This can happen and it is an interesting conversation I have had with many online shop owners in the past. Sometimes if you see many abandoned shopping carts it can be a clear indication of a problem however it can also be normal to see this happen. So why do customers add products to a cart and then walk away? What causes it to happen and how can we win back some of these customers? An interesting question I would like to ask you is do you know how many people have abandoned their shopping carts on your website? If not you should check.

Baymard Institute (a research company) says on average 68% of all online shopping carts are abandoned, this statistic was taken over an 8 year period however in 2013 this figure has climbed to over 74%, this might seem like a high number and you are right, so I would not panic if you find your number of abandoned carts is this high, its normal but it does mean that 7 out of every 10 visitors to your website will stop without buying anything, I believe it would be easier (and cheaper) to convert more of these customers to sales than to gain more traffic to your website.

So why do people abandon their shopping carts?

So the most common suggestion that people make when I discuss this topic with them is that visitors just simply change their minds at the very last moment. When we actually did a little looking into this we found that this was not entirely the case at all. In research carried out by the payment processing company WorldPay, it was found that this was, in fact, the fifth-highest reason people did not buy, this means there are 4 bigger reasons your customers may have left a cart abandoned at your store this year. You’re interested now I bet? So what are they? Have a look at our chart below: