Cart abandonment

Cart abandonment happens mostly due to checkout friction, surprise costs, or distraction. Some is recoverable via email; more is preventable.

Prevention in checkout

• Show shipping cost before checkout
• Offer guest checkout
• Reduce form fields
• Multiple payment options

Recovery via email

Sequence of 3 emails over 48-72 hours. Recovers 10-30% of abandoned carts.

Recovery via retargeting ads

Supplement email; reach users who didn't share email.

SMS abandonment

Higher open rates than email. Works well for cart abandonment specifically.

What to do with this

• Fix the cart-page friction first, abandonment is often a symptom of surprise fees or confusing checkout, not indecision
• Ship recovery email 1 within 1 hour, recovery rate drops sharply after 24 hours
• Save discount codes for email 3 or SMS touch 2, offering discounts too early trains buyers to abandon for discounts
• Add SMS to the recovery stack, SMS open rates of 90%+ make it the highest-converting single channel when opted-in
• Don't stack recovery over 3-4 touches, longer sequences drive unsubscribes without material additional recovery