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.
Shopping cart abandonment occurs when a customer adds products to their online shopping cart but leaves the website without completing the purchase.
Lost Revenue – Every abandoned cart represents a missed sale.
Higher Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) – Driving traffic to your site isn’t cheap. If visitors don’t convert, you’re wasting ad spend.
Missed Growth Opportunities – Recovering even a fraction of abandoned carts can significantly boost revenue.
Now, let’s dive into why shoppers leave and what you can do to fix it.
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:
Offer free shipping on orders above a certain amount.
Provide multiple shipping options, including express delivery.
Display estimated delivery dates upfront, not just at checkout.
Use local fulfillment centers to reduce shipping time.
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:
Be transparent about pricing—show taxes and shipping costs on product pages.
Offer bundled pricing where possible (e.g., "Buy 2, Get Free Shipping").
Provide a shipping calculator before checkout to reduce surprises.
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:
Use exit-intent popups to offer limited-time discounts.
Provide a first-time buyer discount to capture new customers.
Ensure promo codes work properly—broken codes kill conversions.
Implement a loyalty program so repeat customers get value.
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:
Showcase real customer reviews with photos on product pages.
Encourage UGC (user-generated content) via social media.
Feature testimonials prominently throughout the checkout process.
Use trust badges (e.g., "Verified Buyer" or "Real Customer Review").
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.
Minimize checkout steps—aim for one-page checkout.
Enable auto-fill for shipping and billing details.
Remove unnecessary fields (e.g., don’t ask for a fax number).
Use progress indicators to show how close they are to finishing.
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:
Enable guest checkout—let customers buy without registering.
Offer social login options (Google, Facebook, Apple).
Provide an easy post-purchase option to create an account.
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:
Use SSL encryption—customers should see "https://" in the URL.
Display security badges (McAfee Secure, Norton, PCI Compliant).
Offer secure payment methods like PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.
Clearly state your refund policy to reassure hesitant buyers.
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:
Use abandoned cart emails to remind them of their items.
Retarget with ads showing the exact products they left behind.
Provide comparisons and product details to help them decide.
As of 2025, over 70% of eCommerce traffic comes from mobile ,yet many brands don’t optimize for it.
Consider the following:
Ensure a fully responsive design—test on multiple devices.
Make checkout mobile-friendly—bigger buttons, simple forms.
Enable mobile payment options like Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Reduce popups and distractions for mobile users.
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:
Compress images to improve load times.
Enable lazy loading for better performance.
Use a fast hosting provider to reduce server delays.
Minimize JavaScript and plugins that slow things down.
Now that we’ve identified the top issues, here’s how to proactively prevent cart abandonment:
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.
Common means of simplifying the checkout process can include:
Reduce the number of form fields.
Offer guest checkout.
Use auto-fill for address and payment details like Apple Pay, Venmo, Paypal or other solutions.
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:
Display customer reviews and UGC.
Show trust badges and SSL certification.
Provide a clear return/refund policy.
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:
Show all costs upfront.
Offer free or flat-rate shipping.
Use estimated delivery dates.
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:
Send an email within 1 hour of abandonment.
Include a limited-time discount or incentive.
Follow up with a second email within 24 hours.
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:
Test your checkout process on mobile.
Use fast-loading images and minimize heavy scripts.
Offer mobile payment options.
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.