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How to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment and Boost D2C Sales

Learn 15 proven strategies to reduce shopping cart abandonment, improve conversions, and boost D2C sales with faster shipping, better checkout, & trust signals.

Shopping cart abandonment is a major challenge for direct-to-consumer (D2C) merchants. Despite getting shoppers to browse and add items to their carts, many leave before completing the purchase. Industry data shows that nearly 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned, representing billions in lost revenue for eCommerce brands.

The good news? Most cart abandonment issues are fixable. The biggest reasons customers leave—slow shipping, high costs, poor checkout experience, and lack of trust—can all be optimized.

In this guide, we’ll break down the top reasons why shoppers abandon their carts and practical solutions to recover lost sales.

What is Shopping Cart Abandonment?

Shopping cart abandonment occurs when a customer adds products to their online shopping cart but leaves the website without completing the purchase.

Why Does It Matter?

Now, let’s dive into why shoppers leave and what you can do to fix it.

Top Reasons for Shopping Cart Abandonment (And How to Fix Them)

1. Shipping is Too Slow, Too Expensive or a Surprise

Amazon set the free shipping expectation and in doing so pushed retailers, small and large towards, working out their pricing such that the cost of shipping is, at best, also free, or, at least minimal. So minimal that a majority of shoppers will see the value and be fine to proceed with it.

There are different means of making a free shipping solution work for most retailers. Here are a few to consider:

2. Unexpected Costs at Checkout

Hidden fees like taxes, shipping, or service charges frustrate shoppers and make them abandon their carts. If you're an international merchant selling to a market outside your domestic one, international shoppers are likely to experience VAT and other regional taxes applied to their purchase which can cause cart abandonment.

Additionally, if you're a merchant selling big and bulky items, merchants for the first time usually will be surprised themselves to see the customs, duty, VAT and cost of last mile freight delivery they have to incur just to list their item for sale to shoppers. In those cases, there isn't an easy solution for merchants and shoppers but Freight Right does offer a solution for that kind of merchants.

Provided you're selling small parcel domestic goods, consider the following:

3. No Discounts or Discounts Didn’t Work

Many shoppers add items to their cart expecting a discount—only to abandon when they don’t find one. Like with transparent pricing and shipping, incentives to build the basket are extensive and allow merchants to sell at prices that make their operation work while giving a fair incentive to shoppers to add more to cart to unlock additional benefits.

Consider the following:

4. Lack of Customer Reviews and Social Proof

Customers trust other customers. That is more true now in 2025 than ever as trust in advertising is falling to all time lows. While influencer trust is still the high albeit beginning to wane itself, people referring things to people, proof that real people are buying real things and expressing real opinions about them is the gold standard that can drive more impact than even the savviest marketing campaigns.

Consider the following:

5. Checkout Process is Too Complicated

If your checkout has too many steps, fields, or distractions, customers will leave. As a general rule of thumb, the fewer steps the better and only request the minimum amount of information that is absolutely necessary of the customer to complete the sale. Simpler is always better.

6. No Guest Checkout Option

Forcing customers to create an account adds friction and kills conversions. 85% of purchases from online merchants are one-time. In other words, 85% of the time when a sale happens from your store it's likely going to be the first and last time they buy from you. Acknowledging that reality and enabling it is encouraged while simultaneously working out tactics, on the front and backend, to improve customer retention.

Consider the following:

7. Payment Security Concerns

Payment processing solutions have become more secure each successive year. It never hurts, however, to provide signals and cues to shoppers that their cart is secure and their payment means isn't at risk of exposure.

Consider the following:

8. Shoppers Are in the "Research Phase"

Some visitors add items to their cart but aren’t ready to buy yet. There are tactics to encourage those who are in the resesarch based phase to come back and complete their purchase.

Consider the following:

9. Poor Mobile Shopping Experience

As of 2025, over 70% of eCommerce traffic comes from mobile ,yet many brands don’t optimize for it.

Consider the following:

10. Slow Website Speed

A slow-loading site kills conversions. If pages take too long, shoppers leave. This will be covered more below.

Consider the following technical assessments and improvements:

Actionable Strategies to Reduce Cart Abandonment

Now that we’ve identified the top issues, here’s how to proactively prevent cart abandonment:

1. Simplify the Checkout Process

Checkout processes can be susceptible to bloat. Bloat being too many questions, too many boxes to tick or too many that need to be completed in order to proceed or finish the transaction. Seemingly small things with the best of intentions can expand quickly into things that inhibit the checkout process.

2. Build Trust with Social Proof & Security

Small details can push a buyer over the line to complete a purchase or, earlier on, add a product to cart to begin the process. Services like Monetate and others that provide plugins to alert users X number of people have added a product to cart or viewed a certain product help provide those nudges towards checkout. Other solutions can include:

3. Offer Transparent Pricing & Shipping

Buyers, now more than ever, can spot gimmicky pricing tactics and will immediately bounce from the checkout process or website if they feel like they found it. While Amazon famously engaged in, what many believe to be, deceptive pricing, it doesn’t mean it should be a model to follow for smaller shops. Price transparency is important for buyer trust and brand reputation:

4. Recover Abandoned Carts with Email & SMS

Bringing people back to cart has become a tricker tactic in recent years. There’s a myriad of reasons why buyers leave their cart all the way from getting distracted to something genuinely wrong or displeasing about the checkout process. Tactics to bring people back to cart should be explored after rigorous examination of your own checkout process as-is, your pricing and as many other qualities as possible have been checked out first. In other words, if your pricing isn’t aligned with other sellers, or your checkout process is too cumbersome or abrasive, no text or email will bring the user back.

Provided your website, pricing, and other qualities are in check, consider the following tactics:

5. Optimize for Mobile & Site Speed

Site speed and performance are the most technical to diagnose and remedy but can make all of the difference. Everything, from product, to price, can be perfectly aligned and perfectly arranged but a site that loads too slow makes all the other points moot.

Sites that run on common CRMs with ecommerce bolt-ons like Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal, offer lots of functionality out of the box but often don’t come optimized for speed. Usually a developer and/or marketer should be tasked with diagnosing site speed and performance issues and troubleshooting accordingly. Custom built sites can be more difficult to optimize for because of the customized tack. Shopify, the gold standard for DTC merchants, also offers a lot out of the box but truly shines when a developer is involved optimizing not just for appearance and aesthetics but also speed and technical performance.

For marketers and site admins, consider the following:

Conclusion: Turn Abandoned Carts into Sales

Shopping cart abandonment is a huge revenue drain, but fixing common friction points can significantly boost conversions. Additionally, today’s shoppers have higher expectations for the online shopping experience than ever before. Fast, frictionless checkouts on any device are non negotiable and the details matter at this juncture.

Provided your website is setup with Google Analytics 4 or another GDPR compliant tracking software like Clicky, Fathom or Umami Analytics, any of these tools should help illuminate where the leaks are that need to be plugged in your checkout flow.