What is the average Shopify cart abandonment rate?

Cart abandonment is the share of users who add a product to cart but do not complete checkout. The 70% number is global average; high-AOV considered purchases run higher (~75-80%), low-AOV impulse buys run lower (~60%). It is rarely zero — even perfect stores see ~50% because some users always add to cart for price-comparison or wishlist purposes.

The most fixable abandonment driver is unexpected shipping costs. Roughly half of all cart abandons happen because shipping cost (or tax, or fees) was not visible until the final step. Two interventions reverse this: free-shipping thresholds displayed prominently before add-to-cart, and a shipping calculator widget on the cart page that resolves the cost before checkout begins.

Forced account creation is the second-biggest driver and the most under-addressed. Stores that require an account before checkout lose roughly a quarter of their would-be buyers compared to stores that allow guest checkout. Shopify gives you guest checkout by default; the failure mode is when stores re-add the friction by enabling "require email + password" via app overlays. Audit your checkout flow on a fresh device with no cookies before assuming you offer guest checkout.

Email-based cart-recovery flows (Klaviyo, Omnisend) recover 5-10% of abandoned carts industry-wide. The first email needs to land within 1 hour; the recovery rate halves at 4 hours and approaches zero past 24 hours. SMS recovery (Postscript, Attentive) outperforms email for low-AOV impulse categories but underperforms for considered purchases.

A non-intuitive insight: not every recovered cart should be priced down. Discount-laden recovery emails train your repeat-buyers to abandon on purpose. The highest-LTV recovery campaigns are the ones that remove a friction (free shipping reminder, payment-options reminder, security badge) without offering a discount.