Checkout Abandonment
Conversion & UXAlso: Checkout Abandonment Rate · Abandoned Checkout
Quick definition
Checkout abandonment is when a shopper starts the checkout process, entering shipping or payment details, but leaves before completing the purchase. It's measured as the percentage of started checkouts that never convert into an order, and it happens later in the funnel than cart abandonment.
Compare this against your own trend over time rather than an industry average. A single number without a shipping cost or step-by-step breakdown tells you very little.
How it varies across Australia
Checkout abandonment sits lower than cart abandonment for most Australian ecommerce stores, because it only counts shoppers who got as far as entering details. Categories with higher average order value and more complex shipping tend to sit above simpler, lower-priced categories. The gap between cart and checkout abandonment tells you more than either number alone.
See conversion benchmarks across Australian ecommerce →What it actually means
Checkout abandonment happens after the decision has effectively been made. The shopper added the item, clicked through to checkout, and started typing in their address. Then they left. That's a different failure to cart abandonment, where someone was still browsing or comparing.
Most checkout abandonment is self-inflicted. Shipping costs that appear for the first time on the payment page. A forced account creation step. A payment method that isn't offered. A form that resets when a field validates wrong. Each of these is a small friction point, but checkout is the one part of the funnel where friction is most expensive, because you're this close to the conversion event.
The metric pairs naturally with conversion rate and call-to-action design, but it's really a user-experience (UX) diagnosis wearing an analytics costume. A high checkout abandonment rate rarely means your product or price is wrong. It usually means something between 'add to cart' and 'order confirmed' is asking too much of the shopper, too late in the process.
Bounce rate measures people leaving a page. Checkout abandonment measures people leaving a commitment. That's why it deserves more attention per abandoned session than almost any other funnel metric.
Cart abandonment is a shopper thinking about it. Checkout abandonment is a shopper who already said yes and then you talked them out of it.
How to calculate it
Checkout Abandonment Rate = (Checkouts started minus Checkouts completed) divided by Checkouts started
Worked example. 1,000 shoppers started checkout last month. 640 completed an order. Abandonment = (1,000 minus 640) divided by 1,000 = 36%.
The Australian context
Australian shoppers are particularly sensitive to shipping cost surprises, given how much of the country sits outside major shipping hubs. A checkout that quotes a flat rate up front performs noticeably better than one that reveals a higher regional rate only after address entry. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) options like Afterpay and Zip are close to a default expectation in Australian ecommerce checkout, and their absence is a common, quiet cause of abandonment at the payment step.
Where people get this wrong
Related terms
Common questions
What's a normal checkout abandonment rate?
It varies by category and average order value, so there's no single healthy number. What matters more is the trend over time and how it compares to your own cart abandonment rate. A widening gap between the two usually points to a checkout-specific problem.
What's the single biggest cause of checkout abandonment?
Unexpected costs revealed late in the process, most often shipping fees. Shoppers accept a price when they add to cart. If the total jumps at the final step, many will leave rather than accept the new number.
Does forcing account creation increase checkout abandonment?
Yes, in most cases. A guest checkout option consistently reduces abandonment compared to a mandatory account signup, because it removes a step between the shopper's decision and the completed order.
How do I find where in checkout people are dropping off?
Set up step-by-step funnel tracking in your analytics tool, then pair it with session recordings or a heatmap tool for the steps with the biggest drop-off. The quantitative funnel tells you where. The qualitative recording tells you why.
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About New Rebellion
New Rebellion is a marketing intelligence consultancy. We build tools, score Australian businesses on how their marketing actually performs, and publish Debrief every day. This dictionary is part of how we work in the open.
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