Checkout Abandonment
Checkout abandonment measures shoppers who reach your checkout but leave before paying. Learn how to calculate it, benchmark it by vertical, and recover the revenue.
Checkout Abandonment
The share of shoppers who start checkout but leave before completing payment.
Checkout abandonment is the pattern of shoppers reaching your checkout page — typically after clicking through cart — and then leaving without paying. It is the narrowest, most expensive drop-off in the funnel, because every abandoner has already declared purchase intent and incurred your full acquisition cost.
The metric is diagnosed through funnel analysis and session replay: where in the checkout flow people stall, which fields cause hesitation, which payment methods get rejected. Recovery splits into on-site fixes (UX, trust, payment options, shipping clarity) and off-site reminders (email and SMS sequences that pull abandoners back to finish).
Checkout abandonment is distinct from cart abandonment. Cart abandonment counts everyone who adds a product and never reaches checkout. Checkout abandonment is tighter: the shopper has already clicked Checkout, seen the form, and then bailed. Different problem, different fix.
Why it deserves its own metric: a 70% cart abandonment rate is normal browsing behaviour, but a 70% checkout abandonment rate means your payment flow is leaking high-intent revenue. Isolating this stage is the first step in any serious checkout optimization programme.
Checkout Abandonment Rate = (Checkouts Started - Orders Completed) / Checkouts Started
Checkouts Started
Checkouts Started
Unique sessions that reached the first checkout step (contact, shipping, or payment page).
Orders Completed
Orders Completed
Sessions from the same cohort that finished payment and saw the thank-you page.
A Shopify apparel store reviews last month's funnel.
Checkouts Started: 8,400
Orders Completed: 3,360
→ 60% checkout abandonment rate
Six out of ten shoppers who reached checkout left without paying. That is at the high end of apparel norms — likely culprits are surprise shipping cost or a forced account creation step.
Track the rate weekly and segment by device, payment method, and traffic source. Mobile abandonment usually runs 10-15 points above desktop. If one segment is dramatically worse, that is your first hypothesis for testing.
Typical checkout abandonment rate by vertical and device
| Vertical | Desktop | Mobile | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apparel & fashion | 52% | 65% | 58% |
| Beauty & personal care | 48% | 61% | 55% |
| Home & furniture | 61% | 72% | 67% |
| Consumer electronics | 55% | 68% | 62% |
| Health & supplements | 45% | 57% | 51% |
| Food & beverage (DTC) | 42% | 54% | 48% |
Top reasons shoppers abandon checkout, in roughly the order they show up in session replay: unexpected shipping cost, forced account creation, slow page load on mobile, limited payment options (no Apple Pay, no Klarna), and trust signals missing on the payment step. Most stores can claw back 15-25% of lost revenue by fixing the top two.
Frequently asked questions
Under 50% is strong for most verticals. 50-65% is typical. Above 70% signals a structural problem — usually shipping cost, payment options, or a slow mobile checkout — and should be the top priority in your checkout optimization roadmap.
Cart abandonment counts everyone who added to cart and never reached checkout — often just browsing. Checkout abandonment counts only those who clicked Checkout and then left. The second group has higher intent and is more recoverable, which is why it warrants its own metric.
Build a funnel exploration with begin_checkout as the entry step and purchase as the conversion step. The drop-off between them is your checkout abandonment rate. Segment by device_category to spot mobile-specific leaks.
Yes — they typically recover 8-15% of abandoned checkouts when the sequence is three emails over 24 hours. The first email goes out within 30-60 minutes, while intent is still warm. SMS reminders layered on top can add another 3-5 points of recovery.
Usually, yes. Adding Apple Pay and Google Pay alone cuts mobile checkout abandonment by 5-10 points on most Shopify stores. Buy-now-pay-later options like Klarna or Afterpay help in apparel and furniture, where average order value pushes shoppers toward instalments.
Yes. Forced account creation is one of the top three abandonment causes in every study going back a decade. Offer guest checkout by default and invite account creation on the thank-you page instead — you keep the order and still capture the lifecycle data.
Under 2.5 seconds Largest Contentful Paint on mobile. Every additional second past that adds roughly 7% to abandonment. Heavy third-party scripts (chat widgets, multiple tracking tags, heatmap recorders) are the usual culprits — audit and consolidate them.
It is the single biggest driver. Surveys consistently put unexpected shipping cost at 45-50% of stated abandonment reasons. Either show shipping in cart before checkout starts, offer a free-shipping threshold, or both. Hidden costs revealed at the payment step cause the steepest drop-off.
On Shopify Plus, yes — you have full checkout.liquid or Checkout Extensibility access and can split traffic. On standard Shopify the checkout is locked, so testing focuses on the cart and pre-checkout upsell pages, with checkout itself optimised through native settings and apps.
It is the diagnostic metric that drives the whole programme. Checkout optimization is the practice; checkout abandonment rate is the scoreboard. You measure it, segment it to find the worst-performing step or device, ship a fix, and re-measure — that loop is the work.
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