Why 70% of Shopify Carts Are Abandoned — And What Actually Fixes It
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If you run a Shopify store, here is a number that should bother you: for every 10 people who add something to their cart, 7 of them leave without buying.
That is not a rounding error. That is the actual, documented average across ecommerce in 2025 — a 70% cart abandonment rate, confirmed by Baymard Institute across more than 50 studies. On mobile it is even worse, climbing closer to 75%.
Now make that personal. If your store does £10,000 a month in revenue, the maths suggests you are walking past something closer to £23,000 in potential sales every single month. Not because your products are wrong. Not because your prices are off. Because something between "add to cart" and "place order" is breaking the journey.
The good news is that most of those abandoned carts are recoverable — if you fix the right things. The bad news is that most merchants focus on recovery (chasing people after they leave) rather than prevention (fixing why they left in the first place).
This post covers both. By the end, you will know exactly why your customers are abandoning, which fixes are free and immediate, and how to think about recovery tools without wasting money on the wrong ones.
First: What Does Abandonment Actually Cost You?
Before we get into causes and fixes, it helps to understand what you are actually losing — in real numbers, not percentages.
Take a store with:
- 5,000 monthly visitors
- 3% conversion rate (industry average)
- £45 average order value
That store makes roughly £6,750 a month.
Now consider: if 70% of people who add to cart abandon, and the average add-to-cart rate is around 8% of visitors, that is 400 people adding to cart and 280 of them leaving. At £45 per order, that is £12,600 in abandoned carts every month — nearly double the store's actual revenue.
Even recovering 15% of those abandoned carts would add £1,890 per month. That is £22,680 per year from the same traffic, the same products, and the same prices.
This is why cart abandonment is worth your serious attention. It is the highest-leverage problem in ecommerce — and it does not require more ad spend to fix.
The 5 Real Reasons Customers Abandon (And Why Most Apps Only Fix One)
Here is where most advice goes wrong. It jumps straight to "send a recovery email" without asking why the cart was abandoned in the first place. The cause matters, because the fix is completely different depending on the reason.
1. Unexpected costs at checkout (48% of abandonment)
This is the single biggest cause, by a long margin. Nearly half of all cart abandonment happens because the customer reaches checkout, sees the total, and gets a shock.
It is almost always shipping. A product priced at £29 that costs £6.99 to ship feels dishonest to a customer who did not see the shipping cost until the final step. Even if the maths is perfectly reasonable, the surprise is what kills the sale.
The fix is not a recovery email. The fix is showing the total cost earlier. Add a shipping calculator to your product pages. Show a "free shipping over £X" bar at the top of your store. Make the total cost — including shipping — visible before the customer ever reaches checkout.
2. Forced account creation (26% of abandonment)
More than one in four abandoned carts happens because the store requires the customer to create an account before they can buy. For a first-time buyer who is not yet sure they trust your brand, this is a significant ask.
Think about it from the customer's perspective: they have found something they want, they are ready to pay, and then the store asks them to stop, create a username, verify an email address, and remember a password — before they have even decided if they will shop here again.
The fix is enabling guest checkout. Shopify makes this easy. Go to Settings → Checkout and set "Customer accounts" to optional or disabled. You can always ask them to create an account after the purchase, when they are already happy and have received their order.
3. A checkout process that takes too long (18% of abandonment)
Every extra step in your checkout is a chance for the customer to change their mind. Asking for information you do not need — like a phone number for a digital product, or a company name for a consumer purchase — adds friction that costs you sales.
Customers also abandon when the checkout feels slow. If your checkout page takes more than 3 seconds to load, you are losing measurable revenue. This is especially acute on mobile, where connections are less reliable and patience is shorter.
The fix is a checkout audit (more on this below). Go through your own checkout on a mobile device and count every tap required to complete a purchase. Each unnecessary tap is a potential exit point.
4. Security concerns and lack of trust (17% of abandonment)
First-time buyers on a store they have never heard of are making a judgement call about whether you are legitimate. If your checkout does not have visible trust signals — SSL certificate, recognisable payment logos, a clear returns policy — a significant portion will decide the risk is not worth it.
This is particularly important for newer stores with limited reviews or brand recognition. The checkout is not just where payment happens — it is where trust is either confirmed or lost.
The fix is adding trust signals at the point of decision. Display payment method logos (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Apple Pay). Add a short returns policy summary near the "Place Order" button. Show your SSL certificate badge. These cost nothing and directly address the customer's hesitation.
