cart abandonment rate

Definition

The percentage of shoppers who add items to their online cart then flee before completing purchase, usually hovering around a soul-crushing 70%. It's the digital equivalent of people filling their shopping basket then just walking out of the store.

Example Usage

Our cart abandonment rate is 75%, suggesting that three-quarters of shoppers reach checkout and then reconsider their life choices.

Origin

E-commerce metric that emerged in the late 1990s with online shopping

Fun Fact

The top reasons for cart abandonment are unexpected shipping costs, being forced to create an account, and having time to think about whether you really need another throw pillow.

Source: E-commerce analytics

Related Terms

Beginner

customer acquisition cost

The total cost of winning a new customer, including all marketing and sales expenses divided by the number of customers acquired. Also known as CAC, or 'the metric that determines whether your business model is brilliant or just elaborate money-burning.'

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

niche

A specialized market segment so specific that you're either a genius for discovering it or desperately grasping at straws. It's where businesses go to avoid competing with Amazon by selling something like artisanal yak wool iPhone cases. The sweet spot between 'untapped opportunity' and 'there's probably a reason nobody else is doing this.'

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Intermediate

zombie account

A customer account that's technically active but generates no revenue or engagement, cluttering your metrics like digital dead weight. They're not users, they're ghosts.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Intermediate

impression share

The percentage of times your ad was shown divided by the total number of times it was eligible to appear, typically in paid search or display campaigns. It measures how much of the available opportunity you're actually capturing.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

brand voice

The distinctive personality and emotional tone a brand uses in all communications, from tweets to customer service emails. It's what makes Wendy's roast people on Twitter while your bank sounds like a lawyer wrote everything—which they probably did.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Intermediate

copyediting

The unsung heroic work of fixing everyone's embarrassing grammar mistakes, typos, and formatting disasters before they get immortalized in print or pixels. It's the specialized skill of making writers look smarter than they actually are while ensuring 'your' and 'you're' don't get tragically confused in a national publication. Every content marketer thinks they don't need it until they publish 'public' with an unfortunate typo.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

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