Average eCommerce Cart Abandonment Rate hit Record 77% in 2025

You know that feeling when you're shopping online, you've got stuff in your cart, and then... you just close the tab? 

Yeah, we all do it.

But when you're on the other side of that transaction, running an ecommerce store, those abandoned carts are your revenue walking out the door. 

We're talking about roughly 7 out of every 10 people who load up their cart and then ghost you before hitting that checkout button.

So what's actually happening here? 

Cart abandonment is exactly what it sounds like—someone adds products to their online shopping cart but leaves your site without completing the purchase. 

They were this close to becoming a customer, and then something made them pump the brakes.

Before you start thinking your store is broken or your products suck, let's get real for a second. 

This happens to everyone. Amazon deals with it. 

That small boutique shop you love deals with it. 

Your competitors are definitely dealing with it. 

You have cart abandonment. 

The question is: what is the average cart abandonment rate for eCommerce? And is your rate a problem or an achievement?

What is the Average eCommerce Cart Abandonment Rate?

Before we dive into the numbers, let's address something: cart abandonment data is all over the map. 

Different research companies use different methodologies, track different industries, and end up with wildly different figures. 

One study says 68%, another says 75%, and suddenly you're not sure what to believe.

So we're going to keep this consistent. 

We're sticking with data from Mastercard's Dynamic Yield research, which has been tracking cart abandonment for some time. We’ll look at the 5 year period.

That timing matters—2020 marks the beginning of the post-COVID ecommerce era, when online shopping fundamentally shifted from convenience to necessity for millions of people. 

Same source, same methodology, five years of data tracking this new normal. 

Here's what that looks like:

Notice anything? 

We saw a dip in 2021—maybe people were spending that stimulus money or just really excited to shop after lockdowns. 

But since then? It's been climbing. 

We're now sitting at almost 77% for 2025, which means more than 3 out of every 4 people who add something to their cart are leaving without buying.

That's the big picture. But your actual rate depends on a bunch of factors.

The Device Gap

Here's where things get interesting. Not all shopping experiences are created equal:

Average Cart Abandonment Rate by Device (2025)

That's an 11-point difference. 

Mobile users are abandoning carts at a significantly higher rate than desktop shoppers. 

Think about the last time you tried to complete a purchase on your phone—small screen, tiny form fields, autocorrect fighting you on your address, maybe your connection dropped for a second. 

Desktop shopping is just easier. 

You've got a full keyboard, a bigger screen, and you're probably sitting down with the intention to actually complete a purchase rather than just browsing while you're waiting for your coffee.

Geography Plays a Role Too

Where your customers are shopping from also impacts abandonment rates:

Average Cart Abandonment Rate by Region 2025

APAC has the highest abandonment rate, followed by EMEA, with the Americas seeing the lowest rates. 

Why? 

Could be payment preferences—some regions rely heavily on cash-on-delivery or local payment methods that aren't always available. 

Could be shipping costs and delivery times. 

Could be mobile penetration rates since APAC is heavily mobile-first. 

The reasons are complex, but the takeaway is simple: if you're selling internationally, you can't treat all markets the same way.

Average eCommerce Cart Abandonment by Industry: Benchmarks

Alright, so we've covered the overall trends, the device gap, and regional differences. But here's where it gets personal—your industry matters. A lot.

Different types of products come with different shopping behaviors. Someone buying dog food isn't approaching the purchase the same way someone's buying a luxury watch.

Let's break it down:

What's Going On Here?

Pet Care is winning with the lowest abandonment rate at just under 53%. 

Makes sense, right? 

When your dog needs food or flea medication, you're not window shopping. You're on a mission. 

Pet owners are loyal, their purchases are often repeat buys, and there's urgency built into the category.

Consumer Goods sits comfortably at 64%. These are everyday items—think household essentials, basic electronics, things people actually need. Less browsing, more buying.

Food & Beverage comes in at 74%. Interesting middle ground here. 

People will comparison shop for specialty foods or worry about shipping costs and delivery times for perishables, but it's still a relatively straightforward purchase decision.

Multi-Brand Retail and Fashion are hovering around 76-78%. Now we're in serious window shopping territory. 

People love to browse clothes, throw stuff in their cart to visualize an outfit, check how it looks, compare across multiple tabs... and then maybe come back to it later. Or not.

Home & Furniture at nearly 79% makes total sense. You're not impulse buying a couch. 

People are measuring spaces, reading reviews, comparing prices across multiple sites, maybe even going to see it in-store. 

Big-ticket items mean longer decision-making periods.

Luxury & Jewelry and Beauty & Personal Care top the charts at around 81%. 

For luxury goods, you're dealing with high price points and emotional purchases that people need to sit with. 

For beauty? There's a ton of research involved—reading ingredient lists, watching YouTube reviews, finding the right shade match. 

