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April 16, 2026
Guest Writer, Bizrate Insights
Updated 4/16/2026
For a PDF download version of this report: Download Now
A potential customer visits your website. Without adding anything to their cart, filling out your newsletter signup, or taking another action, they close your tab in their browser.
Did they leave because they experienced a glitch on your website? Were they unable to find the product information they needed? Was it hard to navigate your site on mobile? If you never ask, you could miss opportunities to make improvements and capture loyal customers—a crucial step when more than 70% of those who leave never return.
This blog explores the importance of evaluating the causes behind site abandonment. With case studies and actionable strategies, this report shows why it’s vital to learn directly from prospective customers and target investments accordingly.
Site abandonment occurs when a visitor leaves your website without taking an action. It’s often overlooked in favor of cart abandonment, where customers have added items to their shopping cart but don’t complete a transaction.
Ecommerce brands tend to focus on cart abandonment because it’s the final stage of the purchasing process where they hope to make the sale. However, site abandonment can happen at any point in the customer journey. Paying closer attention to why customers leave your site can unveil issues that drive them away, preventing them from reaching checkout in the first place.
On average, B2C companies spend up to nearly 12% of their revenue on marketing. From paid sales and marketing staff to social media campaigns and pay-per-click advertising, getting prospective customers to your ecommerce site isn’t cheap.
Yet, 85% of visitors never add an item to their cart, and as little as 1% may complete a transaction. Unaddressed site abandonment has a large impact on overall conversion rates. Without understanding the customer experience and how it leads to abandoned browsing sessions, ecommerce sites lose revenue opportunities while being hit with higher customer acquisition costs.
On the other hand, broader insights into user experience issues can influence your brand perception and long-term customer value. Instituting strategies to recapture lost opportunities earlier in the customer journey allows for a greater return on investment. Research has found that for every $1 million in turnover, companies can lift sales 3.3% simply by sending a browse recovery email when shoppers leave the site.
There are several reasons why shoppers may leave your site without making a purchase. While these causes are common, they’re also preventable.
Customers find it difficult to locate products of interest due to poor website organization.
• Customers find it difficult to locate products of interest due to poor website organization.
• Shoppers use your site’s search bar, but it doesn’t produce the expected results.
• Your site doesn’t have a search function or it’s hard to find.
• Improperly sized images bog down your website, making it slow to load.
• Parts of your site don’t fully load or show a broken image icon.
• Site load times make it difficult to compare product pages to make a purchasing decision.
• Your website doesn’t have a consistent brand aesthetic or lacks a polished look.
• Key information is not easy to find or scan when browsing products.
• Product information is missing from pages.
• Your website has outdated security certificates, prompting alerts from browsers or antivirus apps.
• Expected and trusted payment options are not available.
• Typos or other formatting issues make your site appear unsafe or compromised.
• Shoppers have to take extra steps like going to the checkout screen to see what shipping costs.
• There is a lack of clarity around which items are included in a promotion or are on sale.
• Customers must search for key information.
• Images, text, and other features appear too small on mobile devices.
• Navigation requires clunky left-to-right scrolling and complicated dropdowns.
• Pop-ups appear too large on mobile screens, making it hard to continue browsing.
Bizrate Insights’ research revealed that 85% of website abandoners who encounter technical difficulties, site usability problems, or payment issues, want the retailer to contact them to complete their order. An abandoned browse is an opportunity to deepen connection with customers through employing strategies that improve their shopping experience.
Good site navigation requires ongoing improvement. Gather customer feedback to address friction as it occurs. When making any large changes to your ecommerce site, tap outside sources to perform user testing to get objective feedback on site design, functionality, and usability. People less familiar with your site will always spot things you can’t.
• Do you have a prominent search bar to easily find products?
• Are products categorized intuitively and in a way that allows the user to choose how they shop? For example, can a clothing store filter by size, color, or item type?
• Does your site have intrusive pop-ups that disrupt the user experience?
For every second delay in a website’s loading time, there’s a 12% conversion reduction. If your site is not fast and mobile-optimized, you’re not meeting customers’ needs for immediacy and on-the-go shopping. This is particularly important, as 90% of Americans own a smartphone, with 15% accessing the internet solely through their phones.
