8 ways to reduce cart abandonment

Measure your cart abandonment first

First, find out where you lose people. Shopify’s analytics can show sessions with cart additions, sessions that reached checkout and sessions that completed checkout. In the Shopify admin, Orders › Abandoned checkouts lists shoppers who entered their email but didn’t finish. In Google Analytics 4, the Checkout journey report shows where people drop out, as long as your store sends the matching ecommerce events.

Where you lose the most people hints at which of the eight ways to start with. Then go through your own checkout on a phone. If pages load slowly, start with speed: Why is your site slow?

1. Show the full cost early

In a 2025 survey of US online shoppers by Baymard Institute, which studies e-commerce usability, 40% of people who abandoned an order (leaving aside those “just browsing”) named extra costs such as shipping, tax and fees. 12% said they couldn’t see the total cost up front.

Show the shipping cost or your free-shipping threshold on the product page and in the cart, and say whether taxes and duties are included. For the product page side, see our product page checklist.

2. Let people buy as guests

18% abandoned because the site wanted them to create an account. Guest checkout (buying without an account) can be switched on and still be missed: Baymard found that 62% of sites don’t make it the most prominent option.

• On Shopify, make sure signing in isn’t required before checkout.
• On WooCommerce, turn on “Enable guest checkout” under Settings › Accounts and Privacy.
• Offer account creation after the order instead (WooCommerce’s “After checkout” option).

3. Ask for less

17% gave up because the checkout was too long or complicated. Baymard’s testing shows an ideal checkout can get by with 12–14 form elements (7–8 if you count only fields), while the average US checkout shows 23.48 by default.

• Remove fields such as company name and the second address line, or make them optional. Shopify’s checkout form options and WooCommerce’s Checkout block (Address Fields) both allow this.
• Mark required and optional fields clearly.
• If you ask for a phone number, say why: over 70% of respondents in a Baymard survey said they were reluctant to give one.

4. Give a date, not a speed

20% abandoned because delivery was too slow. You can’t always ship faster, but you can remove the guesswork: instead of “3–5 business days”, write “Arrives November 4–6”. Baymard found that 48% of sites still show a speed rather than a date in their shipping options. If there’s a cutoff time for same-day dispatch, show it.

5. Make the payment step feel safe

19% didn’t trust the site with their card details. In Baymard’s observations, this worry surfaces when the card form appears, and more easily on lesser-known sites.

• Set the card fields apart from the rest of the form with a border or a background color.
• Add a short, reassuring line next to them.
• Keep your contact details and policies one click away.

6. Offer the payment methods people expect

9% left because there weren’t enough payment methods, and 10% because their card was declined. Express checkout buttons let shoppers pay with a saved wallet, without typing card details.

• On Shopify, accelerated checkout buttons such as Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal can also appear on product pages.
• On WooCommerce, the Express Checkout block shows options such as Apple Pay and Google Pay if your payment gateway supports them.
• If a card is declined, keep the cart and suggest another method.
• If you sell abroad, check which local methods your provider supports in each country.

7. Make the return policy easy to find

13% abandoned because the return policy wasn’t satisfactory. Summarize it in plain words before checkout, on the product page and in the cart: how many days, who pays for return shipping, how returns work. Shopify links your policies in the checkout footer automatically, but shoppers should see the key terms before they get there.

8. Find the errors before your customers do

17% gave up because the site had errors or crashed. Place a test order on your phone after every theme, app or plugin update (WordPress security: no more fear of updates).

Error messages matter too. In Baymard’s testing, messages that name the exact problem, such as “Your card number is incomplete” instead of a generic “invalid”, sharply reduced the number of people who got stuck. Yet 94% of sites don’t adapt their error messages this way.

Where to start

The first two fixes are often a setting or a line of copy: showing the full cost early and allowing guest checkout. Then shorten the form, and place a test order on your phone once a month. For shoppers who leave anyway, Shopify can send abandoned checkout reminders automatically.

To see which of these obstacles your store has, our free inspection looks at your cart and checkout flow, and your pricing and shipping clarity, among its 48 checks, and sorts the findings by priority.