Online cart abandonment stays near 70%
Even when people want something enough to add it to a cart, small friction still kills most purchases.
Online shopping trained people to expect the path to be smooth. When it slows down, surprises them, or asks for too much, they leave.
Global cart abandonment has stayed around seven out of ten carts for years, despite stores knowing the problem exists.
- checkout friction feels unnecessary
- customers can compare instantly
- unexpected costs break momentum
- mobile shopping makes quitting effortless
The same impatience that makes you leave a checkout can also make you quit books, courses, workouts, and hard conversations when the path stops feeling smooth.
Behind the numbersOpen
Baymard Institute tracks global cart abandonment using a meta-analysis of many ecommerce studies and reports a current average of 70.19%. Historical values here use published summaries of the same benchmark series: 68.07% in 2014, 69.23% in 2017, 69.57% in 2019, and 70.19% in 2023 and 2024. Cart abandonment is not purely about waiting; extra costs, forced accounts, slow checkout, unclear delivery, and payment friction all matter. The useful patience signal is that tiny friction at the point of action still causes mass exit.