10 tips to decrease shopping cart abandonment rate in the new age of agentic.

The average online shopping cart is abandoned about 70% of the time.

That number sounds alarming until you consider why it happens: most shoppers are browsing, comparing prices, or saving items for later.

The more important number is the percentage of users who intended to buy and didn't make it through. Those are the customers worth fighting for, and the reasons they abandon are almost always fixable: a slow page, a confusing checkout flow, an unexpected fee, a form that wouldn't submit. Small friction points with measurable revenue consequences.

These ten tips address the most common causes of preventable cart abandonment and what to do about each one. And in 2026, there’s a new layer of urgency: AI agents are now part of the shopping journey.

According to Quantum Metric’s 2026 AI Experience Benchmark Report, 1 in 5 consumers now start their shopping journey on an AI platform, and AI-referred traffic is growing at roughly 111% year over year. That traffic converts better than traditional channels — CVR for AI-referred visitors is already 10% higher in 2026 than 2025 — but it is also far less forgiving. AI-referred users are over 2x more likely to abandon when they encounter friction, and 81% say they won’t return to a brand after a single bad experience. The stakes for getting checkout right have never been higher.

1. Optimize product pages for conversion.

When shoppers land on a product page and leave without adding anything to their cart, the page itself is usually the problem, assuming an otherwise baseline intent to purchase. Either they're not getting the information they need, or the path to purchase isn't clear enough to follow.

Start with the basics: multiple product photos from every angle, high-resolution images, and video that shows the product in use. Then make sure the "Add to Cart" button is impossible to miss. A cluttered product page with too much competing content buries the one action you want shoppers to take.

In the agentic era, product page structure matters even more. AI shopping agents don’t scroll or hover — they scan for structured, extractable information: price, availability, specs, and reviews exposed cleanly in the DOM. If that data is buried behind tabs, accordions, or requires JavaScript interaction to surface, agents may misrepresent your product or skip it entirely. 46% of consumers want brands to prioritize AI for search support — optimizing for how agents read your pages is no longer optional.

2. Declutter workflows.

The fewer steps between landing page and order confirmation, the better. Amazon's near-instant checkout is the clearest proof point — simplicity converts.

Aim for 12 to 14 elements in your checkout flow, or as few as 7 to 8 form fields. Trim copy to only what's essential. Combine form fields where possible — "Full name" instead of separate "First" and "Last" fields. Offer autofill and saved information for returning customers. Write error messages that tell shoppers exactly what went wrong and how to fix it, not just that something failed.

If your setup allows it, a single-page checkout is worth the investment. Every additional page is another opportunity for a shopper to reconsider.

This applies doubly to the future of agentic shoppers. AI agents completing purchases on a consumer’s behalf don’t navigate around friction the way human shoppers sometimes do. Checkout flows that rely on visual cues, hover states, or multi-step modal sequences may simply break. Key actions need clearly labeled attributes that agents can identify and execute without ambiguity.

3. Label workflows clearly.

According to Baymard Institute, 18% of US online shoppers have abandoned an order specifically because the checkout process felt too long or complicated. Progress indicators directly address that perception by showing shoppers exactly how many steps remain and where they are in the flow.

This is especially important at the order summary step, which shoppers frequently confuse with the final confirmation page. A clear label and a visible step count prevents that confusion and keeps shoppers moving forward.

4. Retain first-time customers.

Mandatory account creation is one of the most reliable ways to lose a first-time buyer. Many shoppers will abandon a checkout the moment they realize they have to register, choose a username and password, and confirm their account via email before they can complete a purchase.

The fix is straightforward: offer guest checkout. If you want to capture account information, integrate it into the post-purchase confirmation flow rather than gating checkout behind it. First-time buyers who complete a purchase as guests are far more likely to create an account voluntarily once they’ve had a positive experience. That first purchase matters more than ever in the agentic era: Quantum Metric’s 2026 AI Experience Benchmark found that 98% of consumers make repeat purchases from AI-recommended brands — meaning brands that earn the trust of an AI-referred shopper on their first visit have a powerful retention flywheel to build on.

5. Provide security assurances.

According to McKinsey and Company, only 18% of consumers trust retail companies with their data. That skepticism shows up directly in checkout behavior. Glitchy or slow experiences raise immediate red flags, and shoppers who don't feel confident that their payment information is safe will not complete a purchase regardless of how much they want the product.

