Seven out of every ten people who add something to their cart on your store will leave without buying it. That's the global average across ecommerce — around 70%, and closer to 80% on mobile.
Put a number on it. If your store does $1 million a year in completed sales, roughly $2.3 million in cart value walked out the door. Recovering even a tenth of that is $230,000 you didn't have to spend a cent on new traffic to earn.
The good news is that abandonment isn't random. Shoppers leave for a small number of predictable reasons, and most of them are fixable this quarter.
The real reasons people leave
The single biggest cause is money the shopper didn't expect. Unexpected extra costs — shipping, taxes, handling fees — account for around 48% of all abandonments. Someone budgets $60 for a jumper, sees $73.95 at checkout, and closes the tab.
The second cause is friction. Forcing account creation drives away roughly 24% of shoppers, and a checkout that takes more than five form fields to complete sees noticeably lower completion rates than a lean one.
Then there's trust. About 18% of abandoners say they didn't feel comfortable entering card details, and 16% leave because the return policy wasn't clear enough to justify the risk.
And a large chunk simply weren't ready. Research suggests roughly 58% of abandoners were browsing with no intention of buying that session — comparing prices, saving for later, killing time on the train. Those people aren't lost. They're just early.
Fix the cost surprise first
If you do one thing, make total cost visible before the cart page. Not at checkout — before. A shipping threshold banner ("Free delivery over $75") on the product page reframes the extra cost as a goal instead of a penalty.
Free shipping thresholds work partly because they lift order value. Stores that introduce one typically see average order value climb 10–30%, which often covers the shipping cost outright.
If free shipping isn't viable on your margins, be blunt about it early. A flat "$6.95 delivery, always" line under the add-to-cart button costs you nothing and eliminates the surprise that kills half your carts.
Then audit your checkout with a stopwatch. Count the fields, count the clicks, and try completing a purchase on your own phone. Guest checkout, address autocomplete and wallet payments like Apple Pay or Shop Pay routinely lift mobile conversion by 20% or more.
Catch shoppers before they leave, not after
Most stores' entire abandonment strategy is an email sent three hours later. Those emails work — they open at around 45% and recover roughly 10% of carts — but they only reach people whose email address you already captured. For most stores that's under 30% of abandoners.
The other 70% are anonymous. Once they close the tab, they're gone, and the only way to reach them again is paying for a retargeting ad.
That's why the highest-leverage moment is while the shopper is still on your site. Behaviour gives it away: rapid scrolling back to the product description, hovering over the shipping link, mouse tracking toward the browser bar, a long pause on the cart page.
Pounce reads those signals in real time and triggers the right message at the moment of hesitation — a shipping reassurance to someone stuck on cost, a stock-level nudge to someone comparing options, a first-order offer only to visitors who would otherwise have left. The shopper never has to come back, because they never left.
The economics are simple. Recovering a sale on-site costs you nothing in ad spend, while a retargeted conversion typically costs $8–$15 in media before you've paid for the product.
Match the message to the reason
A blanket 10% popup fired at everyone is lazy and expensive. You discount people who were going to buy anyway, and you shave margin on every order.
Segment by what the behaviour tells you:
- Price-hesitant shoppers who linger on shipping or returns need reassurance, not a discount
- Repeat visitors who've seen the product three times need urgency or social proof