What is Cart Abandonment Rate? Complete Formula and Benchmarks | Razorpay

In 2026, the global average cart abandonment rate is 70.22%. That means for every 10 shoppers who add something to their cart, 7 leave without paying. For Indian D2C brands competing without Amazon’s checkout infrastructure or Flipkart’s stored customer data, that number can be even higher.

Cart abandonment rate is the percentage of online shoppers who add items to their cart but leave without completing the purchase. It is one of the most important metrics for any e-commerce business to track because it sits at the exact point where interest becomes a decision, and decisions become revenue.

This is Chapter 1 of our cart abandonment rate series. We cover what it is, how to calculate it, what a good rate looks like by industry, and why it matters specifically for Indian e-commerce brands.

What is Cart Abandonment Rate and How Do You Calculate It?

Cart abandonment rate measures the percentage of shoppers who add products to their cart but leave before completing the purchase.

The formula is straightforward:

Cart Abandonment Rate (%) = (Abandoned Carts / Total Carts Created) x 100

For example, if 500 users add products to their carts and only 150 complete their purchases:

(500 – 150) / 500 x 100 = 70%

Cart Abandonment vs. Checkout Abandonment

These two terms are often used interchangeably but they measure different things.

Cart abandonment happens when a shopper adds items to their cart but leaves before starting the checkout process at all.

Checkout abandonment happens when a shopper begins the checkout process but does not complete the payment.

Knowing which one is higher on your store tells you exactly where to focus. High cart abandonment points to a product, pricing, or trust problem. High checkout abandonment points to a checkout friction or payment problem.

Why Does Cart Abandonment Rate Matter for Indian E-commerce Brands?

Every abandoned cart is revenue that almost happened. A shopper who adds to cart has already shown buying intent. Losing them at that point is more costly than never attracting them at all, because you have already paid for the traffic.

Three specific reasons this matters more for Indian brands:

Lost marketing spend — Every visitor who abandons their cart represents a wasted acquisition cost. If you are spending on Meta or Google ads to drive traffic and 70% of those visitors leave without buying, your cost per acquisition climbs quickly.

Inaccurate forecasting — A high abandonment rate distorts your sales data. If you are planning inventory, hiring, or ad spend based on traffic numbers without accounting for abandonment, your projections will consistently miss.

Competitive gap — Amazon and Flipkart convert at 10%. Most Indian D2C brands convert at 2%. The difference is almost entirely checkout experience. Cart abandonment rate is the metric that makes that gap visible and measurable.

For Indian D2C brands, the fastest way to close the gap between a 70% abandonment rate and a healthy conversion rate is fixing the checkout experience. Razorpay Magic Checkout reduces checkout friction by pre-filling customer details across a network of 100 million+ shoppers, making it the most direct lever available to Indian brands looking to recover lost sales.

What is a Good Cart Abandonment Rate by Industry in 2026?

Cart abandonment rates vary significantly by product category. Here are the current benchmarks:

A cart abandonment rate below 65% is a strong benchmark for Indian D2C brands. If your rate is above 75%, checkout friction is almost certainly the primary cause.

Mobile vs desktop abandonment

Mobile cart abandonment rate is 80.02% vs 66.41% on desktop. Since over 60% of Indian e-commerce traffic comes from mobile, this is the single most important benchmark for most Indian brands. If your checkout is not optimised for mobile, you are losing the majority of your potential buyers before they pay.

How Do You Track Cart Abandonment Rate on Your Store?

• Three tools cover most needs:

  Your e-commerce platform — Shopify, WooCommerce, and most platforms have built-in cart abandonment tracking in their analytics dashboards. This is the quickest starting point.

  Google Analytics 4 — Set up e-commerce tracking in GA4 to see exactly where in the checkout funnel users are dropping off, which products are most often abandoned, and which traffic sources bring the highest abandonment.

  Heatmap tools — Tools like Hotjar show you visually where users click, scroll, and drop off on your checkout page. Useful for identifying specific friction points that numbers alone cannot explain.

What Should You Do After Measuring Your Cart Abandonment Rate?

Knowing your rate is step one. The more useful question is why shoppers are leaving.

The most common reasons are unexpected costs at checkout, forced account creation, a complicated checkout process, lack of trust signals, and limited payment options. Each has a specific fix.

In Chapter 2 of this series we break down the 10 most common reasons Indian shoppers abandon their carts with specific data on which are most prevalent and which are easiest to fix.