several people are involved in the decision, and a basket sometimes only serves to prepare a quote or an internal approval. A buyer who puts together items and only places the order after consultation appears as an abandonment in the short term but is not a lost customer. That is why in B2B it is particularly important not to read the pure abandonment rate in isolation but to consider it together with features such as wish lists, quote requests and reordering.
How is the cart abandonment rate calculated?
The formula is deliberately kept simple and can be followed in almost any analytics set-up:
Cart abandonment rate = 1 − (completed orders ÷ baskets created)
So you divide the number of actual orders by the total number of baskets created, subtract the result from one and get the proportion of abandonments. The result is usually expressed as a percentage. A value of 0.70 means that 70 out of 100 baskets do not result in an order.
A detail that is often underestimated: the result depends heavily on what you define as the denominator. Do you count every basket created, every session with a basket or only unique users? Systems such as Shopware, Google Analytics 4 or a connected data warehouse can measure differently here. That is why the absolute number is less meaningful than its development over time and the comparison with your own history using the same measurement method.
A worked example
Let's take a Shopware shop that registers 8,000 baskets in a month. Of these, 2,400 lead to a paid order. The calculation is: 1 − (2,400 ÷ 8,000) = 1 − 0.30 = 0.70. The cart abandonment rate is therefore 70 per cent.
Now it gets interesting what even small improvements achieve. If the abandonment rate falls to 66 per cent thanks to a streamlined checkout, the completion rate rises from 30 to 34 per cent. 2,400 orders become 2,720 with the same traffic. With an average order value of 90 euros, this corresponds to around 28,800 euros of additional revenue per month, solely from four percentage points less abandonment. This calculation shows why work on the basket almost always pays off faster than a new advertising campaign.
Why do customers abandon the purchase?
The most reliable data on this topic comes from the Baymard Institute, a research company specialising in e-commerce usability. Baymard has combined 50 individual studies on the cart abandonment rate and calculated a documented average of 70.22 per cent (as of September 2025). Roughly speaking: of ten baskets, seven never become an order. This value has remained remarkably stable over the years.
Baymard also asked users who did not simply browse why they drop out at checkout. The most common avoidable reasons are shown in the following table. Multiple answers were possible, so the values do not add up to 100 per cent.
| Reason for abandonment | Share of respondents |
|---|---|
| Extra costs too high (shipping, taxes, fees) | approx. 40% |
| Delivery too slow | approx. 20% |
| Did not trust the site with credit card details | approx. 19% |
| Forced to create a customer account | approx. 18% |
| Checkout too long or too complicated | approx. 17% |
What stands out in this list: by far the biggest lever is not technical errors but unexpected costs. If shipping only appears on the last page of the checkout, the user feels caught off guard and drops out. Baymard also points out that around 42 per cent of US online shoppers simply leave a basket because they are only browsing and are not yet ready to buy. This group does not fall into any of the categories above and can hardly be moved by optimisation. The percentages above, on the other hand, relate to users with a genuine intention to buy, and that is exactly where your room for manoeuvre lies.
Desktop versus mobile
The device makes a clear difference. Across all studies, the abandonment rate on smartphones is noticeably higher than on desktop. The reason is obvious: small displays, typing on touch keyboards and more frequently interrupted sessions make every additional form step harder. An address field that hardly bothers anyone on desktop becomes a hurdle on a mobile phone. As the mobile share in German B2C, and increasingly also in B2B, is growing steadily, the quality of the mobile checkout now largely determines the overall abandonment rate. Anyone who only optimises the desktop view leaves most of the problem untouched.
Cart abandonment and checkout abandonment: the difference
The two terms are often used synonymously but refer to different phases. Cart abandonment covers every case in which products are in the basket but no order is placed, regardless of whether the user started the purchase process at all. Checkout abandonment is narrower: it only counts users who have already begun the ordering process, i.e. gone to the checkout and were supposed to enter address or payment details, and drop out there.
Why the distinction matters in practice: a checkout abandonment is a much stronger warning signal. This user was ready to buy, actively moved through the process and failed at a specific step. If your figures show that many only drop out at checkout, this points to tangible friction: missing payment methods, a mandatory account, a form with too many fields or a shipping cost shock shortly before the end. Pure cart abandonments before the checkout, on the other hand, include many wish-list users and are less often an acute problem. For reliable optimisation, you should measure both metrics separately.
How to lower the cart abandonment rate
The good news: most of the reasons for abandonment on Baymard's list can be addressed without you having to lower the price. The following measures target exactly the documented causes and are among the first checkpoints in every Shopware project.
- Show shipping and extra costs early. Communicate shipping costs on the product and basket page, not only in the last step. A shipping cost calculator or a clearly visible threshold for free shipping takes the force out of the biggest reason for abandonment.
- Offer guest checkout. Forcing customers to create an account demonstrably costs orders. A genuine guest checkout, optionally with the offer to create the account after the purchase, defuses this immediately.
- Provide the expected payment methods. If the preferred payment method is missing, abandonment is often unavoidable. In the German market, purchase on invoice, PayPal, direct debit and credit card are a must. Check on the basis of your own data which method is wanted but not available.
- Streamline the mobile checkout. Reduce form fields to what is necessary, use suitable keyboard types for numbers and email, offer address autocompletion and keep buttons large enough for the thumb. Every step saved pays off twice on a smartphone.
- Make trust visible. Trust marks such as Trusted Shops, visible SSL notices, clear return conditions and genuine customer reviews address security concerns directly at the point where the credit card number is to be entered.
- State delivery times realistically and prominently. A concrete, reliable delivery promise beats vague wording. If fast delivery is possible, it belongs clearly in the basket.
In addition, an automated cart abandonment email is worthwhile: a friendly reminder of the basket left behind, ideally with the specific products. It brings back some of the users who dropped out but never replaces work on the structural causes. Anyone who uses the email to cover up a broken checkout is treating the symptom rather than the disease. The basis of each of these measures remains clean measurement: only when you see exactly where in the funnel your users drop out can you optimise in a targeted way instead of by gut feeling.
Frequently asked questions about cart abandonment
What is a good cart abandonment rate?
There is no fixed target value, because industry, range and price level vary widely. The average of 70.22 per cent documented by Baymard serves as a guide. If you are well below it, your checkout is performing above average. More meaningful than the comparison with the market, however, is your own trend using a constant measurement method.
How do I calculate the cart abandonment rate?
The formula is: 1 − (completed orders ÷ baskets created). With 8,000 baskets and 2,400 orders, this gives 1 − (2,400 ÷ 8,000) = 0.70, i.e. an abandonment rate of 70 per cent. What matters is that you define the denominator consistently.
What is the difference between cart abandonment and checkout abandonment?
Cart abandonment covers every uncompleted basket, including pure wish-list users. Checkout abandonment only counts users who actively started the ordering process and then abandoned it. Checkout abandonment is the sharper warning signal, because customers who were already ready to buy are lost here.
What is the most common reason for cart abandonment?
According to Baymard, unexpectedly high extra costs such as shipping, taxes and fees are the most common avoidable reason, named by around 40 per cent of respondents. That is why early, transparent display of all costs is the most effective single measure against abandonment.
Do cart abandonment emails really help?
Yes, they win back some of the users who dropped out, especially if they are sent promptly and contain the specific products. But they are a follow-up tool, not a substitute for a low-friction checkout. Fix the structural causes first, then follow up by email.