Trust badges and security certifications from recognized third-party providers like Norton and Stripe help address that concern visually at the moment it matters most. For smaller brands without established recognition, customer reviews and testimonials linked to a third-party platform add a layer of credibility that brand assets alone can’t provide. The cost of getting this wrong is steep: Quantum Metric’s 2026 AI Experience Benchmark found that 2 in 5 consumers will leave a site after a single bad experience, and 81% say they’re unlikely to return — a threshold that applies to AI-referred visitors with even less tolerance for friction than traditional shoppers.

6. Offer promotions.

A well-timed promotion can be the difference between a shopper who browses and one who buys. Email and social alerts about active sales drive traffic with purchase intent already built in.

If you're running a time-sensitive promotion, a countdown timer on the site banner creates urgency without requiring shoppers to do the math themselves. One caveat: make sure your discount and promo codes actually work. A code that fails at checkout is one of the fastest ways to lose a sale you already had.

7. Rescue customers.

Not every abandoned cart is a lost sale. Many shoppers leave because something went wrong, or maybe they just got distracted, and a well-timed intervention can bring them back. The caveat in the agentic era: AI-referred visitors are over 2x more likely to abandon when they hit friction, and recovery is harder — 81% say they won’t return after a bad experience. Prevention matters far more than rescue for this segment, but the same monitoring infrastructure that catches issues for human shoppers is what protects you with AI-referred traffic too.

Live chat and phone support give shoppers a way to resolve issues in real time, including payment errors that an agent can help complete manually. Exit-intent pop-ups can catch shoppers at the moment they're about to leave, giving them a reason to reconsider. And for shoppers whose email you've already captured, a cart abandonment email sent within one to two hours of abandonment — with a clear subject line, a strong visual, and a direct CTA — can recover a meaningful percentage of lost sales. Abandoned cart email sequences recover 10 to 15% of lost sales when sent within 24 hours.

8. Remain transparent about refund policies, shipping, and taxes.

Unexpected costs are the single largest driver of cart abandonment. According to Baymard Institute, 48% of shoppers who abandon do so because extra costs like shipping and taxes appeared too late in the checkout process.

The fix is visibility. Show total costs, including shipping, taxes, and fees, as early in the flow as possible. Make your return policy easy to find and easy to understand — 67% of shoppers check return policies before purchasing, and sites that surface simplified return policy highlights directly on product pages see abandonment rates drop meaningfully. For international shoppers, make sure currency conversion and duty estimates are clear before the payment step.

9. Check and update inventory settings.

Few things derail a purchase more completely than an "Out of Stock" message at the end of a checkout flow. If an item is temporarily unavailable, say so clearly and give shoppers a way to be notified when it's back. That converts an abandoned cart into a future sale rather than a lost one.

Scarcity messaging like "Only 2 left in stock" can drive purchase urgency when it's true. Use it sparingly and only when accurate — shoppers who feel misled don't come back. For items available only for in-store pickup or in limited locations, make that clear on the product page, not at checkout.

10. Monitor key KPIs and cart abandonment metrics.

Cart abandonment rate is the headline number, but it doesn’t tell you where the problem is. Track checkout conversion rate by step to identify exactly where shoppers drop off. Monitor average order value, item count in abandoned carts, and email capture rate to understand the full shape of the problem. In 2026, add AI-referred traffic as its own segment in your reporting. According to Quantum Metric’s 2026 AI Experience Benchmark, AI-driven cart values are nearly 2x higher than traditional traffic in some industries — blending those sessions into aggregate metrics masks both the opportunity and the risk. Segmenting AI-referred vs. non-AI traffic lets you track conversion rate, abandonment rate, and AOV separately for each, so you can see whether friction is hitting your highest-value visitors disproportionately.

When conversion drops suddenly, session replay and real-time anomaly detection can surface the cause before it compounds. A checkout button that stops working, a payment API that starts throwing errors, or a promo code field that's rejecting valid codes — these are the kinds of issues that don't show up in aggregate metrics until they've already cost significant revenue. Catching them in real time is what separates teams that diagnose problems from teams that discover them in Monday's reporting.

Every abandoned cart is a data point. The teams that act on them win.

The retailers that convert the most aren't necessarily the ones with the best products or the lowest prices. They're the ones that have eliminated the friction standing between a shopper and a completed purchase, and built the monitoring practices to catch new friction before it compounds.

That means treating cart abandonment as a diagnostic problem, not a marketing one. The data already tells you where shoppers are dropping off. Session replay, funnel analysis, and real-time alerts tell you what they experienced when they did. That combination is what makes the difference between optimizing checkout and actually fixing it.