The headline number rarely changes. Baymard Institute's 14-year tracking puts global cart abandonment at 70.19%, with mobile at 86% and desktop at 70% (Baymard Cart Abandonment, 2024-2025). Knowing the number is the first step; knowing why it happens, by share, is what changes the optimisation roadmap.
The drivers are specific. Unexpected costs (shipping, taxes, fees) cause 48% of abandonment; forced account creation causes 26%; security concerns about payment data cause 25%; checkout complexity drives another 22% (Baymard Cart Abandonment, 2024). On the form side, the average checkout has 11.3 fields when 12 to 14 is the practical optimum, and only 2% of the 327 leading ecommerce sites Baymard benchmarks reach a good checkout grade (Baymard Checkout Usability, 2024).
Hospitality booking conversion is a different baseline entirely. Phocuswright's hotel-website data puts average direct conversion at 2.2% (42% check rates, 9% enter booking, 2.2% finalise), with capital-city properties at 2.56% and seasonal destinations at 1.78% (PhocusWire, citing Fastbooking research). SiteMinder's 2024 dataset tracking 44,500+ hotel customers and over 125 million bookings shows direct hotel bookings averaged $519 versus $320 through OTAs, a 60% AOV uplift that justifies investing in friction reduction (SiteMinder, 2025).
A short, defensible playbook for ecommerce: surface total cost (item + shipping + taxes) before the checkout flow rather than at the end; enable guest checkout with optional account creation post-purchase; reduce form to 12 to 14 fields; add visible trust signals near the payment step. Each addresses a Baymard-documented driver, and the Baymard ceiling estimate of 35% lift if all 39 typical issues are fixed assumes the team prioritises the highest-share drivers first (Baymard Checkout Usability).