What Is Cart Abandonment? A Guide to Recovering Lost Sales

• Cart abandonment happens when a shopper adds items to their online cart but leaves before buying.
• A majority of online carts get abandoned, so if it’s happening to your store, you’re seeing normal shopper behavior — not a sign that something is broken.
• An abandoned cart is a near-sale from someone who already wanted to buy, so attempting to recover these sales is worth your time.
• There are two main strategies to reduce abandoned carts: reduce friction at checkout so fewer people abandon their carts in the first place, and recover with follow-up email or SMS so the ones who do abandon carts come back.

A shopper finds your store, picks out a few things they love, and adds them to their cart. Then something pulls them away, and the sale you were seconds from making just vanishes. If you run a small online shop, that disappearing act probably feels familiar, and it stings every time.

The good news is that a cart left behind isn’t a dead end. In this guide, you’ll learn what cart abandonment is, why shoppers walk away before they buy, and how to win a share of those sales back (even if you’re a small or solo operation without an actual marketing team).

What is cart abandonment?

Cart abandonment is when a shopper adds one or more items to their online shopping cart but leaves your site before completing the purchase.

Here are some key terms related to cart abandonment you’ll want to be familiar with:

• Cart: The collection of items a shopper has selected but not yet paid for.
• Abandonment point: The moment they leave — whether that’s the cart page, the shipping step, or the payment screen.
• Cart abandonment rate: The share of shoppers who add items but don’t buy, usually shown as a percentage over a set period.
• Recovery window: The short stretch of time after they leave when a well-timed reminder can still bring them back.

Consider a candle shop that sells online. A shopper adds two seasonal candles and a gift box, reaches the shipping page, sees the delivery timeline… and closes the tab. The candles are still in the cart, but the sale hasn’t happened. That’s cart abandonment in practice, and it plays out on small storefronts every day.

You’ll also see this called abandoned cart activity or shopping cart abandonment. Statistically, about 70% of online carts are abandoned before checkout. That means abandonment is the norm for online stores and not a red flag about your shop specifically.

If you want to go deeper on winning those shoppers back, Constant Contact’s abandoned cart email guide walks through the follow-up side in detail.

Cart abandonment vs. checkout and browse abandonment

These three terms get mixed up often, and the distinction matters because each one calls for a different fix. The further a shopper gets, the more buying intent they’ve shown, which changes how you respond.

Cart and checkout abandoners have shown the clearest intent to buy, which makes them your best recovery targets. Browse abandoners are earlier in the journey and usually need more nurturing before a reminder lands. If you’re deciding where to start, put your energy into the shoppers who already had items in their cart.

Why do customers abandon their carts?

A lot of cart abandonment simply comes down to friction. A shopper who filled a cart wanted the product; something in the process got in the way. Here are the reasons most customers tend to leave without checking out:

• Unexpected extra costs: Shipping, taxes, and fees that appear late in checkout are the top reason shoppers with abandon carts according to Baymard’s cart abandonment research.
• Forced account creation: Requiring a shopper to make an account before buying adds work when all they wanted was to check out.
• A long or confusing checkout: Too many steps, too many form fields, or an unclear path forward gives people a reason to quit.
• Limited payment options: If a shopper’s preferred card, wallet, or pay-later method isn’t offered, they may not complete their purchase.
• Trust and security concerns: A checkout that looks dated or unsecured can make people hesitate to enter card details.
• Comparison shopping: Some shoppers use the cart as a holding spot while they check prices elsewhere or think it over.
• Slow or clunky mobile experience: A checkout that lags or breaks on a phone loses shoppers who were ready to buy on the spot.

When you smooth out the checkout process and follow up with the shoppers who still leave, you turn a lot of near-misses into completed orders. A bakery taking holiday pre-orders, for example, can drop a surprise delivery fee that was quietly costing it sales, then send a quick reminder to anyone who still left before ordering.

You’ll want to look at which reasons apply to your own store. A shop selling one-of-a-kind items sees more window shopping and hesitation, while a store with a clunky mobile checkout loses people to friction. Knowing your leak tells you where to focus your efforts first.

Why cart abandonment matters for your business

Every abandoned cart represents a near-sale from a shopper who was interested enough to add items in the first place. That’s different from someone who never visited your store in the first place. These are warm prospects who stopped one step short, which makes the lost revenue worth paying attention to.

It helps to think of that revenue as recoverable rather than gone. A shopper who abandoned a cart yesterday can still buy today with the right nudge, and often the only thing standing between you and the sale is a reminder. Better still, many of these shoppers are already known contacts on your email list, so you have a direct way to reach them without paying to find them again. And done well, that nudge can turn a one-time near-buyer into a repeat customer who comes back on their own next time.

