Checkout Conversion Statistics for 2026: Cart Abandonment Rates, Abandonment Causes, Guest Checkout, Payment Methods, Mobile vs Desktop, Trust Signals, Recovery, and Industry Benchmarks

In 2026, checkout abandonment remains the most costly and most solvable problem in ecommerce. The global average cart abandonment rate is 70.19%, meaning that for every 100 shoppers who add items to a cart, 70 leave without purchasing a figure that has remained stubbornly near 70% for more than a decade despite technological advances, based on Baymard Institute’s comprehensive analysis of 49 independent studies. In dollar terms, abandoned orders represent USD 4 trillion in lost ecommerce value annually globally, and Baymard Institute’s analysis of combined U.S. and EU ecommerce sales of USD 738 billion identifies USD 260 billion in abandoned orders as recoverable solely through better checkout flow and design. The average large-sized ecommerce site can gain a 35.26% increase in conversion rate through checkout redesign alone, based on Baymard’s 16 years of large-scale checkout usability testing across 327 top-grossing U.S. and EU ecommerce sites.

The causes of abandonment are well-documented and structurally preventable. Among shoppers who were not merely browsing, Baymard’s 2025 research identifies unexpected extra costs shipping, taxes, and fees as the top abandonment trigger at 48%. Required account creation causes 26% of abandonments, security concerns about credit card information cause 25%, slow delivery options cause 23%, and complex or long checkout processes cause 22%. Together, these five causes account for the majority of all preventable abandonments, and all five are addressable through UX design, pricing transparency, and infrastructure decisions. The average U.S. ecommerce checkout contains 23.48 form elements nearly double the 12 to 14 that Baymard identifies as optimal and 22% of users have abandoned a purchase solely due to checkout complexity, based on Baymard’s benchmark of 180+ leading ecommerce sites.

The mobile checkout gap amplifies every friction point. Mobile cart abandonment reaches 85.65%, compared to significantly lower desktop rates, despite mobile accounting for 68% of all online shopping orders in Q1 2025, based on Statista data. Every additional form field, every security concern, every unexpected cost is more likely to cause abandonment on a 6-inch touch screen than on a desktop browser with autofill. Digital wallets including Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay directly address this gap by enabling checkout in under one second without typing, and merchants offering BNPL Buy Now, Pay Later see a 78% increase in conversion and a 10% reduction in cart abandonment by removing price barrier concerns for higher-value purchases, based on Swell’s 2025 custom checkout analysis.

This article compiles 75+ checkout conversion statistics organized across nine thematic sections, drawn from the latest figures published within the last two years by primary data providers including Baymard Institute (49-study aggregate methodology, 16 years of large-scale usability testing, 327 ecommerce site benchmark, 23.48 form field analysis), Shopify Enterprise blog 2025, EmailVendorSelection 2025 (aggregate of multiple primary providers including Uptain, XP2, Vibetrace, SalesCycle), SalesCycle Ecommerce Stats and Trends Report, Swell’s Custom Checkout Statistics 2025, IntelliPay checkout research 2025, Klaviyo’s 2024 Abandoned Cart Benchmark Report, Analyzify, Amra and Elma checkout abandonment statistics 2025, and BigCommerce checkout optimization analysis. Every statistic is atomic, individually sourced, and linked directly to its original study or publication.

Scope and Methodology

Includes only publicly available checkout conversion statistics relevant for 2026.
Based on the latest figures published within the last two years.
“Cart abandonment rate” is defined as the percentage of initiated carts shopping sessions where at least one item was added that were not completed as purchases.
“Checkout conversion rate” is the inverse: the percentage of initiated checkout sessions completed as orders.
Sources include primary research, first-party platform data, large-scale UX studies, institutional research, and industry benchmark reports.
Each statistic is listed separately with its original source and study context.
No estimates, forecasts, interpretations, or recommendations are included.

