As its name implies, shopping cart abandonment refers to visitors who leave your website without making any purchase, after adding a product or several articles in their shopping cart.
The metric that measures the shopping cart abandonment is called “abandonment rate” and is calculated using the formula below:
Cart abandonment rate = (Transactions initiated – Transactions completed) / Transactions initiated
In other words, the AR shows the percentage of visitors who completed a purchase after expressing the intention to buy by clicking the “Add to cart” button (initiating the transaction). In e-commerce websites, the AR is generally around 60-75% and can be improved through a combination of techniques such as usability changes, conversion rate optimization, email marketing and retargeting.
