Published on 2025-06-26T04:16:25Z

What is Cart Abandonment? Examples and Tracking

Cart abandonment occurs when an online shopper adds items to a cart but leaves without completing the purchase. It’s a crucial e-commerce metric in analytics that highlights friction points in the checkout process and uncovers potential revenue loss. By measuring the gap between initiated checkouts and completed purchases, businesses can pinpoint usability issues, unexpected costs, or technical delays. Tools like GA4 and Plainsignal (a cookie-free analytics platform) make it easy to capture add_to_cart, begin_checkout, and purchase events. Understanding and reducing cart abandonment rates helps optimize conversion funnels, improve customer experience, and drive higher sales.

Illustration of Cart abandonment
Illustration of Cart abandonment

Cart abandonment

Metric tracking shoppers who add to cart but leave before purchase to optimize conversion and reduce revenue loss.

Why Cart Abandonment Matters

Cart abandonment rate directly impacts revenue and reveals pain points in the checkout process. Analyzing abandonment helps businesses prioritize improvements, reduce lost sales, and refine marketing strategies. It also serves as an indicator of user experience issues, such as form complexity or unexpected shipping fees, and is essential for optimizing the conversion funnel.

  • Revenue impact

    A high cart abandonment rate means potential sales are lost, directly affecting top-line revenue.

  • User experience insights

    Abandonment data uncovers friction in the checkout process, such as confusing layouts or slow page loads.

  • Optimization opportunities

    Tracking where and why users drop off enables targeted experiments like A/B tests or checkout simplification.

How to Track Cart Abandonment

Tracking cart abandonment involves capturing events at key points in the shopping journey. Modern analytics tools like GA4 support event-based tracking, while privacy-focused solutions such as PlainSignal offer a cookie-free approach. By implementing tracking code snippets and defining custom events, businesses can measure add_to_cart, checkout initiation, and purchase steps to calculate abandonment rates.

  • Cookie-free tracking with plainsignal

    PlainSignal offers simple, GDPR-compliant analytics without cookies. Insert the tracking script into your site to capture cart events automatically.

    • Add snippet: 
      <link rel='preconnect' href='//eu.plainsignal.com/' crossorigin />
<script defer data-do='yourwebsitedomain.com' data-id='0GQV1xmtzQQ' data-api='//eu.plainsignal.com' src='//cdn.plainsignal.com/PlainSignal-min.js'></script>
    • Event tracking:

      PlainSignal automatically tracks pageviews and click events. For custom cart metrics, configure rules in your PlainSignal dashboard.

  • Implementing cart events in ga4

    Google Analytics 4 uses event-based measurement to track user interactions. You can send custom add_to_cart and begin_checkout events to GA4 using gtag or Google Tag Manager.

    • Add to cart event: 
      gtag('event', 'add_to_cart', {
  currency: 'USD',
  value: 49.99,
  items: [{ item_id: 'P12345', item_name: 'Sample Product' }]
});
    • Begin checkout event: 
      gtag('event', 'begin_checkout', {
  currency: 'USD',
  value: 49.99
});
    • Calculating abandonment:

      Cart Abandonment Rate = (Number of checkout starts - Number of purchases) ÷ Number of checkout starts × 100%.

Strategies to Reduce Cart Abandonment

Once you identify abandonment points, implement targeted strategies to encourage checkout completion.

  • Simplify checkout process

    Minimize form fields, enable guest checkout, and provide progress indicators to streamline the purchase flow.

  • Transparent pricing

    Display all fees upfront, including shipping and taxes, to avoid surprising customers during checkout.

  • Retargeting campaigns

    Use email reminders, push notifications, or dynamic ads to bring back users who left items in their cart.

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