Key Checkout Conversion Statistics for 2026

The global average cart abandonment rate is 70.19%, meaning 7 out of every 10 shoppers who add items to a cart leave without completing their purchase, based on Baymard Institute’s comprehensive analysis of 49 independent studies published at Baymard Institute Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics.
The average large-sized ecommerce site can gain a 35.26% increase in conversion rate through checkout redesign alone, translating to USD 260 billion in recoverable abandoned orders in the U.S. and EU based on combined ecommerce sales of USD 738 billion, based on Baymard Institute’s 16 years of large-scale checkout usability testing of 327 top-grossing U.S. and EU sites published at Baymard Institute Checkout Usability Research.
Mobile cart abandonment reaches 85.65%, significantly higher than desktop rates, despite mobile accounting for 68% of all online shopping orders in Q1 2025, based on IntelliPay and Statista data cited in IntelliPay Checkout Optimization 2025 and Shopify Enterprise Faster Checkout 2025.
Unexpected extra costs shipping, taxes, and fees are the top checkout abandonment trigger at 48% of non-browsing abandonments, based on Baymard Institute’s 2025 reasons for cart abandonment survey published at Baymard Institute Reasons for Cart Abandonment 2025.
Offering BNPL Buy Now, Pay Later increases checkout conversion by 78% while simultaneously reducing cart abandonment by 10%, and boosts average order value by 20% as customers feel comfortable purchasing higher-priced items, based on Swell’s 2025 Custom Checkout Statistics published at Swell Custom Checkout Statistics 2025.
The average U.S. ecommerce checkout contains 23.48 default form elements, nearly double the 12 to 14 that Baymard Institute identifies as optimal, and 22% of users have abandoned a purchase solely due to checkout complexity, based on Baymard Institute’s benchmark of 180+ leading ecommerce sites published at Baymard Institute UX Statistics.
In 64% of leading ecommerce sites, Baymard’s latest benchmark found checkout UX performance rated “mediocre” or worse even among Fortune 500 companies that have already run checkout optimization projects based on Baymard Institute’s most recent ecommerce site benchmarking published at Baymard Institute Checkout UX Best Practices 2025.
Black Friday 2024 saw global cart abandonment rates between 73% and 78%, and Cyber Monday 2024 saw abandonment rise further to 80.25%, demonstrating that peak-volume shopping days paradoxically drive higher abandonment as checkout systems are under load and impatient shoppers become less tolerant of friction, based on Ninetailed and Charge After data cited in Contentsquare Cart Abandonment Stats 2025.
Abandoned cart email sequences recover 10% to 15% of lost sales when sent within 24 hours of abandonment, with a 39.07% open rate and 23.33% click-through rate, based on Analyzify and Rejoiner research cited in Contentsquare Cart Abandonment Stats 2025 and EmailVendorSelection Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics 2025.
Every 1% improvement in cart abandonment rate increases revenue by approximately 10% for most ecommerce stores, making checkout optimization the highest-leverage revenue intervention available to established ecommerce businesses, based on data cited in Opensend Checkout Abandonment Rate Ecommerce 2025.
Shoppers leave USD 4 trillion worth of merchandise in online carts globally every year, representing the aggregate scale of checkout friction across all ecommerce markets, based on data cited in Amra and Elma Checkout Abandonment Statistics 2025.
The average checkout flow has 5.1 steps from shopping cart to the order review, a figure that has remained unchanged since 2012 despite years of UX research advocating for shorter flows, based on EmailVendorSelection aggregate data published at EmailVendorSelection Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics 2025.

Cart Abandonment Rate Benchmarks

The global average cart abandonment rate worldwide as of August 2025 is 78.77%, representing the highest seasonal peak of any month, while December has the lowest monthly abandonment rate at 71.36%, based on EmailVendorSelection’s 2025 aggregate analysis of multiple primary providers published at EmailVendorSelection Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics 2025.
Individual benchmark sources report abandonment rates ranging from 70.19% (Baymard, 49-study aggregate) to 71.72% (Uptain, September 2025) to 72.5% (Vibetrace, 2024) to 75.45% (XP2, July 2025) to 79.53% (SalesCycle, 2023), reflecting methodology differences, with the calculated average across all top findings at 74.8%, based on EmailVendorSelection’s aggregate analysis published at EmailVendorSelection Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics 2025.
The cruise and ferry industry has the highest cart abandonment rate of any tracked sector at nearly 98%, approximately 28% higher than the global average, due to high price points, complex decision-making involving travel dates, excursion costs, and multi-person bookings, based on GrowTheDevil data cited in Contentsquare Cart Abandonment Stats 2025.
Finance-related checkout flows see abandonment rates up to 85%, travel sees 85%, while fashion typically experiences lower abandonment around 68%, based on industry abandonment data cited in Opensend Checkout Abandonment Rate Ecommerce 2025.
North America has a regional cart abandonment rate of approximately 79.14%, among the highest of any region, based on IntelliPay checkout research published at IntelliPay Checkout Optimization 2025.
Sunday has the highest cart abandonment rate of any day of the week, while Monday has the lowest a pattern interpreted as consumers browsing on Sunday and converting on Monday, creating a weekly rhythm that email and remarketing schedules can be aligned to, based on EmailVendorSelection’s timing analysis published at EmailVendorSelection Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics 2025.
The 25th of the month has the lowest cart abandonment rate of any date, while the 23rd has the highest, reflecting the influence of payroll timing and end-of-month financial pressure on purchase completion behavior, based on EmailVendorSelection’s date-level analysis published at EmailVendorSelection Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics 2025.
Cart abandonment has increased by 0.28% compared to the prior year and by 3.11% over the past decade, demonstrating that the persistence of abandonment is structural and not improving through technological advancement alone, based on Opensend checkout analysis published at Opensend Checkout Abandonment Rate Ecommerce 2025.

