Abandoned cart flows built around why people left

A shopper who left at the shipping step, one who left at the payment step, and one who added an item and closed the tab are three different people with three different objections. Most flows send all three the same sequence: a reminder, a nudge, a coupon. Building the flow around the reason for leaving means reading which step the shopper reached and what was in the cart, and both are available from the platform’s own events without new tooling. This is how we design it.

Three kinds of abandonment, and this flow handles two

• Browse abandonment. A product was viewed and nothing was added. It gets its own light-touch flow and is out of scope here.
• Cart abandonment. An item was added and checkout never started. The cart abandonment rate entry defines it.
• Checkout abandonment. Checkout started, contact details were entered, and the shopper left at the information, shipping or payment step. The checkout abandonment rate entry covers the measurement.

On Shopify, an abandoned checkout record exists once an email or phone number is entered, and the pixel events checkout_started, checkout_shipping_info_submitted and payment_info_submitted mark how far the shopper got. Those step markers are the raw material for the branches below; the events are listed in the Web Pixels API standard events.

What the data says about why they left

Signal in the abandoned checkout	Likely reason	Branch
Left at the shipping step with a cart below the free-shipping threshold	Shipping cost	Show the threshold and what would reach it
Left at the shipping step with a remote or international address	Delivery time	State the delivery window and carrier plainly
Left at the payment step	Payment options, trust, or a declined card	List payment methods, returns policy, and a one-tap resume link
Size guide or several sizes viewed before the add	Fit uncertainty	Fit guidance and the exchange policy
A discount code attempted and rejected	Looking for a deal	Restate the current offer honestly; no new code
Cart value well above the store’s average order	Considered purchase	Longer delay, questions answered, no urgency
Returning customer	Habit interrupted	Short reminder, no incentive
An item in the cart went out of stock	Cannot complete	Back-in-stock notice or the closest alternative
Pre-order or made-to-order item	Unclear lead time	Confirm the ship date
Mobile session ended at payment	Interrupted	Resume link that restores the checkout in one tap

Each branch answers one objection. A shopper who left because of shipping does not need three product photos and a headline; they need the number.

Flow architecture

Triggers and precedence. The checkout abandonment trigger takes precedence over the cart abandonment trigger for the same person, and one person is in one abandonment flow at a time. Without that rule the same cart produces two sequences.

Delays. Low-consideration carts get the first message within an hour or two, while the decision is warm. Considered purchases get it the next day. The second message follows a day later where the branch warrants one, and a third exists only for branches that earn it. How many emails should an abandoned cart flow have argues the case for fewer.

Evaluate branches at send time. The cart may have changed since the trigger. Check the current cart contents, the stock status and whether an order has been placed on any channel immediately before each send, not at the trigger.

The message. One subject line that names the reason, one objection handled in the body, one image, the resume link that restores the checkout, and a policy line for shipping and returns. On Shopify, the recovery link reopens the abandoned checkout with the cart intact.

The discount policy, written down. Never in the first message. Never to a returning customer within a set number of days of a full-price order. Never on categories where margin cannot carry it. Unique codes with an expiry, so the code cannot circulate. A store that discounts every abandoned cart teaches its customers to abandon carts.

SMS. One message, only where SMS consent exists, at the point in the branch where a short reminder is the whole content. SMS marketing covers consent capture and pacing.

Consent comes before the first send

An abandoned checkout email is a commercial message. In Canada, CASL requires consent for commercial electronic messages, and Shopify’s checkout has a marketing consent checkbox whose state is stored on the customer; the safest policy is to send recovery sequences only where that consent is recorded, and to take advice on how implied consent applies to your situation. In the United States, CAN-SPAM requires an accurate sender, a physical address and a working opt-out honoured promptly. Both are summarised on the government pages linked at the end. Gmail’s sender guidelines add authentication and one-click unsubscribe for bulk senders, and a flow that sends to people who did not ask for it is the fastest way to a spam-rate problem.

Suppression rules

Suppress anyone who has purchased since the trigger on any channel, anyone with an active subscription order for the same item, anyone with an open support conversation, anyone refunded in the last few weeks, carts containing only a gift card, carts whose items are unavailable, internal and test addresses, and anyone who has already received an abandonment sequence in the past week. The suppression list is where most of the complaints come from when it is missing.

Measuring by branch, not by flow

Report placed-order rate and revenue per recipient for each branch and each message, not for the flow as a whole, because the shipping branch and the considered-purchase branch have nothing in common. Open rates are unreliable since mail clients prefetch images, so do not steer by them. Hold out a share of eligible shoppers from the flow and compare their return rate against recipients, because a portion of abandoners come back on their own and the flow should only claim what it added. The incrementality entry explains the holdout method.

Feed the reasons back into the site

The branch counts are a diagnosis of the checkout. If the shipping branch is the largest, the fix is on the product page and in the cart, not in email: should shipping costs be shown on the product page and does free shipping increase conversion rate cover the options, and the free shipping threshold calculator models a threshold against margin. If the payment branch dominates, checkout optimisation is the work. If accounts are being forced, should checkout require creating an account has the answer. The flow recovers some of what the site loses; fixing the site loses less.

A starting structure

Branch	First message	Second message	Third message
Shipping cost	Threshold and what reaches it, one to two hours	Delivery window and returns, next day	None
Payment step	Payment methods and trust signals, one hour	Resume link and support contact, next day	Offer only if policy allows, day three
Fit uncertainty	Fit guide and exchange policy, two hours	Reviews that mention fit, next day	None
Considered purchase	Questions answered, next day	Comparison of the options in the cart, day three	Reminder with delivery window, day six
Returning customer	Short reminder, two hours	None	None
Out of stock	Back-in-stock or alternative, when known	Notification when restocked	None

Adjust the timings to the category’s buying process, and revisit the branch table each quarter with the branch counts in front of you. The full service, including the branch logic and the holdout, is described under abandoned cart flows, and abandoned cart emails not sending is the page for when the trigger itself is broken.

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Sources

• Shopify.dev: Web Pixels API standard events
• Government of Canada: Canada's anti-spam legislation
• Federal Trade Commission: CAN-SPAM Act compliance guide for business
• Gmail Help: Email sender guidelines