- Baymard’s 70.22% cart abandonment rate is the average of 50 studies dated 2006 to 2025. [1]
- The individual figures run from 55.00% to 84.27%, and 33 of the 50 are from 2015 or earlier. [1]
- The newest entry, 71.72% for the first half of 2025, comes from a maker of cart recovery software for the German-speaking market. [2]
- Adding that one study moved the average from 70.19% to 70.22%. [3][1]
- Google Analytics starts counting at add to cart or at begin checkout, depending on the report. Shopify starts when an email is entered. [4][5][6]
- Baymard itself says a large portion of abandonment is ordinary browsing. [1]
- Measure your own rate one way, keep the definition fixed, and price a single point before you buy a tool.
Some version of “seven in ten carts are abandoned” appears in a great many checkout business cases. The source, when one is given, is a page maintained by Baymard Institute, a research firm that studies e-commerce usability. The page is admirably open about what the number is. It lists every study behind it. [1]
Reading that list changes what the number is good for.
What the average is made of
Baymard explains why the list exists: it needed abandonment statistics for its own checkout study, found “a myriad of articles citing the same sources, as well as large fluctuations in the actual abandonment rates,” and gathered them in one place. It then calculated an average “so it’s easy to cite just one number instead of 50 different ones.” [1]
The fluctuations are still there. We keyed in all 50 figures and they do average 70.22%. Only eight are dated 2020 or later. The companies named include SaleCycle, Fresh Relevance, Barilliance, Listrak, Kibo Commerce, IBM, Adobe, and Forrester. [1] Where two of them report on the same year, they can be far apart.
Baymard’s list gives 57.60% and 84.27% for 2020, a gap of almost 27 points, and 59.22%, 79.30%, and 81.08% for 2021. [1] No single year of online shopping produced all of those. The companies measured different stores with different rules.
The newest entry shows what a single study looks like. Uptain reports 71.72% for the first half of 2025, from “millions of users from over 1,500 online shops.” [2] The report describes Uptain as the leading software for winning back cart abandoners in the German-speaking market. Its definition is the widest available: “Users who add products to their cart but do not complete the purchase are considered cart abandoners.” [2]
That study is also the reason the famous number changed. Baymard’s checkout research page still gives the average as 70.19% and counts 49 statistics. [3] Remove Uptain from the list of 50 and the mean is 70.19%. One new data point in two years moved it by three hundredths of a point, because the other 49 have not changed.
The same word, counted from three places
Your own reports disagree with each other for the same reason the studies do. Each starts the count somewhere else.
| Report | Counting starts when | It ends at | Counts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics 4, Purchase journey [4] | A user adds to cart, after session start and product view | Purchase | Users, in a closed funnel |
| Google Analytics 4, Checkout journey [5] | A user begins checkout | Purchase, after shipping and payment steps | Users who began at the first step |
| Shopify, abandoned checkouts [6] | A customer has provided an email address | The checkout stays incomplete for more than ten minutes | Checkouts |
Google’s documentation defines abandonment rate step by step. In its example, 200 users complete one step and 140 complete the next, so the rate is 30%. [5] A store therefore has several abandonment rates in one report, and the one from add to cart to purchase will be at least as high as any of the others, because it includes everyone the later ones do.
Shopify’s figure is narrower again. Its help page says abandoned checkouts older than three months are deleted from the admin, and that some checkouts on the list may still come from bots. [6] A Shopify abandoned checkout count set beside Baymard’s 70% compares a subset with a mixture.
Work out your own rate, and what one point is worth
Use one report and one definition. The widest, add to cart to purchase, matches what the benchmark studies claim to measure.
Your cart abandonment rate
Take both numbers from the same report and the same period. In Google Analytics 4 they are the Add to cart and Purchase steps of the Purchase journey report.
Model: (added to cart − purchased) ÷ added to cart. The defaults are an illustration, not a benchmark.
Revenue from moving the rate
Before paying for a recovery tool or a redesign, price the change you expect from it.
Model: users who added to cart × points ÷ 100 × average order value. It assumes recovered orders are the same size as your average order and would not have come back on their own.
The second assumption in that note matters most. Baymard says so itself: “a large portion of cart abandonments are simply a natural consequence of how users browse ecommerce sites,” and its survey found that 42% of US online shoppers have abandoned a cart because they were just browsing or not ready to buy. [1] Some of those people return and buy without any reminder, so a recovery tool that claims every later order overstates itself. That is a question for a holdout test, as we described in our guide to incrementality testing.
