What is Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate?
Shopping cart abandonment rate definition: shopping cart abandonment rate measures the percentage of people who added items to their virtual basket but left a brand’s website before making a purchase.
Shopping cart abandonment rates are calculated based on a few factors:
- Customer initiation: how many people added an item to their basket
- Complete purchases: how many people completed the process
- Incomplete purchases: how many people left before buying
The calculation then runs as follows:
- Customer initiation – complete purchases = incomplete purchases
- Incomplete purchases / customer initiations x 100 = abandonment rate
Here is a hypothetical example.
- 50,000 people add items to their Nordstrom basket.
- 10,000 of them complete the purchase.
- 50,000 – 10,000 = 40,000
- There are 40,000 incomplete purchases.
- 40,000 / 40,000 x 100 = 80%
- Nordstrom has a shopping cart abandonment rate of 80%.
Shopping cart abandonment rates are typically quite high; the ecommerce average is between 60% and 80%.

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