What Is Drop-off Rate? Formula and Why It Misleads

How to Work Out Drop-off Rate

The conversion rate on your dashboard counts the visits that turn into orders. It says nothing about where everyone else left. Drop-off rate fills in that part, one step at a time.

Pick two steps in a row, like “added to cart” and “reached checkout.” Count how many got to each, then use this:

Drop-off rate = (number at step A − number at step B) ÷ number at step A × 100

Step A is the earlier step, and step B comes right after it. Quicker way: take 100% and subtract the share who moved on. If 45% of carts reach checkout, 55% dropped off.

Example: One Week at a Pet Food Shop

Say a pet food shop has 900 visits with something in the cart this week. Of those, 405 get to checkout and 243 end in an order.

Cart to checkout: (900 − 405) ÷ 900 = 495 ÷ 900 = 55% drop-off
Checkout to order: (405 − 243) ÷ 405 = 162 ÷ 405 = 40% drop-off
Cart to order: (900 − 243) ÷ 900 = 657 ÷ 900 = 73% drop-off

Check that last line. The total is 73%, not 55% + 40% = 95%. Why? The 40% only counts the 405 people who reached checkout, not all 900. So you can't add step rates. It's the most common mistake with this metric.

Where You See Drop-off on Shopify

Shopify's analytics show how many sessions added to cart, reached checkout and completed checkout. (A session is one visit.) Plug any two of those counts into the formula and you've got the drop-off rate for that step.

Want a sense of scale? Our visitor data from 958 Shopify stores shows 58% of carts never started checkout. 43% of those who started checkout didn't finish. Overall, 76.04% of carts were abandoned. Add the first two and you'd get 101%, which can't happen. Same trap as the pet shop. These numbers pool many stores, so they aren't a target for yours. Our Shopify cart abandonment statistics page has the full breakdown.

Growth Suite, our app, has a five-stage Funnel Report, and its visitor tracking points out where shoppers drop off. Our guide to finding drop-off in a Shopify funnel report explains how to read each stage.

When the Number Misleads You

A drop-off rate is a clue. It isn't the final answer, and it can fool you:

Early steps nearly always look worse. Plenty of visitors are just browsing, so product page to cart loses far more people than checkout does. Compare a step with its own past weeks rather than with other steps.
A rate hides the head count. 60% of 50 shoppers is 30 people, while 20% of 1,000 is 200. The smaller rate is the bigger loss.
It can get better while sales get worse. Switch off an ad that brings in casual browsers and your drop-off rate falls. But if a few of them used to buy, your orders fall too.
Not every drop-off is a lost sale. Someone might leave their cart today and buy tomorrow. Session counts still log today's visit as a drop-off.
The rate can't tell you the cause. A high rate at checkout could mean a delivery fee nobody expected or a form that's too long. Or maybe people just wanted to see the total. The number looks the same whichever it is.

Drop-off Rate vs. Drop-off Point

They're related, but not the same. A drop-off point is the step where people leave, like the shipping page. Drop-off rate is how big the loss is at that step, as a percentage.

Exit rate is different again. It's tied to a single page: the share of that page's views that were the last in a visit. Drop-off rate is about getting from one step to the next.