Cart abandonment rate: understanding and reducing losses
What is cart abandonment rate?
Cart abandonment rate refers to the percentage of online shoppers who add products to their shopping cart but leave the site without completing their purchase.
Cart abandonment in B2B differs significantly from retail eCommerce. While both track incomplete purchases, B2B cart abandonment reflects the complex nature of business purchasing. A single transaction often involves multiple people, approval chains, and considerable deliberation before completion.
Consider a typical manufacturing company’s purchasing process: A procurement manager adds industrial supplies to their cart but needs sign-off from operations and finance before completing the order. This built-in delay means B2B cart abandonment rates need different interpretation than their B2C counterparts.
Calculating cart abandonment rate in B2B
The formula to calculate cart abandonment rate is straightforward:
- Cart Abandonment Rate = Number of Abandoned Carts / Total Number of Carts Created * 100
If, for example, 100 carts were created and 70 were abandoned, the cart abandonment rate would be 70%.
Smart B2B companies segment this data by customer type, order value, and product category to gain meaningful insights.
Common causes of B2B cart abandonment
B2B carts can be abandoned for several reasons:
Complex approval processes
B2B purchasing rarely involves single-person decisions. Most companies require multiple layers of approval before completing a purchase. Without proper system support for these approval workflows, buyers often abandon their carts when they cannot get timely authorization.
Price visibility and quotes
B2B pricing depends on volume, customer agreements, and negotiated terms. When buyers cannot see their specific pricing or easily request quotes for large orders, they often abandon their carts to contact sales directly for clarification.
Payment flexibility gaps
Modern B2B buyers expect multiple payment options beyond credit cards. Companies lose sales when they cannot support purchase orders, credit terms, and bank transfers—payment methods essential to B2B commerce.
Using DJUST.io to reduce cart abandonment rate
DJUST’s B2B-specific features address the main causes of cart abandonment through:
- Custom approval workflows that match your customers’ internal processes
- Dynamic pricing displays that show customer-specific rates
- Comprehensive payment options through trusted payment partners
- Sales team alerts and engagement tools
- Integration with existing ERP and procurement systems
Supporting approval workflows
DJUST's platform enables companies to design and implement customized workflows that match their checkout processes. The system lets business customers set up multi-user accounts with defined roles and permissions for each team member.
Your buyers can share shopping carts among different users to coordinate approvals, and the platform supports built-in validation steps before orders are processed. This reduces friction in the purchasing process by keeping everything organized within a single system.
When construction distribution company Socoda implemented DJUST’s platform, it solved a major pain point by creating custom approval workflows that mirror each customer’s internal processes. Its buyers now move smoothly through internal approvals without abandoning carts, leading to higher completion rates.
Streamlining price management
The DJUST platform displays personalized pricing for each customer based on their specific agreements and volume thresholds. Your sales teams can manage multiple price lists and customer-specific discounts from a centralized interface. The system supports both standard pricing and volume-based discounts, showing buyers their exact negotiated rates in real time. For special requests, buyers can generate quotes directly through the platform, eliminating the need to abandon their cart to start a pricing discussion.
Sustainable food packaging company DeSter transformed its customer experience using DJUST’s dynamic pricing engine. The system now displays customer-specific pricing automatically and enables easy quote requests for volume purchases. These improvements helped DeSter significantly reduce cart abandonment related to pricing issues.
Flexible payment solutions
DJUST’s partnerships with payment service providers like Mangopay and Lemonway give B2B buyers the payment flexibility they need.
Leveraging sales team engagement
Unlike B2C, abandoned carts in B2B create opportunities for sales team intervention. DJUST’s sales portal transforms abandoned carts into sales opportunities by alerting representatives when customers need assistance. Sales teams can view cart contents, customer history, and reach out proactively with help or suggestions.
Conclusion
In B2B, an abandoned cart might represent the start of a sales conversation rather than its end. With the right tools and approach, you can turn these incomplete purchases into opportunities for engagement and growth.
Your approach to cart abandonment should reflect the realities of B2B purchasing. Focus first on understanding why your customers abandon carts—is it approval processes, pricing visibility, or payment options? Use these insights to configure your eCommerce platform to better support your customers’ buying processes.
