Why shoppers leave checkout, and which reasons a conversation can fix
What Baymard's research says
Baymard Institute keeps a running list of published studies on cart abandonment. In its October 2026 update, the unweighted average of 50 studies from 2006 to 2025 is 70.22%, with individual studies ranging from 55% to 84%.
A large share of that needs no fixing. In Baymard’s own study, 42% of US online shoppers said they had abandoned a cart because “I was just browsing / not ready to buy”. Setting those aside, the page lists the remaining reasons, which appear in the table below. They add up to more than 100%, so read each one as how common that reason is, and not as a slice of one pie. The page does not give the sample size or say whether people could give several answers.
What a conversation can and cannot do
| Reason, in Baymard's words | Share | Can a conversation help? | What it can do | What to change on your site |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees) | 40% | Partly | Explain the charges and, if price is the objection, offer a code you listed. | Show the full cost in the cart. |
| Delivery was too slow | 20% | Partly | State your shipping times if the brief lists them. It cannot shorten them. | Show delivery dates earlier, as an estimated date. |
| I didn’t trust the site with my credit card information | 19% | Partly | Say who you are and give your support email. A call from an unknown number may not reassure anyone. | Look at the payment step the way a first-time visitor would. |
| The site wanted me to create an account | 18% | No | Nothing. The form is still there when they come back. | Offer guest checkout and move account creation to the confirmation step. |
| Too long / complicated checkout process | 17% | No | Nothing lasting. | Cut form fields. Baymard puts the average US checkout at 23.48 form elements, against an ideal of 12 to 14. |
| Website had errors / crashed | 17% | No | Find out it happened. The template asks whether something went wrong on the checkout page. | Fix the bug. A hand-off for website problems can tell you about it sooner. |
| Returns policy wasn’t satisfactory | 13% | Partly | Explain the real policy, which helps if someone misread it. | Change the policy if it is losing orders you want. |
| I couldn’t see / calculate total order cost up-front | 12% | Partly | Tell the shopper the cart total. | Show the total in the cart, the same fix as the first row. |
| The credit card was declined | 10% | Partly | Send the link so they can try again, hand off to billing, or transfer them to your payment line if you set one. The agent never takes card details. | Offer other ways to pay. |
| There weren’t enough payment methods | 9% | No | Tell the shopper what you accept, if the brief lists it. | Add the methods your shoppers expect. |
| I don’t know | 7% | Partly | Ask what stopped them. The discovery questions are there for this. | Nothing specific. |
The 42% who were just browsing get their own line here. A conversation cannot create intent that is not there, and the template’s guardrail covers them: “If the shopper says they are not interested, thank them and end the conversation.”
What no conversation fixes
If your store forces an account, a friendly call changes nothing. The shopper taps the link, lands on the same form and leaves again. The same goes for a slow site, or a checkout that throws errors on a phone.
Baymard makes this point about retargeting emails in its guide to reducing abandonment: “Bringing users back to a frustrating checkout simply re-exposes them to the same friction that drove them away initially.” We think that holds for calls and texts too. If your store has one of these problems, fix it before you pay for recovery, ours included.
Baymard also calculates that the average large-sized ecommerce site can gain a 35.26% increase in conversion rate through better checkout design. It tested large US and EU sites, so a smaller store should read that as a direction and not a forecast.
Count your own reasons
Baymard’s figures describe US online shoppers in general, and your store may look different. Every new campaign comes with a Conversation Intelligence question called Main objection: “What was the main reason the shopper gave for not finishing checkout?” It sorts answers into price, shipping cost, delivery time, product fit, trust, timing, technical problem, none given and other, and you can read the counts in Analytics.
That count has limits. It only covers shoppers who actually talked to the agent, and it starts from the moment the question is published. A shopper who never replied gave no reason. Even so, a run of technical problem answers is worth checking against your live checkout that same day.
Sources
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