Abandoned cart
What is an abandoned cart?
An abandoned cart is an order a shopper started and never finished: products went into the cart, sometimes as far as the payment step, and then the session ended. A shop counts how many carts are created and how many become orders; the gap shows where people give up — over delivery cost, a missing payment method, a forced account or a long form. Many of them come back once the reason is gone.
Example
In one month a shop records 1,200 carts and 360 orders. Thirty per cent finish; 840 do not. These are not passing visitors — they picked a product and got within one screen of paying.
The reason comes first. The recordings show delivery cost appearing only at the last step, and no way to order without creating an account. Both go: shipping is priced in the cart, and guest checkout is switched on.
Only then is a reminder worth sending — one email an hour later, a second the next day, each linking back to the same cart. If it recovers 3 per cent of the 840 carts, that is 25 orders; at an average order of €48 it comes to roughly €1,200 a month. The amounts are illustrative; the mechanics are not.
A discount in the first email is not a default. Send one every time and customers learn to wait for it instead of ordering.
Why it matters for a business
An abandoned cart is the cheapest traffic a shop has: the advertising is paid for and the choice is already made. Read the abandonment rate as a diagnosis of where the friction sits, not as a reason to send more email.
The number on its own misleads. People compare prices across shops and return days later, and some carts are made by bots. What is worth watching is the trend, and the split by device, payment method and delivery option. The cart and the payment step are part of the shop rather than an add-on to it, which is how we scope an online store build.
How to improve it
- Show delivery cost and the final total in the cart, not at the last step.
- Allow ordering as a guest; offer the account after the order is placed.
- Carry the payment and delivery options your customers actually want — card, cash on delivery, an office or a locker.
- Fewer fields, plain error messages, and a form that can be filled one-handed on a phone.
- Keep the cart between visits and across devices.
- Send a reminder that links back to the same cart, on a lawful basis, with an unsubscribe that works.