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Understanding cart abandonment and checkout abandonment recovery

Summary

Wati supports two types of abandonment recovery for Shopify: cart abandonment and checkout abandonment. Although both help recover lost sales, they target different stages of the customer's purchase journey and have different eligibility requirements.

This article explains how each recovery flow works, which shoppers can receive recovery messages, and why merchants should enable both flows to maximize recovery opportunities.

Instructions

Cart abandonment recovery

Cart abandonment recovery targets shoppers who add products to their cart but do not start the checkout process.

How it works

Cart abandonment is tracked only when Wati can identify the shopper. A shopper is considered identifiable if they:

  • Are logged in to their Shopify account.

  • Have already opted in during the current browsing session.

  • Are a returning visitor recognized through a persistent browser cookie.

Wati groups all cart activity within a 30-minute window into a single cart. If the shopper does not initiate checkout during that period, the cart is marked as abandoned and the cart abandonment recovery flow is triggered.

Checkout abandonment recovery

Checkout abandonment recovery targets shoppers who begin the checkout process but do not complete their purchase.

How it works

A shopper is eligible for checkout abandonment recovery when they:

  • Proceed to the Shopify checkout page with products in their cart.

  • Enter their email address.

  • Provide marketing consent for their email.

  • Enter their phone number during checkout.

  • Do not complete the payment.

Unlike cart abandonment recovery, shoppers do not need to be logged in to qualify for checkout abandonment recovery.

Important information about customer consent

Whether a shopper receives an abandonment recovery message depends on the shopper's eligibility and consent.

A shopper must satisfy the requirements of the applicable abandonment flow and have provided the required marketing consent. Because consent is determined by the shopper, merchants cannot guarantee that every abandoned cart or checkout will trigger an automated recovery message.

To protect customer privacy, merchants should not manually modify or enable marketing consent for shoppers from the Shopify admin.

Best practice

  • Enable both cart abandonment and checkout abandonment recovery flows.

  • Each flow targets a different stage of the customer journey and has different eligibility criteria.

  • Enabling both increases the likelihood that eligible shoppers receive abandonment recovery messages.

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