Imagine you’re a customer standing in line for the register at a local beauty store…
A face serum, new body lotion, and skin toner are in your cart. Making the trip to the beauty store was a little out of your way, but the products were highly recommended, and you’ve been looking forward to trying them all week…
The line at the store is long. You’re in a bit of a hurry.
But you decide to wait and give it a little bit of time… you’re really excited to try the serum that your friend said made her skin positively 🌟 GLOW.
Still, you keep checking your watch.
The line has barely moved.
You tap your fingers on the cart’s handle.
Come on, come on…
You crane your neck to see what’s going on…
Ugh, something is wrong with the credit card reader.
Each customer’s purchase is taking forever…
What’s so complicated about swiping a credit card?
You check your watch again. You’ve got to pick up your kids at school soon.
The line inches forward.
You decide you won’t even try the credit card reader, and you dig in your wallet for cash, hoping to speed up your own purchase.
You check your watch again… you have minutes left before you definitely need to leave!
At this point, you’re really impatient.
Why on Earth is this taking so long?
You’re squeezing the cash in your hand so tightly that your hands are getting sweaty.
Seriously, just let me throw the money on the counter so I can GO!
The line inches forward a little more… but you check your watch again.
And that’s it, it’s official. You’re late.
You’ve had it.
You smack the cart’s handle, as if to say, “forget about it!”, push away, and walk off in a huff.
And you leave your cart behind.
And you never come back to try again, no matter how much your friend said you’d LOVE this store’s beauty products.
What a waste of time!
Later, while you wait in the carpool pick-up line, you open your phone and order similar items online. They might not be as nice as the ones your friend recommended, but at least buying them didn’t waste your entire afternoon…
The Real Cost of Cart Abandonment in E-Commerce
If your blood pressure rose just reading that story, then you have a glimpse into what online shoppers feel every day – that exact scenario plays out in online stores EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
Only instead of a broken credit card reader, it’s slow load times, confusing checkout flows, unexpected fees, or too many steps to complete a purchase.
And the cost? It’s massive. Just look at the toll that cart abandonment takes:
- Nearly 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned across industries
- E-commerce brands lose around $18 billion annually due to cart abandonment
- Globally, up to $4 trillion worth of products are left sitting in carts every year
- About $260 billion in lost orders is recoverable with better checkout design
- For every $100 a customer is ready to spend, about $70 never converts
This isn’t a traffic problem. It’s a checkout problem.
Top 3 Reasons Why Customers Abandon Their Carts
If you wonder why customers abandon their carts, we’ll be the first to tell you that it’s not simply because they changed their mind.
They leave because something got in their way.
Here are the biggest culprits:
1. Unexpected costs: About 48% of shoppers abandon their carts when extra costs appear at checkout, like shipping, taxes, convenience fees, or something else.
2. Forced account creation: 26% of users leave when they’re required to create an account before purchasing.
3. Slow or complicated checkout experiences: Friction like glitches, long forms, or slow pages consistently ranks among the top abandonment triggers.
Sound familiar?
It should, because it’s exactly what happened in that beauty store, and it’s exactly what happens online.
The real question is, is this happening in your online store?
How to Fix It: Optimized Checkout + Abandoned Cart Recovery
If you’ve been wondering why customers abandon their carts in your own e-commerce store, the good news is – you can fix it! And, even better – you can fix it before your competition does. In fact, cart abandonment is one of the most fixable problems in e-commerce (and one of the most profitable to solve!).
To solve cart abandonment issues, there are two main elements that need to be addressed:
1. Make Checkout Frictionless through Speed and Simplicity
A high-converting checkout should feel effortless, so that your customers can zoom through the checkout without waiting in line!
This is the behind-the-scenes foundation of your checkout experience. If your site is slow or clunky, nothing else matters.
A frictionless checkout experience includes:
- Fast load time and mobile-optimization. Remember, an enormous percentage of your customers are making purchases while they’re commuting to work, sitting at a coffee shop, passing time at their desks, or waiting in a waiting room – on their phones!
- Minimal steps. Ideally, online checkout experiences should have one page. Nothing more. The more pages you have, the more your customer feels like she’s waiting at the back of that impossible line at the beauty store!
Every second you shave off your checkout time and every step you remove directly increases conversions.
2. Improve User Experience through Control and Clarity
Even if your site is fast, customers won’t convert if they feel uncertain, restricted, or surprised during checkout.
A frictionless checkout experience also means giving users the freedom and clarity to complete their purchase with confidence:
- Guest checkout option: Don’t force a customer to set up an account. It adds time and friction. Offering a guest checkout option gives the customer control over her experience.
- Transparent pricing upfront: If purchases include convenience fees, handling fees, taxes or shipping, clearly explain those upfront. If certain fees like shipping or taxes won’t be calculated until the final checkout frame, then state that clearly throughout the process.
- Multiple payment options: Again, give the customer control over how she pays. Maybe she hates using her credit card, and prefers to pay cash – PayPal is a way to accommodate that. Maybe your customer really needs to split up the payment across two months – payment plans through Klarna can help. The point is, let the customer decide.
When customers feel in control and fully informed, they’re far more likely to follow through with their purchase instead of abandoning their cart.
3. Recover Lost Sales with Abandoned Cart Emails
Even with a perfect checkout, some customers will still leave. If you’re wondering why customers abandon their carts even after you’ve optimized everything you can, that’s the time to send them a friendly reminder to check their cart. After all, life happens, the boss calls, a child wakes up from a nap, or the doctor is finally ready to see you.
That’s where recovery comes in.
Effective abandoned cart email strategies include:
- Reminder email sent within 1–2 hours
- Follow-up email sent within 1-2 days, with social proof or urgency
- Final email sent within 1-2 weeks with an incentive, such as a discount or free shipping
Brands that implement recovery flows can reclaim a meaningful portion of otherwise lost revenue, turning “almost sales” into actual revenue.
Wonder Why Customers Abandon their Carts – and need to call in the pros?
At the end of the day, your checkout process is your digital cash register.
If it’s slow, confusing, or broken… your customers won’t wait in line.
They’ll leave.
And they’ll buy somewhere else.
While some e-commerce store owners are a whiz at website optimization, chances are that most want to focus on product development, and bring in the pros to identify why customers abandon their carts and optimize their website accordingly.
Book a call with the website experts at SLM today, and let’s build you a checkout experience that removes friction, recovers lost carts, and turns more of your traffic into revenue.
