Carts started vs completed
A funnel chart showing 100 carts started narrowing to about 30 completed orders, with the dropped portion shaded and labeled abandoned.
The standard formula is cart abandonment rate = 1 − (completed orders / cart-reachers). A site with 10,000 carts started and 2,500 completed orders has a 75% cart abandonment rate.
How it differs from related metrics
- Browse abandonment — the share of visitors who view a product page but never add to cart (88-93% in 2026).
- Checkout abandonment — the share of visitors who start checkout but don't finish (28-35% in 2026).
Why some abandonment is unavoidable
Part of cart abandonment is structural: visitors who were comparison-shopping or never really intended to buy. Even on best-in-class stores, the floor sits around 50-55%, so the goal is to recover the addressable share, not to reach zero.
Why shoppers abandon carts
The top stated reasons (Baymard 2026 reasons survey):
- Extra costs that surprised them at checkout (47%)
- Account creation required (24%)
- A long or complicated checkout (22%)
- Couldn't see the total cost up front (18%)
- Didn't trust the site with credit card details (17%)
For the full deep dive, see the cart abandonment in 2026 guide and the cart abandonment calculator.
Related terms
- Onsite conversion agent — the in-session recovery surface
- Proactive chat — a common recovery surface
- Conversion rate — the adjacent funnel metric
Last updated May 31, 2026.