Abandoned Carts
What counts as abandoned, when the reminders go, what they contain, and how to tell whether they are working.
Marketing, Abandoned Carts. A basket somebody filled and did not check out.
Abandoned cart recovery needs a higher plan
If this is missing from your Marketing menu, that is why. See What Your Plan Includes.
What Counts as Abandoned
A basket with an email address attached that has sat for an hour without the order being completed.
The email address is the condition people miss. A shopper who fills a basket and leaves without ever typing their address cannot be contacted, so they are not in this list. In practice an address is captured when they begin checkout or when they are signed in.
When Reminders Go
Three of them, at 1 hour, 24 hours and 72 hours after abandonment. Reminders stop after seven days, and a cart receives at most three.
They send on their own. There is nothing to press.
A cart that is recovered stops receiving them immediately, so somebody who comes back after the first reminder does not get the other two.
What the Reminder Contains
A link back to the basket as they left it, and what was in it. Following the link restores the basket rather than making them start again, which is the entire point.
The wording comes from the abandoned cart email template under Marketing, Email Templates, so if it does not sound like you, that is where to change it.
Reading the List
Each row shows the customer or email, what is in the basket, what it is worth, when it was abandoned and how many reminders have gone.
Recovered carts are marked as such, which is how you tell whether this is earning its place.
Judge it on recovered value, not open rates
The only number that matters is how much of the abandoned value came back. A campaign that recovers a few large baskets is worth more than one that recovers many small ones, and neither shows up in an open rate.
Why Baskets Get Abandoned
Worth knowing, because the reminders treat the symptom.
The most common reasons are a shipping price that appears later than expected, a checkout that asks for an account, a form that is awkward on a mobile device, and a payment method the shopper wanted not being offered.
If your abandonment is high, the fix is usually at checkout rather than in the reminder email. Go through your own checkout on a phone with a basket of real items and watch where you get irritated.
Turning Them Off
A shop that does not want automatic emails can switch the reminders off under Settings, Notifications. The list keeps recording abandoned baskets, which is still useful as a measure even if nobody is being emailed.