That’s where ecommerce email marketing earns its keep. According to Constant Contact’s 2024 Email Marketing Trends for Ecommerce report, ecommerce business owners and marketers who use email as part of their marketing strategy are 1.5 times more likely to have seen a revenue increase over the past year than those who don’t. For a small store, that’s the difference email makes: It’s how you turn near-misses into sales you can count.

Even a modest recovery rate adds up over a year. If 70% of your carts are abandoned and you win back a slice of them, that’s real revenue reclaimed from sales you’d otherwise write off. For a small store, that recovered income can fund the next product run or a slow-season promotion.

How to reduce cart abandonment and recover lost sales

You have two jobs here: Keep more shoppers from leaving in the first place, and bring back the ones who do. Prevention and recovery work together, and neither one needs a big budget or a technical team.

Reduce friction before checkout

The fewer hurdles between the cart and the confirmation page, the more orders you keep. A few practical moves:

• Offer guest checkout: Let people buy without creating an account first.
• Show total costs early: Surface shipping, taxes, and fees before the final step so nothing feels like a surprise.
• Keep the form short: Ask only for what you actually need to fulfill the order.
• Add trusted payment options: Include the cards and digital wallets your shoppers actually use.
• Make it fast on mobile: Test the full checkout on a phone and fix anything that lags or breaks.

Recover carts with automated email

An abandoned cart email is a timely, automated reminder for abandoned cart recovery, sent to a shopper who left items behind. Because it goes to a known contact and references something they already picked out, it tends to bring people back at a much higher rate than a generic promotion. The message can go out on its own, triggered by the abandonment, so you’re not watching for drop-offs by hand.

This isn’t a tactic reserved for those with advanced marketing or tech skills, either. A Constant Contact study of 37,000 customers found that 40% of the most successful customers use automations. The businesses getting the best results lean on automated follow-ups like the abandoned cart email, and the reason is simple: The automation does the follow-up for you, on time, every time, while you focus on running the rest of your business.

Abandoned cart emails recover a meaningful share of otherwise-lost sales when they’re timely and relevant. Constant Contact’s abandoned cart automation is built for small stores that want that follow-up handled without extra hands on deck.

Add SMS retargeting

Email doesn’t have to work alone. A short SMS reminder can reach a shopper who skips their inbox, and retargeting ads can put your product back in front of someone as they browse elsewhere. Used alongside email, these give a high-intent shopper more than one chance to return without feeling pestered. A good rhythm might be an email first, then a text a day later for the shoppers who didn’t open the email.

Common cart abandonment mistakes to avoid

Even stores that follow up on abandoned carts leave money behind by making a few common errors. Here are the ones worth catching:

The mistake: Treating an abandoned cart as lost forever
How to fix it: Set up a recovery automation so every abandoned cart triggers a follow-up instead of quietly disappearing.

The mistake: Waiting too long to reach out
How to fix it: Send the first reminder within a few hours, while the shopper still remembers what they wanted.

The mistake: Sending one generic blast to everyone
How to fix it: Reference the actual items left behind and segment your contacts so the message feels personal, following abandoned cart best practices.

The mistake: Surprising shoppers with costs at the very end
How to fix it: Show shipping, taxes, and any fees early in the process so the total never feels like a trap.

The mistake: Ignoring the mobile experience
How to fix it: Test your checkout on a phone regularly and fix any step that’s slow or hard to tap.

Cart abandonment FAQs

What is a good cart abandonment rate?

A rate below the roughly 70% average cart abandonment rate is generally considered good, though it varies by industry and device. Rather than chasing a perfect number, focus on lowering your own rate over time.

What is the difference between cart abandonment and checkout abandonment?

Cart abandonment is when a shopper adds items but leaves before starting checkout, while checkout abandonment is when they begin checkout and leave before paying. Checkout abandoners have shown more intent, so they’re often the most valuable to recover.

How soon should I send an abandoned cart email?

Send the first reminder within a few hours of the cart being abandoned, while the shopper’s interest is still fresh. Many stores follow up with a second message a day or so later if the first goes unopened.

Do abandoned cart emails actually work?

Yes, because they reach a known, high-intent shopper about a product they already chose. That relevance is why abandoned cart emails tend to outperform generic promotions.

Can small businesses recover abandoned carts without a developer?

Yes. With a marketing platform that connects to your store, you can turn on automated abandoned cart emails and SMS reminders yourself, no coding required. Once the automation is set up, it runs in the background and follows up on every cart for you.

Recover more lost sales with Constant Contact

You’ve seen why shoppers leave and how to win them back. The next step is putting the followup on autopilot. Constant Contact brings abandoned cart automation, email and SMS, and ecommerce integrations together so a solo store owner or small team can recover carts without adding to their already long to-do list.

Ready to turn near-misses into sales? Start a free trial of Constant Contact and set up your first abandoned cart automation today.