Cart abandonment
Cart abandonment is when a shopper adds something to their cart and leaves without completing the purchase.
The numbers
The Baymard Institute keeps a running average of published cart abandonment studies. It also surveys US online shoppers on why they left. Its September 2025 figures:
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Average documented cart abandonment rate (mean of 50 studies) | 70.22% |
| US shoppers who abandoned because they were “just browsing” or not ready to buy | 42% |
| Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees) | 40% |
| Delivery too slow | 20% |
| Didn’t trust the site with card details | 19% |
| Site required an account | 18% |
| Checkout too long or complicated | 17% |
| Returns policy not good enough | 13% |
| Couldn’t see or work out the total cost up front | 12% |
Source: Baymard Institute, cart abandonment rate statistics, updated 22 September 2025. Reasons exclude the “just browsing” group. Shoppers could give more than one reason.
The 70.22% is an average across many store types. Treat it as background, and use your own store’s rate as the number you work on.
What it means in practice
Sort the reasons by who can fix them. Browsers were never going to buy today, and chasing them annoys people. Surprise costs and a long checkout are fixed in the store itself, by showing delivery costs earlier and cutting fields.
A chat can recover the group with a question. Will this fit? Does it arrive before Saturday? Can I return it? Is the black one in stock? Several reasons in the table are questions of this kind: delivery time, returns policy, total cost. The shopper is still on the page and close to buying. If they can ask and get a correct answer in seconds, some of them buy.
Speed matters here. Customers who message a business expect an answer quickly, and someone halfway through checkout will wait only minutes before leaving.
Answering well takes your store’s data. “Does it arrive before Saturday” needs a shipping-rate lookup for their address. “Is it in stock in black” needs an inventory check. Neither answer sits in an FAQ page, so a tool that only searches text can’t give it. See RAG. On a Shopify store, AeroChat reads products, stock and shipping rates while the shopper is chatting, and can send a discount you have approved.
Recovery messages
Abandoned-cart reminders on WhatsApp are marketing templates. Meta charges for each one, and the rate depends on the country (Meta pricing documentation). Unwanted ones get your number blocked and lower its quality rating. Send them only to people who opted in, and send one. See WhatsApp message templates.
Related terms
- Payment link
- Conversational commerce
- WhatsApp message templates
- Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
Read next
Related guides
- Automate Abandoned Cart Recovery in Chat
- WhatsApp abandoned cart templates
- WhatsApp Abandoned Cart Recovery That Answers the Question
Answer the question before the shopper leaves
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