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Shopping cart abandonment rate

Shopping cart abandonment rate is the percentage of online shoppers who add items to their cart but leave your website without completing their purchase.

It's an important metric for ecommerce brands because it shows how many potential customers are leaving without buying anything. By monitoring and analysing the abandonment rate, ecommerce brands can identify issues and make improvements to increase conversion rates and revenue.

How to calculate your shopping cart abandonment rate 

Here's how to calculate your cart abandonment rate:

  1. Decide on a time frame you’re interested in looking into, like a month or a quarter.
  2. Gather data on the number of abandoned carts. If you’re using Shopify, this is easy to do - just go into your Shopify admin, then select ‘Orders’, then ‘Abandoned checkouts’.
  3. Gather date on the completed purchases during that same period.
  4. Divide the number of abandoned carts by the sum of abandoned carts and completed purchases.
  5. Multiply the result by 100 to get the percentage.

For example, if you had 500 abandoned carts and 1,500 completed purchases in a month, your calculation would look like this: (500 / (500 + 1,500)) * 100 = 25%.

4 tips to recover abandoned carts

Once you have the abandonment rate, it’s time to figure out why customers are leaving and take steps to reduce it. Common reasons for abandonment include unexpected costs, complicated checkout processes, and lack of trust.

To reduce cart abandonment, you could try:

  1. Simplify the checkout process and remove unnecessary steps.
  2. Clearly display the total cost, including any additional charges, upfront.
  3. Make good use of customer reviews to create trust in your brand.
  4. Use remarketing strategies like targeted emails or offering discounts to bring back abandoned customers.

The best cart abandonment solutions

Here are some platforms you could use to understand your shopping cart abandonment rate and automate abandoned cart email workflows:

  • Google Analytics: You can configure your Analytics account to track and measure cart abandonment rates.
  • Ecommerce platforms:Popular platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and BigCommerce all offer built-in analytics and reporting features to track cart abandonment.
  • Hotjar: Use Hotjar’s heatmap and session recording tools to visualise how your visitors interact with your website.
  • Klaviyo: One of the most popular DTC marketing tools out there, Klaviyo is a comprehensive email marketing platform. It specialises in automation and lets brands create automated abandoned cart email workflows.