Most people who get as far as a checkout never finish it. The Baymard Institute has tracked this for nearly two decades, and the reasons people give are not really about shopping at all — they are about surprise costs, wasted time and doubt. Every one of them has an equivalent on a service business’s contact page.
What the research found
Baymard Institute, an independent research organisation, maintains a running average of documented cart abandonment rates. Across 50 different studies published between 2006 and 2025, the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate is 70.22%.
In other words, roughly seven in ten people who put something in a basket leave without buying.
Baymard also asks people why. Setting aside those who were only browsing, its latest quantitative study reports these reasons:
- 40% — extra costs were too high (shipping, tax, fees)
- 20% — delivery was too slow
- 19% — didn’t trust the site with their card details
- 18% — the site required them to create an account
- 17% — the checkout was too long or complicated
- 17% — website errors or crashes
- 12% — couldn’t see the total cost upfront
Why it matters beyond online shops
Read that list again without the word “checkout”. Unexpected costs. Waiting too long. Not trusting the business with your details. Being made to do unnecessary work. A form that’s too long. A page that breaks.
That is a complete description of why people leave a plumber’s contact page, a manufacturer’s quote request, or a clinic’s booking form. The purchase is different; the friction is identical.
What a local business can take from this
- Be straight about cost. The single biggest reason for abandonment is a cost that appears late. If you can’t publish prices, publish what drives them, and what a typical job involves.
- Say how fast you can get there. Slow delivery is the second reason online. For a service business the equivalent is silence — say when you answer enquiries and how quickly you can attend.
- Earn trust before you ask for details. Nineteen per cent didn’t trust the site with their card. Your visitors are deciding the same thing about their phone number and address. Real photographs, a real address area, named people and a secure site all help.
- Don’t make them do extra work. Nobody should register an account, or fill in fifteen fields, to ask a question. Ask for the minimum you need to call them back.
- Fix the errors. Seventeen per cent abandoned because something broke. Test your own form on a phone, every few months, and check the enquiry actually arrives.
A reality check
These figures describe online retail, not service enquiries, and Baymard is clear that its headline number is an average drawn from many studies rather than a single measurement. Nobody should claim seven in ten enquiry forms are abandoned.
The value is in the reasons, which are consistent across two decades of research and are all within your control. They are also cheap to fix: shortening a form and stating your prices honestly costs nothing but the decision to do it.
Would your enquiry form survive this list?
Open your own contact page on a phone. Count the fields. Look for the price information, the response time and the reason to trust you. Then ask whether a stranger, comparing you with two other businesses, would finish it.
Want us to look at your enquiry process?
We can go through your contact and quote pages the way a customer would, and tell you where people are most likely to give up — and what to change first.