Both categories are also highly visual, which means people love to browse even when they're not ready to buy.

What This Means for You

Find your industry in that list. That's your baseline.

If you're running a fashion site and sitting at 77%, you're right on par. If you're at 85%? 

Time to figure out what's going wrong. If you're at 70%? You're actually doing pretty well compared to your competitors.

The point isn't to get to zero abandonment—that's impossible. The point is to understand what's normal for your space and then work on beating it.

Accounting for Cart Abandonment

So what can you do to recover those carts?

You've probably read a dozen articles telling you to offer free shipping, throw in a 10% discount code, or run an exit-intent popup with a special offer. 

And yeah, those tactics work. They absolutely can recover abandoned carts and boost your conversion rate.

But every discount you offer comes straight out of your margin. 

And if you don't know your numbers—I mean really know them—you might be "winning" customers while quietly losing money on every sale.

Revenue Feels Good, But…

It's easy to get excited when you see revenue go up. 

You dropped a 15% off discount code on cart abandoners, recovered a bunch of sales, and suddenly your revenue graph is pointing in the right direction. Feels good, right?

Until you sit down with your accountant and realize your operating expenses just ate your lunch. 

That 15% discount on top of your ad spend, payment processing fees, shipping costs, warehouse overhead, and everything else? 

You just turned a profitable sale into a break-even one. Or worse.

Understanding Contribution Margin

Before you start throwing discounts at the problem, you need to understand your contribution margin: what's left after you subtract your variable costs from your revenue. 

This is different from your gross margin because it accounts for all the direct costs of making that sale happen.

If you're working with a 40% contribution margin, a 10% discount might be totally fine. 

If you're working with 20%? That same 10% discount just cut your contribution in half. 

And if you're in a commoditized space running on 10-15% margins because you're competing on price? You literally can't afford to discount your way out of cart abandonment.

Customer Acquisition Cost Changes Everything

Now layer in your customer acquisition cost (CAC). 

If you spent $30 on Facebook ads to get someone to your site, and you're giving them a 15% discount to convert, you need to know if that first sale even covers your acquisition cost.

Here's where it gets interesting: your CAC varies wildly by marketing channel. 

So your pricing tactics (including your cart recovery discounts) should probably differ based on how that customer found you. 

Offering the same 20% discount to an organic visitor and a paid ad customer means you're leaving money on the table in one scenario and possibly losing it in the other.

The Scaling Problem

Here's what happens when you don't have these numbers dialed in: you find a tactic that works, you scale it, and suddenly you're growing but bleeding cash.

Let's say you're running cart abandonment emails with a 10% discount code. It's recovering 5% of abandoned carts. Awesome! 

You decide to get more aggressive—bump it to 15% off, add SMS reminders, throw in free shipping. Recovery rate jumps to 12%. Revenue goes up. You're crushing it.

But when you scale, all those percentage points add up. You're now paying more in discounts, more for SMS messaging, more for shipping. 

Your contribution margin per sale drops. And if you're simultaneously scaling your paid advertising to bring in more traffic? Your blended CAC is climbing too.

You can absolutely scale yourself into unprofitability this way. Revenue growth is not the same as profit growth, and a lot of ecommerce businesses learn this lesson the hard way.

Know Your Margins First

If you're serious about tackling cart abandonment without destroying your business, start with your books. 

Calculate your contribution margin by product, by category, by customer segment. 

Know your CAC by marketing channel. 

Understand which customers are worth fighting for and which ones aren't profitable even if they convert.

Then figure out what you can afford to offer without torching your profitability. 

Maybe it's 10% off for paid traffic customers but 15% for organic. 

Maybe it's free shipping on orders over a certain threshold where your margin can absorb it. 

Maybe it's a payment plan option that doesn't cost you anything except some financing risk.

Are Discounts Worth it?

This doesn't mean discounts are bad. It means you need to be strategic about them.

Know your customer lifetime value. 

If someone's first purchase is break-even but they typically come back three more times, that changes the math completely. 

Maybe you can afford to be more aggressive on that first sale.

Know which products can handle a discount and which can't. Your high-margin items? Sure, take 15% off. Your loss leaders or low-margin staples? Absolutely not.

Know when to offer free shipping versus a percentage off. Sometimes absorbing the shipping cost is cheaper than a blanket discount, especially on higher-ticket items.

And here's the thing most people miss: sometimes the best way to reduce cart abandonment isn't a discount at all. 

It's fixing your checkout flow, being transparent about costs upfront, offering those payment plans, or just making the whole experience less annoying. 

Those don't cost you anything except time and effort.

Get Your House in Order

Because recovering a cart doesn't mean anything if you're losing money on the sale. 

The math has to work first. Then you can start testing tactics. Then you can think about scaling.