• How long does your site take to load on desktop and mobile?
• What are your site’s load times for specific product pages?
• Is your site mobile optimized for easy navigation?
Data from Bizrate Insights’ Site Abandonment Survey showed that 31% of shoppers used checkout just to calculate the total cost of their purchase. Don’t make customers jump through hoops to find the information they need. Provide product information in visually appealing ways throughout the customer journey to inspire conversions.
• Have you included shipping costs and timing information early in the buying process?
• Are your promotions clear, including highlighting any exclusions on specific product pages and time limits for using promo codes?
• Is your product availability displayed on the product page, with real-time updates to inventory so stock levels are accurate?
• Are product images clear and inviting? Can you zoom in for a close-up?
• Are there enough details on product pages so customers can quickly see material, color options, sizing, and other key information to make a decision?
It takes visitors to your site a mere 50 milliseconds to form an opinion about your page. To make a good first impression, display trust signals, such as security logos, so customers know their information is secure. Incorporate social proof so browsers see that peers already trust your site, such as noting how many customers bought your product in the last 24 hours.
• Does our site certificate display as valid and our connection as secure in different internet browsers?
• Do we offer trusted, encrypted payment options?
• Where can we highlight reviews and other user-generated content to inspire trust?
• Is it easy to find our contact information and customer support services?
To build brand loyalty for its online shop, Lehman’s Hardware Store redesigned its ecommerce site with dynamic content and relevant products based on search history. It also employed targeted search engine and social media campaigns. Site traffic increased, but conversions did not — visitors were abandoning the site.
Lehman’s used Bizrate Insights’ Site Abandonment Solution to quickly collect feedback from people leaving the site to decipher purchasing roadblocks. The solution proved easier and faster than the Google Analytics and multivariate A/B testing the company had previously used.
The result? When surveyed customers were asked, “What would have enticed you to make a purchase today?” 53% of site abandoners chose free shipping. Lehman’s shipping costs had been tiered from $10 to $50+ based on the order’s size and weight.
The digital marketing team used this feedback to run a month-long free shipping promotion on purchases over $99. Within two weeks, Lehman’s saw a 12% lift in overall conversion rate and a 5% increase in average order value.
Given how crucial site abandonment is to ecommerce performance, Bizrate Insights now includes its Site Abandonment Solution with all plan tiers. It’s a powerful tool with potential to turn “window” shoppers into long-term, loyal customers.
The solution comes with key features, each geared to better understand and re-engage potential customers as they leave your site:
• TrueExitTM Technology: Prompts desktop shoppers about to exit your site with a pop-up. Uses metrics such as time on site and scroll percentage to trigger surveys on mobile.
• Real-Time Notifications: Provides feedback alerts from customers who have bounced so you can reach out quickly and save the sale.
• Opt-In Marketing List Growth: Helps expand your email subscriber base by capturing potential customers at the point of exit.
• VitalSigns Reporting: Offers analysis of survey data and presents actionable insights on metrics such as overall satisfaction, likelihood to visit again, point of abandonment, visit intent, customer comment tones, visit frequency, and device distribution.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Compares NPS of customers who complete purchases and those who abandon your site for a unique perspective on your brand perception.
With these easy-to-use, quick-to-employ tools, your ecommerce brand can quickly identify whether any of the common causes of site abandonment are impacting your customers, such as slow load times, navigation difficulties, or mobile optimization. With that knowledge, you can then prioritize solutions like improving site performance or building customer trust.
Unexamined and unaddressed site abandonment issues can lead to lost revenue, higher customer acquisition costs, and negative brand perception. The best way to learn why customers are leaving your site without taking an action is to ask them.
Tools that give you real-time data and center the customer voice can highlight the challenges site abandoners may be facing, such as:
• Site navigation hurdles
• Slow page loads times
• Trust and security concerns
• Missing product information
A simple solution like Bizrate Insights can help you identify these pain points so you can improve conversion rates and elevate the customer experience.
For a PDF download version of this report: Download Now
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Our report dives into why 85% of visitors leave without adding items to a cart and provides actionable strategies to mitigate site abandonment through better navigation and consumer trust.