Abandonment Causes and Friction Points

The top five reasons non-browsing shoppers abandon checkout are: unexpected extra costs at 48%, required account creation at 26%, credit card security concerns at 25%, slow delivery options at 23%, and long or complex checkout processes at 22%, based on Baymard Institute’s 2025 reasons for cart abandonment survey published at Baymard Institute Reasons for Cart Abandonment 2025.
58.6% of American shoppers have abandoned a site within the last three months simply because they were browsing or not ready to buy meaning nearly 6 in 10 abandonments are unavoidable window-shopping behavior that even perfect checkout UX cannot recover, based on Baymard Institute’s quantitative study published at Baymard Institute UX Statistics.
17% of users have recently abandoned an order solely due to a difficult checkout process, not because of price or intent, making checkout UX failure a directly attributable and directly fixable revenue leak, based on Baymard Institute’s checkout usability testing published at Baymard Institute UX Statistics.
39% of shoppers abandon when surprised by additional fees at checkout, including those who were not classified as the 48% of non-browsing abandoners who cited extra costs, based on Baymard Institute 2025 research cited in RedStag Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics 2025.
30% of shoppers abandon when asked to re-enter credit card information, and 25% will leave if required to re-enter shipping information, demonstrating that data persistence failures in checkout forms are direct conversion killers that affect nearly one in three and one in four potential buyers, based on ConvertCart data cited in Contentsquare Cart Abandonment Stats 2025.
13% of customers abandon when the ecommerce website does not offer their preferred payment method, establishing payment method breadth as a direct conversion variable rather than a convenience enhancement, based on Baymard Institute research cited in Contentsquare Cart Abandonment Stats 2025.
14% of users abandon checkout when a phone field is simply marked “required” without explanation, while testing shows users only need an explanation of why the field is required yet 39% of ecommerce sites do not provide one, based on Baymard Institute’s phone field UX research published at Baymard Institute Checkout UX Articles.
15% of shoppers abandon when a page crashes during checkout, making site stability and performance a direct conversion component, based on Shopify Enterprise data cited in Shopify Enterprise Faster Checkout 2025.

Guest Checkout Statistics

Required account creation before purchase causes 26% of checkouts to be abandoned, making forced registration one of the most impactful and most preventable checkout friction points, based on Baymard Institute’s 2025 survey published at Baymard Institute Reasons for Cart Abandonment 2025.
63% of online shoppers will abandon a cart if they cannot check out as a guest, based on a Future Commerce and BigCommerce study cited in BigCommerce Checkout Optimization 2025.
60% of shoppers needed help finding the guest checkout option on their mobile devices, establishing that even when guest checkout exists, its discoverability on mobile is itself a conversion-limiting problem, based on research cited in BigCommerce Checkout Optimization 2025.
Baymard Institute recommends making the guest checkout option the most prominent option on the account-selection step to ensure users can easily find it, based on 16 years of checkout usability testing observations published at Baymard Institute Checkout UX Best Practices 2025.
Guest checkout provides a lower-commitment path to purchase, and brands that implement guest checkout prominently, with optional account creation offered post-purchase, consistently outperform those that require pre-purchase registration in first-time buyer conversion, based on IntelliPay checkout analysis at IntelliPay Checkout Optimization 2025.
Delayed Account Creation a Baymard-recommended checkout architecture in which users complete their purchase as a guest and are offered account creation afterward using the details they have already entered removes the account friction entirely while still capturing the data brands need for post-purchase retention programs, based on Baymard Institute checkout guideline research at Baymard Institute Checkout UX Best Practices 2025.

