Why do people add to cart and then not buy?
What Baymard Institute's research says about why shoppers leave at checkout, which reasons a small business can actually fix, and how to tell a checkout leak from a traffic problem this holiday season.
Most people who add to cart were never close to buying, and the ones who were usually leave because of a surprise at checkout. Baymard Institute's average of 50 studies puts documented cart abandonment at 70.22 percent, and in its survey of US shoppers 42 percent said they were just browsing. Among the rest, the top reason by far was extra costs such as shipping, tax and fees that were higher than expected.
## Separate browsers from buyers
A cart is often a wish list. Shoppers park items to compare prices, wait for payday or show a partner. Baymard's survey found that 42 percent of US online shoppers who abandoned a cart were not ready to buy. No checkout fix will change that group, so measure your abandonment against people who reached the checkout page, which is the group a fix can move.
## The reasons a business can fix
Baymard's list of reasons, from US shoppers who were ready to buy:
- Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees): 40 percent - Delivery too slow: 20 percent - Did not trust the site with card details: 19 percent - Site wanted them to create an account: 18 percent - Checkout too long or complicated: 17 percent - Website errors or crashes: 17 percent - Returns policy not good enough: 13 percent - Could not see the total order cost up front: 12 percent - Card declined: 10 percent - Not enough payment methods: 9 percent
Almost every item on that list is a decision the business made. Costs and the total can be shown on the product page. Guest checkout can be turned on. Delivery dates and the returns policy can sit next to the add-to-cart button. Each one is cheaper than buying more traffic.
## A quick test for your own checkout
Before the holiday rush, buy something from your own site on a phone, as a new customer, and write down every moment you hesitated:
1. When did you first see the full price with shipping and tax? 2. Were you asked to make an account before paying? 3. How many fields did you fill in? 4. Did you see a delivery date before paying? 5. Did anything break, reload or log you out?
If two or more answers make you wince, the leak is at checkout, and more ads will pour more people into the same hole.
## When the problem is earlier
If very few visitors add anything to the cart at all, checkout is not the bottleneck. The offer, the price, the product page or the traffic itself is. That is a different fix, and it is easy to waste a season repairing the wrong stage.
The six questions on this site help you name which stage of the funnel is leaking, from first visit to paid order, and point you to the fix that matches it before you spend on the others.