“I’m getting traffic. People are adding things to their cart. Then nothing.” If that sounds like your store, you are not doing anything unusual. You are looking at the most expensive leak in e-commerce, and it can be fixed.
This guide covers why shoppers walk away, what those empty checkouts really cost you, and how to bring a good share of them back automatically, with emails that sound like a person and not a robot.
Seven in ten carts. Never paid for.
Baymard Institute has tracked shopping cart abandonment across dozens of studies for years. Its current average is 70.22% (Baymard, cart abandonment rate statistics). Put simply: for every ten shoppers who add something to their cart, about seven leave without paying.
Some of that is normal. People use carts as wish lists, compare prices across tabs, or check the delivery cost before deciding. In Baymard’s survey, 42% of US shoppers had abandoned a cart because they were “just browsing”. You will never win all of those back, and you shouldn’t try.
But the rest left for reasons that have nothing to do with not wanting the product. That is the part worth fighting for.
Why they leave. And why many would come back.
Take the “just browsing” group out, and Baymard’s survey shows why the others abandoned:
- Extra costs were too high (shipping, tax, fees): 40%
- Delivery was too slow: 20%
- They didn’t trust the site with their card: 19%
- The site wanted them to create an account: 18%
- The checkout was too long or complicated: 17%
- Their card was declined: 10%
Look at that list again. Almost every item is friction, not rejection. The shopper wanted the product and hit a bump. Many of them got interrupted: a phone call, a meeting, a child, a slow page. They fully intend to come back. Then life happens, and they forget.
A well-timed reminder catches them before they forget. That is all abandoned cart recovery is: a polite nudge to someone who already chose your product.
What an empty checkout costs you.
Abandoned carts are easy to shrug off because they never show up as a loss. No refund, no complaint, just silence. But every one of those carts cost you something to fill.
You paid for the ad click, the email, or the months of SEO that brought that shopper in. You photographed the product, wrote the description and set up shipping. The shopper did the hardest part: they found something they wanted and put it in the cart.
Here is a simple way to see it. Say your store fills 400 carts a month and the average cart is worth $60. At a 70% abandonment rate, about 280 carts, or roughly $16,800 of buying intent, leave every month. You don’t need to recover most of it for reminders to matter. Winning back even a small slice of that pays for the effort many times over, every month, without spending another cent on traffic.
Three reminders. Sent for you.
WP EasyCart PRO sends a three-step reminder sequence on its own. Each step is timed from the cart’s last activity, and each has a job:
- After 1 hour: “You left something behind”. The shopper still remembers your store. This one is a simple, friendly note with their cart and a button back to it. No discount needed.
- After 24 hours: “Still thinking it over?” A day later, they are comparing or have moved on. This is a good place to answer doubts: returns, delivery times, a review.
- After 72 hours: “Last chance — your cart expires soon”. The final nudge. If you offer a discount at all, this is where it earns its keep.
Those are the defaults. Each step has its own on/off switch, delay, subject line, heading, message and button text, so you can make every email sound like your store. Every email shows the shopper the items they left behind, with a button straight back to their cart.
Set it up. In about ten minutes.
You will find everything on one screen in the WP EasyCart admin:
- Go to Marketing › Abandoned carts and open the Sequence & settings tab.
- Turn on Send automatic reminders.
- Read through each step. Change the subject, heading, message and button text so they sound like you. Leave a step switched off if you only want two.
- Under Timing & rules, check when a cart counts as abandoned (60 idle minutes by default) and the hours reminders are allowed to go out.
- Under Tracking & privacy, decide on open and click tracking. If you sell in the EU or UK, the screen shows a note on what to check.
- Leave Save the email as soon as it’s typed at checkout switched on. It makes a cart recoverable even if the shopper never reaches the next step, and it is the setting that grows your recoverable carts the most.
- Click Send me a test on each step and read the emails in your own inbox. Then save.
The smart parts. Built in.
Single-use discount codes
Any step can include an offer. Pick a code-based offer and every shopper gets their own single-use code, tied to their email address and applied automatically from the button in the email. Each code expires a few days after sending, and you choose how many. Because a code only works once, for one person, it can’t end up on a coupon site and eat into your margins. Set up an offer first, then choose it on the step.
A faster note when a card is declined
A declined card is a different problem from a distracted shopper. They tried to pay and couldn’t. WP EasyCart treats these carts on their own: the first reminder goes out after 15 minutes instead of an hour, with wording about the payment problem and a way back to finish up.
Only what they can still buy
Before each email goes out, WP EasyCart checks the shopper’s items again. Anything that has sold out or been switched off is left out, and if nothing in the cart can be bought any more, no email is sent. Nobody clicks through to a disappointment.
Polite by default
Reminders wait for your sending window, 8am to 10pm store time by default, so nobody gets a sales email at 3am. Each shopper gets one sequence every 7 days at most. There is a cap on how many go out every 15 minutes, so switching the sequence on doesn’t blast your whole backlog at once. Every email carries a one-click unsubscribe, and reminders stop the moment the shopper places their order.
Don't lead with a discount
If every first reminder carries a code, shoppers learn to abandon carts on purpose. Keep the first two emails about the product and the shopper’s questions. Save a modest offer for the last step, when it tips a real decision.
Fix the leak. Not just the bucket.
Reminders win back carts that are already lost. The best stores also stop carts from being lost in the first place. Go back to Baymard’s list and work down it:
- Show costs early. Surprise shipping at the last step is the number one reason people leave. Show delivery costs on the product or cart page, and consider a free-shipping threshold that nudges order size up.
- Let people check out as a guest. Asking for an account before payment turns buyers away. Offer the account after the order instead.
- Make the checkout short. Only ask for what you need to ship and charge. Every extra field is another chance to leave.
- Earn trust at the payment step. A secure checkout, familiar payment options and a clear returns policy close the “do I trust this site?” gap.
- Say when it will arrive. “Delivery was too slow” often means “I couldn’t tell when it would arrive”. Put realistic delivery times where shoppers can see them.
Write like a person
Short subject lines, plain words and a real sender name get opened. “You left something behind” beats “Complete your purchase now!” every time. Read your test emails out loud. If they sound like a machine, rewrite them.
See what it earns. Then improve it.
The Abandoned carts screen shows your Recovered carts, your Recovery rate and your Recovered revenue. You will know exactly what the sequence brings in, instead of guessing.
With open and click tracking on, you can also see where shoppers drop off. Few opens? Work on the subject line. Opens but no clicks? Make the message shorter and the button clearer. Change one thing at a time, give it a couple of weeks, and let the numbers tell you what works for your customers.
Try it on your own store. Free.
Abandoned cart recovery is part of WP EasyCart PRO. The free trial costs nothing and unlocks it on your own store, so you can switch the sequence on, send yourself a test and see it work before you decide.