Payment Methods and BNPL Statistics

Offering BNPL Buy Now, Pay Later increases checkout conversion by 78%, reduces cart abandonment by 10%, and boosts average order value by 20%, with the payment flexibility removing psychological price barriers for higher-value purchases, based on Swell’s 2025 custom checkout analysis published at Swell Custom Checkout Statistics 2025.
Over 50% of Gen Z consumers prefer BNPL to credit cards, based on a 2024 PYMNTS study cited in TestParty BNPL Trends Shopify Commerce 2025.
13% of customers abandon carts when their preferred payment method is not available, establishing payment method breadth as a measurable conversion variable, based on Baymard Institute research cited in Contentsquare Cart Abandonment Stats 2025.
Approximately 53% of shoppers worldwide used a digital wallet for purchases in 2024, and merchants who have not implemented Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Shop Pay experience conversion rate gaps versus mobile-optimized competitors who remove payment friction at the moment of highest abandonment risk, based on Blend Commerce 2025 benchmark data cited in Blend Commerce Ecommerce Conversion Rate Benchmarks 2026.
Shop Pay and equivalent digital wallet solutions enable checkout in under one second, skipping form fields entirely and eliminating the most common mobile friction points typing billing details, re-entering shipping addresses, and locating card numbers in a single tap, based on Shopify Enterprise checkout performance data at Shopify Enterprise Faster Checkout 2025.
Brands that offer multiple payment solutions Apple Pay, Google Pay, BNPL, and credit and debit cards as baseline options see higher checkout conversion than those offering a limited selection, with payment variety addressing the diverse payment preferences of global consumer audiences, based on analysis at Daminico Industry Average Checkout Conversion Rate 2025.
21% of ecommerce sites only accept one payment method, creating conversion gaps for the subgroup of users who rely on third-party payment options to complete their checkout and cannot or will not use the single available method, based on Baymard Institute payment method UX research at Baymard Institute Checkout UX Articles.

Mobile Checkout Statistics

Mobile cart abandonment reaches 85.65%, significantly higher than desktop rates, making mobile checkout optimization the highest-leverage technical investment for ecommerce businesses whose traffic skews mobile, based on IntelliPay checkout research at IntelliPay Checkout Optimization 2025 and Swell’s 2025 analysis at Swell Custom Checkout Statistics 2025.
68% of online shopping orders were completed on smartphones in Q1 2025, nearly double the proportion of four years prior, while mobile cart abandonment at 85.65% remains substantially higher than desktop abandonment, based on Statista Q1 2025 data cited in Shopify Enterprise Faster Checkout 2025.
From April 2023 to April 2024, mobile device conversion rates averaged approximately 3.0%, while desktop conversion rates were higher at 4.4%, based on Shopify Enterprise cross-device analysis published at Shopify Enterprise Faster Checkout 2025.
Mobile commerce is expected to represent 72.9% of all ecommerce sales by the end of 2025, making mobile checkout a business-critical rather than supplementary optimization target, based on mobile commerce projection data cited in IntelliPay Checkout Optimization 2025.
Mobile users are five times more likely to abandon a checkout task if the website is not optimized for mobile, based on Baymard Institute mobile UX research published at Baymard Institute UX Statistics.
Smaller screens exaggerate every additional form field and every loading delay, and thumb-typing is significantly more tiring than keyboard typing explaining why mobile checkout friction translates directly into abandonment at rates that desktop users tolerate as minor inconveniences, based on Shopify Enterprise checkout performance analysis at Shopify Enterprise Faster Checkout 2025.
Google’s Core Web Vitals requirement, updated in March 2024, mandates that every user interaction generates a response in under 200 milliseconds for sites to maintain “Good” status, with sites failing this benchmark seeing lower search rankings, higher bounce rates, and reduced checkout completion rates, based on Shopify Enterprise Core Web Vitals data at Shopify Enterprise Faster Checkout 2025.

Trust Signals and Security Statistics

19% to 25% of shoppers have abandoned a checkout flow within the last three months because they did not trust the site to securely handle their credit card information, based on Baymard Institute’s checkout usability research published at Shopify Enterprise Faster Checkout 2025 and IntelliPay Checkout Optimization 2025.
85% of consumers will not purchase from a website if they have security concerns, establishing trust signal optimization as a direct revenue lever with near-universal consumer sensitivity, based on research cited in Scoop Market CRO Statistics 2025.
Displaying trust signals SSL certificates, security badges, recognized payment provider logos, and customer reviews throughout the checkout flow addresses the security concerns that cause 17% to 25% of non-browsing abandonments, based on IntelliPay and Baymard data at IntelliPay Checkout Optimization 2025.
Well-known third-party security brands including Norton/Symantec and McAfee, business accreditations including the Better Business Bureau, and SSL providers like GeoTrust help shoppers feel secure at the checkout stage when users reach the most sensitive parts of the purchase flow and begin thinking about payment security, based on checkout trust signal analysis at BigCommerce Checkout Optimization 2025.
Adding a money-back guarantee or a clearly communicated hassle-free return policy near the checkout CTA reduces hesitation among cautious buyers and directly improves checkout completion rates for higher-priced purchases, based on trust signal conversion research at Daminico Industry Average Checkout Conversion Rate 2025.
Progress indicators in multi-step checkouts improve conversion by 11% to 25% by reducing the cognitive load of an unknown-length process and giving users a clear signal of how close they are to completion, based on UX Planet 2024 research cited in Brillmark Ecommerce A/B Test Ideas 2025.

