Roughly seven in ten Australian shoppers who add something to a cart never complete the purchase. That figure gets quoted constantly, usually to make store owners feel bad about it.
The number itself isn’t useful. What matters is which of the six or seven specific causes is responsible for your store, because the fix for each is completely different — and most owners guess rather than diagnose.
This article covers the causes in order of how often we find them, how to identify which applies to you, and what recovery is realistically worth.
First, Know What Normal Looks Like
Abandonment rates between 65% and 75% are typical across Australian ecommerce. If you’re sitting at 70%, you don’t have a crisis — you have an ordinary store with ordinary friction.
Above 80% suggests something specific is broken. Below 60% usually means you’re measuring cart adds differently to everyone else rather than performing miraculously.
In Shopify, find this under Analytics, then Reports, then the conversion funnel. Note the drop between reaching checkout and completing it — that’s the number this article is about, and it’s different from people browsing without adding anything.
1. Unexpected Costs at the Final Step
This is the largest single cause, and it isn’t close.
Someone builds a $60 cart, reaches checkout, and discovers $14.95 shipping. The problem isn’t the $14.95 — it’s that they’d mentally committed to $60 and now feel the price changed on them.
Three approaches work, in rough order of effectiveness:
Show shipping cost on the product page, not just at checkout. Set a free shipping threshold slightly above your average order value and display progress towards it in the cart. Or build shipping into your pricing and advertise free delivery, which suits some categories and not others.
What doesn’t work is hoping people won’t mind. They mind.
2. Forced Account Creation
Requiring an account before purchase adds a step that serves you rather than the customer. First-time buyers in particular will leave rather than create a password for a store they’ve never used.
Enable guest checkout. You can invite them to create an account on the confirmation page, once the sale is secure.
3. Too Many Steps
Every additional field and page reduces completion. Ask only for what you need to take payment and deliver the order.
Address autocomplete removes a genuine point of friction on mobile. So does a visible progress indicator, which reduces the sense that the process might go on indefinitely.
4. Missing Payment Methods
Australian shoppers expect buy now, pay later options. If Afterpay or Zip aren’t available and your average order value sits above about $80, you’re losing a meaningful segment — particularly in fashion, homewares and anything considered discretionary.
Apple Pay and Google Pay matter more than most owners assume, because they remove card entry entirely on mobile. PayPal still carries weight with older demographics.
5. Trust Gaps
A first-time visitor entering card details on a store they’ve never heard of needs reassurance at exactly that moment.
Security badges near the payment field. A visible returns policy — not buried in the footer, but stated in a line at checkout. Contact details that suggest a real business, ideally including a phone number. Reviews visible earlier in the journey.
If your store looks new, and everything about a new store does, this matters more than it would for an established brand.
6. Mobile Checkout Problems
Over 70% of Australian ecommerce traffic is mobile, and checkout is where mobile problems concentrate.
Test the entire flow on a real phone over mobile data, not on a desktop browser resized to look narrow. Tap targets, keyboard behaviour on the card fields, whether the form scrolls sensibly when the keyboard appears. Slow checkout compounds all of the above, which is covered in our speed optimisation guide.
Matching the Cause to the Evidence
| Cause | What you’d see | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Shipping shock | Drop-off spikes at the shipping step | Show costs earlier, set a threshold |
| Forced accounts | Drop-off at the first checkout screen | Enable guest checkout |
| Payment options | Drop-off at payment, higher on larger carts | Add BNPL and wallet options |
| Trust | New visitors abandon, returning don’t | Badges, returns policy, contact details |
| Mobile friction | Mobile abandonment far above desktop | Test and fix the mobile flow |
That last row is the quickest diagnostic in the list. Segment your abandonment rate by device. If mobile is more than about 10 points worse than desktop, you have a mobile problem rather than a pricing or trust problem, and you can stop guessing.
Recovery Emails, and What They’re Actually Worth
Abandoned cart emails recover somewhere between 5% and 15% of lost carts when set up properly. Worth having, but they treat the symptom.
Three emails works better than one. The first goes out within an hour, while intent is still warm, and simply reminds them. The second at 24 hours can address a likely objection — shipping, returns, sizing. The third at 72 hours is where a discount belongs, if you use one at all.
On discounts: offering one in the first email teaches customers to abandon deliberately. If you’ve trained people to wait for the 10% code, you’ll see it in your margins within a few months.
Where to Start
This week: Complete a full purchase on your own store using your phone on mobile data. Note every point where you hesitate or have to concentrate. Then segment your abandonment rate by device.
This month: Fix whichever cause your evidence points to — not all six at once, because you won’t know which one worked. Enable guest checkout if you haven’t, since that one is nearly always worth doing.
Next 90 days: Set up a three-email recovery sequence, and compare checkout completion rate month on month rather than week on week.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s a good checkout completion rate?
Between 25% and 35% of people who reach checkout completing the purchase is normal for Australian stores. Consistently below 20% points to a specific problem rather than general friction.
Does Shop Pay actually improve conversion?
For returning Shopify customers, yes — it removes form entry almost entirely. The benefit is smaller for first-time buyers who don’t already have Shop Pay set up.
Should I offer free shipping?
If your margins allow it, free shipping above a threshold usually outperforms low flat-rate shipping, because the threshold also lifts average order value. Test it against your current setup rather than assuming.
How much can I realistically improve?
Stores with a specific fixable problem often see completion rates improve by 10 to 20% relative. Stores already performing normally should expect smaller gains from checkout work and better returns elsewhere.
Do abandoned cart emails annoy customers?
One reminder rarely does. Daily emails for a week does. Three emails over three days is the range most Australian shoppers tolerate without complaint.
Related Reading
- Shopify Store Speed Optimisation: The Complete Guide
- 7 Signs Your Shopify Store Needs a Professional Audit
- How to Start a Shopify Store in Australia: The Complete 2026 Guide
Abandonment isn’t one problem with one fix. Diagnose which cause applies to your store before changing anything, or you’ll spend a month solving something that was never broken.
HHP Design has built over 600 Shopify stores from our Sydney office. See our Shopify development service or get in touch to discuss your checkout.