Ecommerce Metrics · Updated June 2026
Cart abandonment occurs when a shopper adds products to their cart but leaves without completing checkout. Across ecommerce, roughly 70% of carts are abandoned — making recovery emails and checkout friction reduction among the highest-ROI fixes available.
The leading causes of abandonment are surprise costs at checkout (shipping, taxes), forced account creation, and long forms. Each is fixable: show total cost early, allow guest checkout, and add express payment buttons.
A 3-email recovery sequence (sent at ~1 hour, 24 hours, and 72 hours) typically recovers 5–15% of abandoned carts.
Meta-analyses of ecommerce studies put average cart abandonment around 70%, with mobile rates typically higher than desktop. Luxury and high-consideration categories run higher; groceries and replenishables run lower.
Conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who complete a purchase. It is calculated as orders divided by total sessions, multiplied by 100. A typical Shopify store converts 1–3% of sessions; top performers exceed 4%.
An abandoned cart email is an automated message sent to shoppers who left items in their cart without buying. A 3-email sequence (≈1h, 24h, 72h) typically recovers 5–15% of abandoned carts, making it the highest-ROI email automation in ecommerce.
Shop Pay is Shopify’s accelerated checkout that stores payment and shipping details for one-tap purchase. Shopify reports Shop Pay checkouts convert meaningfully higher than regular checkouts, making it one of the simplest conversion upgrades available.