Cart abandonment rate

The cart abandonment rate measures the share of carts created that did not turn into a paid order within the same period. It is the indicator that reveals the size of the leak at the end of the funnel.

The formula

abandonment rate = (carts created − paid orders) ÷ carts created × 100

A store with 1,000 carts created and 250 paid orders has a 75% rate.

Two traps when measuring it: use the same window on both sides, and define what counts as a created cart. If the platform logs a new cart every time an item is added, the number inflates and the rate looks worse than it is.

The market average misleads

Published averages sit between 65% and 80%, and get cited as if they were a target. They are not. They mix categories with very different behaviors — whoever sells high-value items lives with a high rate because the decision takes longer, and that is not a flaw.

The useful number is your own, compared against itself over time. A rate falling month over month says more than a rate below any average.

Translate the percentage into money

A percentage does not move a team. This is the math that does:

monthly loss = carts abandoned in the month × average order value

An operation with 400 abandoned carts a month and a $35 average order value leaves $14,000 on the table. Recovering 10% of that is $1,400 a month — usually more than the cost of the tool doing the recovering.

This translation also sets the priority: if the rate is high but the average order value is low, the effort pays off less than fixing shipping costs or shortening checkout.

What to watch alongside it

The rate alone does not say where the problem is. Track it alongside the rate by payment method — Pix tends to abandon differently than card — and the recovery rate, which is how many of the people contacted came back. That second one shows whether the recovery operation is actually working.