What Baymard says can be fixed
Setting the browsers aside, Baymard’s survey ranks the other reasons shoppers gave. These are the leading ones. [1]
| Reason given for abandoning | Share of US online shoppers, per Baymard [1] |
|---|---|
| Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees) | 40% |
| Delivery was too slow | 20% |
| Did not trust the site with card information | 19% |
| The site wanted an account created | 18% |
| Checkout too long or complicated | 17% |
| Website had errors or crashed | 17% |
| Returns policy not satisfactory | 13% |
| Could not see the total cost up front | 12% |
These are shares of shoppers who say they have abandoned for that reason, not shares of abandoned carts, and the page does not give the survey’s size or date. [1] The top items are about price and delivery, which a redesign does not change.
On the part design can change, Baymard’s numbers are specific. Its June 2024 research says most sites need only 8 form fields in a checkout, and the average was 11.3, down from 12.7 in 2019. It found the number of fields matters more than the number of steps, and that 89% of benchmarked sites still split the name into more than one field. [7] The list page, for comparison, quotes an average of 14.88 form fields for US checkouts. [1]
One claim on the page deserves a label. Baymard says better checkout design could lift conversion by 35.26% at an average large site, and that this makes $260 billion of lost orders recoverable across combined US and EU e-commerce sales of $738 billion. [1] The arithmetic holds. The inputs are Baymard’s own testing and an undated sales total, and Baymard sells the audits that find the fixes. Use it as a statement of direction.
How to use the benchmark
- Quote 70.22% as what it is: an average of 50 published figures, most of them more than a decade old. [1]
- Pick one definition for your store and write it down. Add to cart to purchase, by users, is the closest to the studies.
- Track the steps separately. Cart to checkout and checkout to purchase fail for different reasons. [4][5]
- Compare with your own last quarter and last year, never with a vendor’s average.
- Check extra costs and delivery promises before you redesign forms. They top the list of reasons. [1]
- Count your checkout’s form fields against Baymard’s 8. [7]
- Price one point of improvement, then test whether the tool delivers it against a holdout.
Sources
- Baymard Institute · 50 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics 2026Primary for the list and the average. Last updated September 22, 2025. Baymard sells UX research and audits.
- Uptain · Focus Cart Abandonment: First semi-annual report 2025Vendor report, August 4, 2025. Uptain sells cart recovery software.
- Baymard Institute · Cart & Checkout Usability ResearchPrimary. Read October 13, 2026, when it still gave 70.19% and 49 statistics.
- Google Analytics Help · Purchase journey reportPrimary. Funnel steps and definitions.
- Google Analytics Help · [GA4] Checkout journey reportPrimary. Definition of abandonment rate between steps.
- Shopify Help Center · Recovering abandoned checkoutsPrimary. Describes the legacy abandoned checkout experience.
- Baymard Institute · Checkout Optimization: 5 Ways to Minimize Form Fields in CheckoutPrimary. Published June 26, 2024.
Frequently asked questions
What is the average cart abandonment rate?
The figure most often quoted is Baymard Institute’s 70.22%. It is the average of 50 published studies dated from 2006 to 2025, and the individual figures range from 55.00% to 84.27%. Baymard last updated the list on September 22, 2025.
Is 70% a good benchmark for my store?
Not directly. The studies behind the average use different definitions and samples, and 33 of the 50 are from 2015 or earlier. In 2020, two companies on the list reported 57.60% and 84.27% for the same year. Compare your rate with your own history, measured the same way each time.
How do I calculate my cart abandonment rate?
Take the users who added a product to the cart in a period and the users who purchased, both from the same report. The rate is the share who added to cart and did not purchase. In Google Analytics 4, the Purchase journey report shows those steps: add to cart, begin checkout, and purchase.
What is the difference between cart abandonment and checkout abandonment?
Cart abandonment starts counting when a product is added to the cart. Checkout abandonment starts later, when the shopper begins checkout. Shopify’s abandoned checkouts start later still: a checkout counts as abandoned if it stays incomplete for more than ten minutes after the customer has provided an email address. The three rates are not comparable.
Why do shoppers abandon carts?
Baymard says a large portion of abandonment is a natural result of how people browse, and reports that 42% of US online shoppers have abandoned a cart because they were just browsing or not ready to buy. Among the other reasons in its survey, extra costs such as shipping, tax, and fees lead at 40%, followed by slow delivery at 20% and not trusting the site with card details at 19%.
How many form fields should a checkout have?
Baymard’s June 2024 research says most sites need only 8 form fields in a checkout flow, while the average was 11.3, down from 11.8 in 2021 and 12.7 in 2019. It finds that the number of fields affects checkout usability more than the number of steps.
Can better checkout design really recover $260 billion?
That is Baymard’s estimate, and Baymard sells checkout audits. It multiplies a potential 35.26% increase in conversion rate, drawn from its own usability testing, by combined US and EU e-commerce sales of $738 billion. The page gives no year for the sales figure.
Mikołaj Salecki
Writes about media, tech, and AI business for people who actually run digital. Former agency lead. Skeptic of frameworks that read better than they perform.
