What is Checkout Abandonment?

While cart abandonment captures everyone who adds items to a cart without purchasing, checkout abandonment focuses on shoppers who have taken the additional step of beginning the checkout flow. These visitors have demonstrated higher purchase intent than general cart abandoners, making their abandonment both more concerning and more recoverable. The checkout abandonment rate is calculated as: (Checkouts Initiated - Checkouts Completed) / Checkouts Initiated x 100. Average checkout abandonment rates typically range from 20-40%.

The causes of checkout abandonment are distinct from general cart abandonment because the shopper has already committed to buying. The most common reasons include unexpected costs surfacing at checkout (shipping, taxes, fees not previously disclosed), required account creation, a checkout process with too many steps or form fields, limited payment options, concerns about payment security, declined credit cards, and website errors or crashes during checkout. Each of these represents a friction point that interrupted an otherwise willing buyer.

Shopify's checkout is relatively streamlined compared to custom e-commerce builds, but there are still optimization opportunities. Shop Pay accelerated checkout reduces friction significantly for returning Shopify shoppers. Offering diverse payment methods including credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and buy-now-pay-later options like Klarna or Afterpay addresses payment preference barriers. Displaying clear progress indicators, minimizing required form fields, and ensuring the checkout is fully responsive on mobile all contribute to lower abandonment.

Recovery strategies for checkout abandoners should be more aggressive than for general cart abandoners because these shoppers were closer to purchasing. Email recovery sequences can be sent sooner (within 1-2 hours rather than 24 hours), incentives can be smaller (these shoppers need less convincing), and the messaging should address likely friction points (offering free shipping if that was the probable objection, or highlighting the return policy if trust was the concern).