Abandoned Cart vs Checkout Recovery Rates: 8 Brands
About 12% of shoppers who abandon a cart buy within a week, and so do about 12% of shoppers who abandon checkout. We tracked 30,680 cart abandonments and 24,413 checkout abandonments at 8 DTC brands from April to September 2026. At the median brand, 11.7% of cart abandoners and 12.2% of checkout abandoners placed an order within 7 days.
Checkout abandoners do come back a little more often at most brands, but not by much. Brand by brand, the checkout rate ran a median 1.21 times the cart rate, and at 3 of the 8 brands cart abandoners came back more.
Timing matters more than stage. About half of the week's recoveries happen in the first 24 hours, and about 80% by day three.
Abandonment flows' credited conversion rate came to about 73% of the abandoned cart recovery rate and 47% of the checkout recovery rate at the median brand. Credit isn't the same as cause. Klaviyo credits a flow for orders placed after someone opens or clicks its email, including from shoppers who were coming back anyway.
How Many Abandoned Carts Come Back?
Here's the abandoned cart recovery rate and the checkout recovery rate at the median brand, counting any order from the same shopper after they abandoned, whether or not an email was involved:
| Measure | Abandoned cart | Abandoned checkout |
|---|---|---|
| Abandonments measured | 30,680 | 24,413 |
| Ordered within 1 day | 5.9% | 6.6% |
| Ordered within 3 days | 9.3% | 9.8% |
| Ordered within 7 days | 11.7% | 12.2% |
| Share of 7-day recoveries on day 1 | 51% | 53% |
| Credited to the flow (orders per person) | 8.3% | 6.6% |
Medians across 8 brands for recovery and 7 brands for flow credit (one brand had no abandonment flow with enough sends). Each row is its own median, so the rows don't add up exactly.
A cart abandonment here means a shopper added to cart and didn't start checkout or order within the hour. A checkout abandonment means they started checkout and didn't order within the hour. Both only include shoppers Klaviyo could identify, which is the audience an abandonment flow can email. If you're not tracking Added to Cart yet, our add to cart tracking guide covers the setup.
Cart vs Checkout Recovery Rate by Brand
The usual assumption is that checkout abandoners are the warm leads and cart abandoners are browsers. Brand by brand, the gap is smaller than that, and sometimes it runs the other way.
Ordered Within 7 Days of Abandoning · 8 Brands · April to September 2026
| Brand | Cart: abandons | Cart: 1 day | Cart: 7 days | Checkout: abandons | Checkout: 1 day | Checkout: 7 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal care* | 16,943 | 1.5% | 3.0% | 7,797 | 4.7% | 8.3% |
| Outdoor goods | 5,058 | 5.7% | 11.2% | 5,636 | 8.2% | 15.4% |
| Fashion | 3,306 | 5.7% | 11.8% | 3,324 | 7.6% | 15.2% |
| Apparel A | 2,154 | 6.5% | 11.7% | 2,152 | 7.6% | 13.2% |
| Health & wellness | 1,115 | 6.1% | 11.9% | 2,132 | 2.9% | 5.2% |
| CPG C | 762 | 6.0% | 12.9% | 1,968 | 5.5% | 11.1% |
| Home decor | 1,000 | 4.8% | 10.8% | 757 | 10.4% | 19.9% |
| CPG B | 342 | 9.1% | 17.5% | 647 | 5.3% | 11.3% |
*This brand's rates are well below the others. See Methodology.
Checkout abandoners came back more at 5 of the 8 brands. At the median brand the checkout rate was 1.21 times the cart rate. The biggest gap in percentage points was at the home decor brand, where checkout abandoners recovered at 19.9% against 10.8% for carts. The other three went the opposite way: at the health and wellness brand, 11.9% of cart abandoners ordered within a week, against 5.2% of checkout abandoners.
Leaving out the brand with the lowest rates doesn't change the picture: cart 11.8% and checkout 13.2% at the median of the other seven.
Seven of the eight brands landed between 10.8% and 17.5% for cart recovery. Checkout varied more, from 5.2% to 19.9%. If your checkout abandoners come back less than your cart abandoners, that isn't automatically a broken flow. It happened at three of our eight brands.
Half of Recoveries Happen in the First Day
At the median brand, 51% of the cart abandoners who ordered within a week did it within 24 hours. For checkout it was 53%. Across all eight brands that share stayed between 44% and 57%, and by day three it reached about 80% for both stages.
So whatever your flow does after day three is working on the last fifth of the recoveries. The first email is the one that matters most, and it needs to land within hours, not the next morning. Our abandoned cart flow guide covers timing and splits.
What Abandonment Flows Get Credit For
Seven of the eight brands had both a cart flow and a checkout flow with at least 100 people entering. Here's Klaviyo's attributed conversion for each flow next to the brand's total 7-day recovery rate:
| Brand | Cart flow credited | Cart recovery | Checkout flow credited | Checkout recovery |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal care | 2.0% | 3.0% | 5.4% | 8.3% |
| Outdoor goods | 8.3% | 11.2% | 13.8% | 15.4% |
| Fashion | 4.4% | 11.8% | 6.6% | 15.2% |
| Apparel A | 8.8% | 11.7% | 7.1% | 13.2% |
| Health & wellness | 10.0% | 11.9% | 2.4% | 5.2% |
| CPG C | 9.4% | 12.9% | 3.5% | 11.1% |
| Home decor | 4.0% | 10.8% | 7.7% | 19.9% |
Flow credited = orders Klaviyo attributed to the flow, divided by the people who received its most-sent email. Recovery = share of abandoners who ordered 1 hour to 7 days later.
