An add to cart is evidence of interest. It is not evidence that the customer was ready to buy at any cost.
When cart activity is healthy but purchases lag, separate normal consideration from avoidable friction.
Check unexpected costs
Delivery fees, duties, taxes or minimum thresholds introduced late in checkout change the offer after the customer has already made a decision. That is one of the first places to inspect.
Check payment and delivery confidence
Customers need to know whether they can pay in their preferred way, when the order will arrive and what happens if something goes wrong. Ambiguity creates hesitation at the worst possible moment.
Check the mobile experience
Forms, address fields, coupon boxes, account creation and payment redirects can be acceptable on desktop and painful on mobile. Review the actual checkout flow on common devices rather than relying on screenshots.
Check whether the cart was ever high intent
Some customers use the cart to save products, compare totals or reveal shipping costs. If a campaign attracts low-intent traffic, high cart abandonment may begin before checkout.
Recovery is not the first fix
Abandoned-cart email and paid remarketing can recover demand, but they should not become a permanent tax on a broken checkout. Fix structural friction first, then use recovery flows for genuine hesitation.
For a broader diagnosis, compare checkout behavior with offer quality, traffic source and customer economics rather than treating abandonment as an isolated CRO problem.