Let's look at an everyday scenario: the customer has found the right product, viewed the photos, read the description, compared the options and added it to the cart. Everything pointed to an order being placed any moment — and yet the purchase broke off somewhere along the way, leaving us blinking in confusion and mourning the lost transaction.
At times like this it's easy to assume the price was too high, the customer found a better offer, changed their mind, or simply broke off the purchase. Or, if we allow ourselves darker thoughts: the customer doesn't know what they really need and didn't even deserve such a great product. All of these can happen, but surprisingly often the real culprit behind cart abandonment is the ordering process itself: an unexpected cost, a complicated checkout, or a detail that undermines trust.
According to the Baymard Institute's 2026 data, which aggregates the results of 50 different studies, the average cart abandonment rate in online retail is 70.22 percent — meaning roughly seven out of ten carts created never become an order. That may sound alarming at first, but it's important to see that not every abandoned cart is a lost customer.
Many people just set products aside for later, others want to see the final shipping cost, or are comparing offers from several webshops. At the same time, there are plenty of shoppers who genuinely intended to order but left the process because of an obstacle that would have been easy to fix.
That's exactly why we like to emphasise that the goal of reducing cart abandonment is not to turn every abandoned cart into an order at any cost, but to eliminate the points that deter an otherwise purchase-ready shopper from completing their order.
Not every abandoned cart is a problem
The cart abandonment rate on its own can easily be misleading, so it's worth considering the customer intent behind it.
Many people don't add a product to the cart because they want to buy it immediately. They may just be comparing prices, checking the shipping cost, saving a product for later, or simply curious what the full order would cost.
According to Baymard's research, 42 percent of US online shoppers have abandoned a purchase because they were just browsing and weren't ready to order. So completely eliminating cart abandonment is not a realistic goal for a webshop — let's not make plans like that, even if we do like to dream big.
It's far more important to understand how many customers you lose who actually wanted to order but were deterred from completing the purchase. This is the area where improving how your webshop works can deliver real results.
Unexpected costs are still one of the biggest conversion killers
Imagine a customer who finds a product for HUF 19,990, considers the price fair and adds it to the cart. At the checkout, however, it turns out that a HUF 2,490 shipping fee — and perhaps an additional cash-on-delivery charge — gets added on top, making the total look far less attractive.
According to Baymard's 2026 data, among those who abandoned a purchase for reasons beyond just browsing, 40 percent named extra costs that were too high — such as shipping, taxes or other fees — as one of the reasons. For a further 12 percent, the problem was that they couldn't see the total cost of the order up front. The lesson is not that every webshop must offer free shipping; what matters far more is that the customer isn't hit with an unpleasant surprise at the checkout.
If shipping costs HUF 1,990, for example, make that clear well before the checkout. And if it becomes free above a certain cart value, show that on the product page and in the cart as well. A well-chosen free shipping threshold can not only reduce cart abandonment but also increase the average order value. If someone is at HUF 17,500 while delivery is free above HUF 20,000, they may well decide to add one more small item to their order.
Customers don't want to run an obstacle course
One of the simplest rules of checkout is that the closer the customer gets to payment, the fewer obstacles you should put in their way. Despite this, many webshops still ask for unnecessary data, make registration mandatory, or lead the customer through an unjustifiably long process. According to Baymard's data, 18 percent of respondents have abandoned a purchase because the webshop required mandatory account registration, while for 17 percent the problem was a checkout process that was too long or too complicated.
We're not saying every webshop must offer purchasing without registration — but we are saying that such a decision has to be a conscious one: gut feeling, habit, 'because I want it that way' and 'just because' are not conscious decisions. Registration can of course play a role, especially for returning customers or B2B partners. But there's a big difference between a webshop offering this option and making it a condition of ordering.
Their usability studies have also shown that a well-optimised checkout can be built from as few as 12–14 form elements, with only 7–8 actual input fields. By comparison, many webshops still ask for far more information than is genuinely needed to fulfil the order. Every unnecessary field, extra step or mandatory registration increases the chance that the customer ultimately abandons the order. That's why guest checkout is especially important — someone placing a one-off order doesn't necessarily want to create a separate user account for it.
Sellvio's checkout is optimised for mobile use from the start, and it supports guest orders as well as saved carts, so the purchase flow can be completed with as few unnecessary steps as possible.
A missing payment method is real lost revenue
The customer reaches the checkout, fills in the required details, and only at the final step discovers they can't pay the way they want to. It's easy to assume they'll simply pick another option, but in practice that's far from certain. More likely, they won't — they'll find another webshop that offers the payment method they prefer.
According to Baymard's research, 9 percent of shoppers have abandoned an order due to the lack of suitable payment options, and a further 10 percent because they ran into some error during card payment.
When choosing payment methods, the primary question shouldn't be which solution is simplest or cheapest for you as a merchant, but how your customers want to pay. In Hungary, alongside card payments, cash on delivery and bank transfer can still play an important role, while more and more people also use fast digital solutions such as Apple Pay or Google Pay.
Sellvio's checkout can handle card payment, cash on delivery and bank transfer alike, and Sellvio Pay brings several payment options together in a single system. The current lineup includes card payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay and SZEP card payments, among others.
This is much more than a simple convenience feature. If the customer can pay the way they're used to, that's one less reason for them to leave your webshop at the very last step of the order.