Divide one by the other and cart flows got credit equal to 73% of the cart recovery rate at the median brand. Checkout flows got 47%. Brand by brand that ranged from 37% to 84% for cart flows and from 31% to 90% for checkout flows.
Read that as likely overstating what the flow did, not a measure of it. Klaviyo credits an email for orders placed within its attribution window after someone opens or clicks it, and a lot of these shoppers were going to come back on their own. The only way to know what a flow adds is a holdout: send a random slice of abandoners nothing and compare. For how much revenue email should drive overall, see our email attribution benchmarks.
These rates are per person who entered the flow, which is partly why they're higher than the per-email conversion rates in our Klaviyo flow benchmarks. A flow with three emails splits its orders across three sends.
Revenue per person depends on what you sell
Revenue credited per person who entered the flow ranged from $1.39 to $48.36 for cart flows and from $1.09 to $232.30 for checkout flows. The median was $11.93 for cart and $7.95 for checkout. The top numbers belong to the outdoor goods and home decor brands, which have the highest order values in the set. Compare your flow with your own average order value, not with another brand's revenue per recipient.
Want to know how fast your abandoners come back, and what your flows add on top? We measure this in your Klaviyo account.
What to Do With This
1. Run both flows.
Cart abandoners came back at about the same rate as checkout abandoners, and they're a different group: shoppers who never reached checkout. A store with only a checkout flow sends them nothing.
2. Send the first email within hours.
Half the week's recoveries happen on day one. A first email set to go out the next day misses about half of them.
3. Don't lead with a discount in email one.
Half the comebacks happen in the first day, so a code in the first email is likely to go to many shoppers who were already on their way back. Save it for a later email, after the fast comebacks have happened. Our discount margin calculator shows what a code costs you, and our first-order discount study shows how codes on one order lead to codes on the next.
4. Test what the flow adds with a holdout.
Add a random split to the start of the flow that sends 10% of entrants down a path with no emails. After a month, compare their order rate with everyone else's. That difference is what the flow earns. Our A/B test calculator tells you whether the gap is real.
Abandoned Cart Recovery FAQ
What is a good abandoned cart recovery rate?
Across 8 DTC brands, the median was 11.7% of cart abandoners ordering within 7 days and 12.2% of checkout abandoners. Seven of the eight brands landed between 10.8% and 17.5% for cart recovery. These count every order, whether or not an email was involved.
Do abandoned checkout shoppers come back more than abandoned cart shoppers?
A little. Brand by brand, the checkout recovery rate ran a median 1.21 times the cart rate, and checkout was higher at 5 of 8 brands. At the other 3, cart abandoners came back more.
How fast do abandoned carts convert?
About half of the shoppers who order within a week do it within 24 hours: 51% for cart abandoners and 53% for checkout abandoners at the median brand. About 80% have ordered by day three.
How much of abandoned cart recovery do the flows drive?
This data can't say. Klaviyo credited cart flows with a conversion rate equal to 73% of the cart recovery rate, and checkout flows with 47%, at the median brand, but that credit includes shoppers who would have come back anyway, so it likely overstates what the flow adds. A holdout test is the only way to measure it.
Want to know what your abandonment flows add?
Free 30-min audit. We'll measure your cart and checkout recovery rates, check your first-email timing, and show you how to set up a holdout so you know what the flow is doing.
Methodology
- Data: Shopify Added to Cart, Checkout Started and Placed Order events from Klaviyo, April 1 to September 30, 2026, for DTC brands we manage. Orders were tracked through October 21 so every abandonment had a full 7-day window. Brands are identified by vertical only.
- Shoppers: only shoppers Klaviyo could identify, since those are the people an abandonment flow can email.
- Cart abandonment: an add to cart with no checkout and no order from the same shopper within 1 hour. Checkout abandonment: a started checkout with no order within 1 hour. Repeat events from one shopper within 24 hours count once.
- Recovery: the shopper placed any order between 1 hour and 1, 3 or 7 days after abandoning. Subscription renewals don't count where we could identify them. We counted Shopify orders only.
- Excluded: shoppers with 10 or more events at one stage in the period (bots, staff testing checkout, wholesale buyers). Two brands were left out of the checkout figures because their checkout events also come from in-store and app channels: about a fifth of their checkout events came from shoppers with 10 or more checkouts, against 9% or less at the other brands.
- Sample: brands with at least 300 abandonments at a stage. Eight brands qualified at both stages.
- Flows: every live flow triggered by an add to cart or checkout event, with at least 100 people entering it. Flow credited = Klaviyo-attributed orders divided by recipients of the flow's most-sent email. Attributed orders can include more than one order from the same person. Where a brand had more than one flow of a type, we summed them. Flow numbers cover April 1 to October 21, 2026.
- Reporting: per-brand results and medians, not pooled averages, because one large brand would dominate the pool.
