Shopify abandoned checkout: why it happens and how to fix it

What to check, in order

An abandoned checkout is someone who clicked Checkout, started filling it in, and left. If your problem is earlier, people adding to cart and never pressing Checkout, read why people add to cart but don't buy instead. This post starts where that one stops. Checkout is one of five places a store usually loses sales.

1. Are you reading the number right?

Shopify only lists a checkout as abandoned once the shopper has entered an email and then left it unfinished for more than ten minutes. The list lives under Orders > Abandoned checkouts, and anything older than three months is deleted automatically (Shopify Help).

That means the list undercounts. Someone who opens checkout and leaves before typing an email never appears in it. Analytics is a bit wider: a session "reached checkout" once there was any key press or click in checkout (Shopify Help).

For the benchmark, use checkout completion: of sessions that started checkout, the share that bought. Across 427 Shopify stores from July to October 2026, the median is 52%. The top 20% complete 68% or more, the top 10% complete 76% or more (Littledata). So losing about half your checkouts is the middle of the pack. Losing 70% is a problem worth an afternoon.

2. What's in the abandoned list?

Before you change any setting, open ten abandoned checkouts and read them. Each one has the customer's details and a timeline that includes payment events (Shopify Help), plus the Email status and Recovery status columns in the list.

Look for repeats. The same country points at shipping cost or a missing rate. The same payment event points at check 5. A wall of "Not sent" points at check 6.

3. Is the form asking too much?

Go to Settings > Checkout and read every form option as a first-time buyer would (Shopify Help). Four settings do the most damage:

• Company name set to Required. Apple Pay and Google Pay shoppers then have to type a company name when their wallet doesn't hold one. Most consumer stores should set it to Optional or remove it.
• Address line 2 set to Required or Don't include. Shopify notes that either one can stop some customers from finishing, depending on where they live.
• Shipping phone set to Required. Only do it if your carrier or payment provider needs it.
• A login before checkout. Check whether your store makes shoppers sign in before they can pay. A 2023 answer on the Shopify Community points to an option under the customer contact method that does exactly that (thread). Turn it off unless you're wholesale only.

The reason this matters: 18% of shoppers who meant to buy left because the site wanted an account, and 17% because the checkout was too long or complicated (Baymard). Baymard puts the average checkout at 11.3 form fields against an ideal of 8, and says the number of fields hurts usability far more than the number of steps (Baymard). One-page checkout is Shopify's default, and the three-page layout is still an option (Shopify Changelog). Cutting fields beats switching layouts.

4. Are the wallets showing?

Shopify's checkout opens with an Express Checkout section for Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay and PayPal, ordered to show the fastest option first (Shopify Help).

Shopify says Shop Pay lifts conversion by up to 50% compared with guest checkout and beats other accelerated checkouts by at least 10% (Shopify). That's Shopify's own claim, from a 2023 study by an unnamed consulting firm, so treat the size with care.

Check on a real iPhone and a real Android. Missing wallets are one reason mobile converts worse than desktop on some stores. If a wallet you've turned on doesn't appear, fix that first, and well before sale traffic arrives (the Black Friday checklist).

5. Are payments failing?

10% of shoppers in Baymard's survey left because their card was declined, and 9% because there weren't enough payment methods (Baymard).

Read the timeline on a few abandoned checkouts for payment events. Then open the Blocked view in Abandoned checkouts, where Shopify Payments puts checkouts it flagged as high risk (Shopify Help). If a lot of them come from one market you sell to on purpose, ask Shopify support why, because real buyers may be getting turned away.

And place a real order with a real card on your phone now and then. It's the simplest way to catch a broken payment step.

6. Is the recovery email on?

Some people will always leave. Shopify can email them automatically. Go to Apps > Messaging > Automations, open "Abandoned checkout emails by Shopify", choose Edit settings, tick "Send abandoned checkout emails automatically", then pick who it goes to and how long to wait (Shopify Help).

Shopify won't send it in some cases, and they explain a lot of "Not sent" statuses:

• the shopper entered only a phone number (if your contact method allows phone)
• your store can't ship to their address
• the products went out of stock, or everything was free
• there was a payment processing error
• Shopify Payments blocked the checkout as high risk
• they bought before the email went out

Then read the results carefully. Shopify marks a checkout as recovered if the customer completes the order after the email was sent, whether they clicked the link or came back on their own (Shopify Help). So "recovered" includes people who would have bought anyway. The Abandoned checkouts emails report shows sessions and orders from the emails (Shopify Help).

Is it the ads or the site?

Someone who types an email at checkout wanted the thing. So checkout abandonment is mostly the site, the price or the payment.

There's one exception, and the "can't ship to the address" rule above gives it away. If your abandoned list is full of addresses in countries you don't ship to, or charge a lot to reach, your ads are reaching people who can't buy. Narrow the ad's countries. Nothing in the checkout will fix that.

Where Anry fits

Anry follows each ad click to the visit and the order, so you can see when one campaign, one device or one country turns into far fewer orders than the rest. It prices each leak in your store's own orders, with deterministic code, and an LLM only writes the explanation and the suggested fix. Your agent in Claude, Claude Code or Cursor gets that through a read-only MCP server, and the change stays yours to make.

If you haven't done checks 1 to 3 yet, do those first. They're free and they're all in your Shopify admin.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as an abandoned checkout on Shopify?

A checkout where the shopper entered their email and didn't finish within ten minutes. If they leave before giving an email, Shopify doesn't list it as abandoned at all.

What's a good checkout completion rate on Shopify?

Littledata's median across 427 Shopify stores is 52% of sessions that start checkout. The top 20% reach 68% and the top 10% reach 76% (July to October 2026).

Why didn't my abandoned checkout email send?

Shopify skips it when the shopper gave only a phone number, when you can't ship to their address, when products are out of stock or free, after a payment error, when Shopify Payments blocked the checkout, or when they bought before it went out.

How long does Shopify keep abandoned checkouts?

Three months. After that they're deleted from the admin automatically. Convert one to a draft order if you want to keep it.

Can I send an abandoned checkout email by hand?

Yes. Open the checkout in Orders > Abandoned checkouts and click the customer's email. Your email app opens with the recovery link already in the message. It's worth doing for big orders.

Sources

• Abandoned checkouts, Shopify Help Center
• Recovering abandoned checkouts, Shopify Help Center
• Checkout form options, Shopify Help Center
• Accelerated checkouts, Shopify Help Center
• Behavior reports, Shopify Help Center
• One-page and three-page checkout, Shopify Changelog, November 2023
• Shop Pay checkout, Shopify blog
• Checkout completion rate benchmark, Littledata, October 2026
• Cart abandonment rate statistics, Baymard Institute
• Checkout optimization: minimize form fields, Baymard Institute