Baymard's shoppers could give more than one reason, so the bars do not total 100. The ordering is what matters.
About 70% of carts are abandoned, and that number is not a store problem, it is the industry baseline. What matters is the reason breakdown underneath it. The largest single cause, at roughly 48%, is extra costs appearing too late: shipping, tax and fees the shopper did not expect. Almost every reason on the list is a setting somebody chose rather than a flaw in the product, which is what makes this the cheapest layer of the funnel to fix.
70% is the baseline, not the problem
Baymard Institute maintains a rolling average across dozens of abandonment studies. It sits at roughly 70%, and it has sat there for years. Some of that is people comparison shopping, saving items for later, or using a cart as a wish list. None of that is fixable and none of it is a fault.
So the useful question is never "how do I get my abandonment rate down." It is "which of the fixable reasons is happening in my store."
Baymard also asked shoppers who abandoned with real purchase intent why they did it. Multiple answers were allowed, so the list does not total 100:
| Reason | Share | Whose problem |
|---|---|---|
| Extra costs too high or shown too late | 48% | Entirely yours |
| The store required an account | 26% | Entirely yours |
| Checkout too long or complicated | 22% | Mostly yours |
| Their payment method was not offered | 19% | Entirely yours |
| Did not trust the site with card details | 18% | Mostly yours |
Read the third column. Every row is a decision somebody made in a settings panel. Not one of them is about whether the product is any good.
Nothing on the abandonment list is about your product. Every line is a setting somebody chose. The Dropshipping Playbook
The 48% is a timing problem, not a price problem
Shoppers are not saying your shipping is expensive. They are saying they found out about it too late.
Someone who sees "$8.90 shipping" on the product page and adds anyway has already accepted it. Someone who sees the same $8.90 for the first time on the payment step experiences it as a change to the deal, and a change to the deal at the last step is where trust goes.
Three fixes, in cost order:
Note what the first row costs: nothing. It is the highest-yield free change available to most dropshipping stores, and it is the same change that lowers chargeback risk in chapter 1.3, because a customer who knew the delivery window does not dispute the charge when it takes that long.
The 26% is one toggle
Forced account creation is the second largest cause on the list. Guest checkout is a setting. A shopper who wanted one item does not want a password, and asking for one turns a purchase into a signup decision one step from the payment.
If you want the email address, ask for it after the order, or in exchange for something. Do not put it in front of the payment.
The failures you cannot reproduce
Then there is the category that makes this level exist. Documented cases in the Shopify Community involve merchants whose customers reported checkout failures that the merchant could never trigger themselves, despite testing across devices and browsers and, in some cases, hiring developers to audit the code.
That is not carelessness. It is the shape of the problem. Checkout failures are frequently specific to a combination:
- One country, where a payment method or tax rule behaves differently
- One device class, where a field or button falls below the fold or off-screen
- One payment provider, where a verification step fails silently
- One browser, usually an in-app browser opened from a social feed
- One cart state, such as a variant that went out of stock after being added
You cannot find any of those by testing as yourself. The diagnostic in chapter 3.1 splits by device, source and country for exactly this reason: the total hides a failure that is total within its own segment.
If most of your traffic comes from a social feed, most of your checkouts happen inside that app's own browser, not Safari or Chrome. Test there specifically. Open your own ad on your phone and buy something through it, rather than pasting the URL into a normal browser.
A checkout test worth running monthly
Twenty minutes, and it catches most of the list above.
- Open your own live ad on a phone and complete the purchase inside that app's browser.
- Repeat as a guest, with no account and no saved details.
- Add a discount code and confirm it applies and displays correctly.
- Note the exact step where a cost first appears that was not visible on the product page.
- Change your address to another country you sell to and see whether shipping and tax still resolve.
- Confirm the order confirmation email arrives and states the delivery window you advertised.
Step four is the one to write down. Whatever step that is, is your 48%.
Common questions
Is a 70% abandonment rate bad?
Can I edit the Shopify checkout itself?
Should I just offer free shipping on everything?
My checkout works when I test it. Customers say it doesn't.
One number pays for the rest
What a single order is worth decides what every other fix can afford. Chapter 4.1 is where that number moves.
Go to chapter 4.1