5. They were just browsing — but you can still win them back (8% of abandonment)
Some people add things to their cart with no immediate intention to buy. They are using the cart as a wishlist, comparing prices across stores, or waiting for payday. This group will not be converted by any checkout optimisation because they were never going to buy right now.
But they were interested enough to add to cart — which means they are excellent candidates for recovery outreach. A well-timed email or push notification 24–48 hours later, when they might be ready to make a decision, can capture a meaningful portion of this group.
The fix for this group is a recovery sequence — but only for this group. If you send recovery emails to everyone who abandons, you are mixing customers who left because of a broken experience (and will not come back regardless) with customers who were just browsing (and might).
The Free Checkout Audit: 20 Minutes That Can Change Your Numbers
Before you spend a single pound on a recovery app, do this. It takes 20 minutes, it is completely free, and it will show you exactly where your checkout is broken.
Step 1 — Buy from your own store on your phone. Not on your laptop, not on your desktop. On your phone. Use a real card. Go through the entire process as if you were a first-time customer. Note every moment of friction, confusion, or hesitation.
Step 2 — Check when shipping costs first appear. If the answer is "on the checkout page," you have the most common cause of abandonment in your store. Fix this before anything else.
Step 3 — Count the form fields. How many pieces of information does a guest customer need to enter to complete a purchase? If the number is above 8, you have unnecessary friction. Common culprits: company name, phone number (unless you need it for delivery), address line 2 as a required field.
Step 4 — Check your page speed. Go to PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) and enter your checkout URL. If your mobile score is below 50, you have a speed problem that is costing you conversions.
Step 5 — Look at your abandoned checkout report in Shopify. Go to Orders → Abandoned Checkouts. Look at where in the checkout process people are stopping. If most are abandoning on the shipping page, you have a cost shock problem. If they are abandoning on the payment page, you may have a trust or payment method problem.
Write down what you find. This is your priority list — fix these things before you pay for any app.
Thinking About Recovery Tools: What Actually Works
Once you have fixed the preventable causes, recovery tools make sense. But the market is crowded and confusing, so here is a clear framework for thinking about them.
Email recovery is the baseline. Shopify has a built-in abandoned checkout email that you can turn on for free in Settings → Checkout. It is limited (one email, no customisation of timing, no SMS) but it costs nothing and it works. Start here.
The timing matters more than the message. The highest-performing recovery emails go out between 1–4 hours after abandonment — close enough that the product is still in the customer's mind, far enough that it does not feel like surveillance. A second email at 24 hours captures a second wave. Beyond that, the returns diminish sharply.
Discounts in recovery emails are a double-edged sword. They work for recovering the sale, but they teach your customers to abandon deliberately in order to get a discount. Use them selectively — for high-value carts, for new customers, or as a last-resort third email — not as your default opening offer.
SMS and WhatsApp recovery has significantly higher open rates than email (closer to 98% vs 20–30% for email), but it requires a phone number — which means the customer got further into checkout before abandoning. It is also more intrusive, so it needs to be used carefully. One message, not a sequence.
Push notifications are underused. They reach customers who did not give you an email or phone number, they are free to send, and they appear directly on the customer's device. The limitation is that customers must opt in, which means they work better as a long-term strategy than an immediate fix.
The Priority Order: What to Do First
To summarise everything above into a clear action order:
This week (free, immediate):
- Enable guest checkout
- Add a shipping cost indicator to product pages
- Turn on Shopify's built-in abandoned checkout email
- Run your own checkout audit on mobile
This month (low cost):
- Review your checkout form fields and remove anything non-essential
- Add trust signals to your checkout page (payment logos, returns summary)
- Check your mobile page speed and address any issues under 50
When you have the above sorted:
- Consider a recovery app that adds SMS or WhatsApp to your sequence
- Set up a two-email recovery sequence with proper timing
- Test with and without a discount to see what your specific audience responds to
The merchants who recover the most abandoned carts are not the ones with the most sophisticated tools. They are the ones who fixed the preventable problems first, then used recovery as a top-up rather than a replacement for good checkout UX.
A Note on Expectations
No strategy will recover all 70% of abandoned carts — that is not how it works. Some of those people were always just browsing. Some had a genuine emergency. Some changed their minds for reasons that have nothing to do with your store.
A realistic target is to recover 5–15% of abandoned carts with a solid prevention and recovery strategy in place. On a £10,000/month store, that is still an extra £700–£2,100 in revenue per month from the same traffic.
That is worth the 20-minute audit.
