Most abandonment is self-inflicted
The industry talks about abandonment as though it were weather. It is not — most of it is caused by specific, fixable things that happen between the basket and the payment.
- Unexpected delivery cost, discovered at the final step
- Forced account creation before checkout
- A long or confusing checkout, particularly on mobile
- Missing payment methods the customer expected
- Doubt — about returns, about the business, about the product
Show the delivery cost early
A customer who sees the postage on the product page and continues has accepted it. The same customer discovering it at checkout feels misled, and behaves accordingly.
Show it on the product page, in the cart, and offer a threshold with a clear indication of how far they are from it. That single change usually moves the number more than anything else.
Never force account creation
Guest checkout should always be available. An account is a benefit you offer after the sale, not a toll on the way to it.
Offering to save their details after the order is placed captures most of the accounts you would have got, without costing any sales.
Checkout on a phone
- Test the whole checkout on your own phone, on mobile data
- Address autocomplete, so nobody types a postcode twice
- Express payment options above the form, not below it
- Card fields that trigger the right keyboard
- Nothing that requires zooming
Recovery emails work, at the margin
An abandoned cart sequence recovers a modest but real proportion. Send the first within an hour, keep it short, and do not lead with a discount — you will train customers to abandon deliberately.
Treat it as a safety net rather than a strategy. The larger gains are always in removing the reason they left.