Cart Recovery Email Statistics

Cart abandonment email open rates stand at 39.07% and the average click-through rate for cart abandonment emails is 23.33%, with an average conversion rate of 10.7%, based on Analyzify and Rejoiner research cited in Contentsquare Cart Abandonment Stats 2025.
Cart abandonment email flows generate the highest revenue per recipient of any automated email flow at USD 3.65, compared to USD 0.11 for one-off email campaigns a 33x difference in revenue efficiency based on Klaviyo’s 2024 analysis of 325B+ emails published at Klaviyo 2024 Email Marketing Benchmarks by Industry.
Email campaigns with three abandoned cart emails generated USD 24.9 million compared to USD 3.8 million for those sending only one email a 6.6x revenue difference from sequence depth alone based on Klaviyo data cited in ConvertCart eCommerce Email Marketing Statistics 2025.
Abandoned cart email sequences recover 10% to 15% of lost sales when sent within 24 hours of abandonment, with high-performing programs achieving 15% to 20% recovery rates, based on Mailchimp and Opensend data cited in Opensend Checkout Abandonment Rate Ecommerce 2025.
Exit-intent popups recover up to 15% to 21% of abandoned carts, with OptiMonk’s analysis showing cart abandonment popups converting at 17.12%, making real-time exit recovery a significant complementary lever to post-abandonment email sequences, based on OptinMonster and OptiMonk research cited in Inbeat CRO by the Numbers 2025.
Only 50% of the top 100 ecommerce businesses send cart abandonment emails despite the format’s 23.33% CTR and 33x revenue-per-recipient advantage over standard campaigns, representing a structural opportunity gap in recovery infrastructure adoption, based on Iterable research cited in ConvertCart eCommerce Email Marketing Statistics 2025.
1 in 2 people who click on abandoned cart emails make a purchase, compared to 1 in 20 who click on a standard campaign email, based on Omnisend’s 2025 Ecommerce Marketing Statistics Report published at Omnisend Email Marketing Statistics 2026.

Checkout Form and UX Optimization Statistics

The average U.S. ecommerce checkout contains 23.48 default form elements, while the ideal is 12 to 14, and most sites can achieve a 20% to 60% reduction in displayed form fields without losing essential information by collapsing optional fields, condensing name fields, auto-populating address fields, and pre-selecting same-as-shipping billing addresses, based on Baymard Institute’s checkout form optimization research published at Baymard Institute UX Statistics.
Optimized custom checkout solutions use as few as 7 fields compared to the average 14.88 fields in standard checkout implementations, based on Swell’s 2025 custom checkout analysis published at Swell Custom Checkout Statistics 2025.
80% of ecommerce sites do not allow and auto-format spaces in the credit card number field, creating unnecessary input friction for users who naturally type card numbers in groups of four digits separated by spaces, based on Baymard Institute checkout UX research at Baymard Institute Checkout UX Articles.
34% of ecommerce sites do not retain data in sensitive credit card fields after validation errors, forcing users to re-enter their full card details when a single digit error occurs a friction point that is particularly severe on mobile and drives abandonment in users who are already hesitant, based on Baymard Institute’s credit card field research at Baymard Institute Checkout UX Articles.
31% of ecommerce sites do not have inline form validation, and 4% implement it incorrectly, meaning the majority of checkout flows do not give users real-time feedback on field errors before they attempt to submit the form, based on Baymard Institute’s form validation research at Baymard Institute Checkout UX Articles.
An ideal checkout flow can be as short as 12 to 14 form elements yet the average U.S. ecommerce site uses 23.48 a 67% to 96% excess that translates directly into the 22% of users who abandon due to checkout complexity alone, based on Baymard Institute’s checkout usability testing published at Baymard Institute UX Statistics.
Default delivery option selection pre-selecting the most commonly chosen shipping option rather than presenting all options with none selected impacts final conversion by 6% to 14%, making even presentational defaults in shipping selection a measurable conversion lever, based on UX Planet 2024 research cited in Brillmark Ecommerce A/B Test Ideas 2025.

References

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