"When will I get it?" — shipping matters at least as much as price
We tend to reach for the price-sensitivity mantra to explain everything, yet one frequently underrated cause of cart abandonment is shipping. According to Baymard's research, 20 percent of shoppers also named delivery that was too slow as a reason for abandoning an order — but speed isn't the only thing that matters here. Predictability is at least as important. If the customer doesn't know whether the product will arrive tomorrow, in three days or only after two weeks, one of the most important pieces of information for their decision is missing. In many cases, simply showing a clear and realistic expected delivery time significantly reduces uncertainty.
In Sellvio's stock and warehouse management, separate delivery times can be configured, and the system calculates the expected delivery date based on the products in the cart. When using multiple warehouses, the shipping information shown on the product page can also be aligned with current stock data. It's also worth offering a choice of shipping methods, since not every customer prefers the same thing. Some want home delivery, others would order to a parcel locker, and others again would rather choose a pickup point.
In Sellvio's system, home delivery, pickup points and parcel lockers can all be handled, and shipping fees can be configured based on weight or order value, among other things. So the customer can see in advance not only when their package might arrive, but also which pickup options they can choose from.
A lack of trust gets really expensive at the checkout
A webshop can be visually striking, fast and technically well built, yet still easily lose the order if the customer becomes uncertain at the last moment. Questions arise: is it safe to enter my card details, what happens if there's a problem, is the merchant really trustworthy, and what if I need to return the product? According to Baymard's research, 19 percent of shoppers have abandoned an order because they didn't trust the site enough to enter their card details, while 13 percent cited unsatisfactory return policies as the reason for leaving.
Trust-building, therefore, shouldn't be left solely to the 'About us' page. Key information needs to appear where the customer makes decisions: make it clear who operates the webshop, how customer service can be reached, what shipping and return conditions apply, and what happens after payment. The look and behaviour of the checkout must remain consistent throughout. In this sense, a good checkout flow is almost uneventful: no unexpected twists, no uncertainty, and no point where the customer has to wonder what will happen after the next click.
A small technical glitch is not a "small problem"
There is also a cause of cart abandonment that has nothing to do with customer uncertainty or a poorly chosen offer — the webshop simply doesn't work properly. According to Baymard's survey, 17 percent of shoppers have abandoned an order due to a website error or crash. A broken subpage is unpleasant, but if the problem occurs in the checkout, at payment or when selecting the shipping method, it can cause direct revenue loss. That's exactly why the entire purchase flow should be tested regularly — not only on desktop, but on various mobile phones too. Among other things, check that coupons work, test the payment and shipping methods, parcel locker selection, cash-on-delivery orders, the confirmation pages, and also what happens after a failed payment.
The technical stability of your webshop is just as much a part of conversion optimisation as a better product page, a more considered checkout or a more convincing product photo. Once the customer has reached the final steps of the order, it's especially important that the system runs flawlessly.
And what about those who leave anyway?
Even a well-built webshop can't keep every customer — but an abandoned cart doesn't necessarily mean a permanently lost order.
If the system detects that a customer has left products in their cart, it may be worth reminding them later. This doesn't necessarily call for a hard-selling message; in many cases a simple nudge is enough: "You left a few items in your cart."
Sellvio's settings include abandoned cart notifications, and automated reminders can help bring back customers who, for whatever reason, left their order unfinished.
It's not worth jumping straight to a discount every time, though. If a webshop consistently sends a 10 percent coupon after every abandoned cart, returning customers can quickly learn that it pays to wait for the discount before ordering. As a first step, a well-timed reminder is often more than enough.
If some incentive is needed after all, choose it deliberately. In Sellvio you can manage scheduled promotions, coupons, quantity discounts, bundle offers and loyalty points, so winning the customer back doesn't have to mean a plain price cut.
Don't watch the abandonment percentage in isolation
Suppose your cart abandonment rate climbs from 68 percent to 72 percent from one month to the next. At first glance that looks like a clear deterioration, but on its own it isn't necessarily a problem. Your traffic may have grown in the meantime, more shoppers may have added products to their carts, and the overall number of orders may even have risen significantly. That's why cart abandonment shouldn't be examined in isolation — it has to be interpreted as part of the whole sales funnel.
You need to see how many visitors reach the product pages, how many of them add something to the cart, how many start the checkout process, and finally how many successful orders are placed. It's equally worth watching the overall conversion rate and the average cart value, because together these show whether your webshop's performance has actually improved or declined.
Sellvio's reports show traffic data, cart values, product top lists, stock value and sales trends, among other things, and the platform's business analyst also helps you interpret the data.
The point is: don't try to decide by feel which change is working. Measure, change one thing, then measure again. If you modify the checkout, adjust shipping fees, introduce several new payment methods and hand out a coupon all at once, conversion may well improve — but it will be hard to tell which change actually delivered the result.
Reducing cart abandonment is really about removing friction
There is no single trick that makes abandoned carts disappear overnight — and there doesn't need to be, because that's not a realistic goal. For most webshops, removing just a few unnecessary obstacles from the purchase flow can already bring a noticeable improvement.
Make the shipping cost clear, don't make registration mandatory, offer multiple payment and pickup options, and show up front when the package can be expected. Keep the checkout fast and predictable, make the trust-building information easy to find, and test the whole flow regularly. And if someone abandons their order anyway, give them an easy way to pick it up later.
The technical foundation plays an important role here too. Sellvio provides tools to improve the process with guest checkout, saved carts, a mobile-optimised checkout, flexible shipping settings, multiple payment options, Sellvio Pay integration, abandoned cart notifications and detailed commerce data.
We'd like to note that conversion optimisation is ultimately not about how to talk even more people into buying — it's about not putting unnecessary obstacles in front of those who are already ready to order.