How to reduce abandoned carts

People add your product to the cart, some even type their email at checkout, and then nobody pays. To reduce abandoned carts on a new store, you do not need more apps or a discount code: you need to find the one surprise that makes people stop, fix it, and write to every person who left. At a few hundred visits a month, each of those carts is one of your first orders, so do not wait for them to come back on their own.

Do these three things

About 5 hours today, then about 1 hour a day, every day. Judge each fix after 20 more checkouts, not after one quiet week.

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1. 1Today: buy from your own store on your phone, once in your browser and once inside Instagram, and fix every surprise you hit: the shipping price shown before checkout, no forced sign-in, fewer boxes to fill, Shop Pay and Apple Pay on. Then turn on Shopify's free abandoned checkout email.
2. 2Every day: email every person who left checkout in the last 24 hours yourself, and ask what stopped them. Then watch every store visit with an Add to cart in Microsoft Clarity's free recordings, and write down where each one stopped.
3. 3Every Sunday: copy four numbers from Shopify's conversion rate report into one sheet: sessions, carts, checkouts and orders. Fix the one step where most people stopped, and nothing else that week.

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1. Find out where your carts are lost

Open Shopify's "Conversion rate breakdown" report and write down how many sessions added to cart, reached checkout and paid in the last 30 days. Then open your list of abandoned checkouts. These two screens tell you whether you have a cart problem, a checkout problem, or not a cart problem at all.

Take the four numbers. In your Shopify admin, go to Analytics › Reports. Click the Category filter, pick "Behavior", and open "Conversion rate breakdown". Set the dates to the last 30 days and filter to human sessions, so bots are left out. Copy "All sessions", "Sessions with cart additions", "Sessions that reached checkout" and "Sessions that completed checkout" into a Google Sheet.

Shopify changed how it counts sessions on 21 September 2026. Session numbers and rates after that date are a new starting point, so do not compare them with older months. Orders and sales did not change, so count orders when you compare.

Open the abandoned checkouts. Go to Orders › Abandoned checkouts. Shopify lists a checkout here when someone typed an email or phone number and did not pay within 10 minutes. It keeps them for 3 months. People who left before typing an email are not on this list, so this list is always shorter than the gap in your report.

Spot the fake ones. Since early 2026, store owners have reported bots that start hundreds of checkouts to test stolen cards. They look like many checkouts with different emails, often on a cheap product you just added, often with the same shipping address. Do not email them. Leave them out of your counts, and send Shopify Support your store address and a few examples.

Then use this rule:

• Fewer than 1 in 100 sessions adds to cart: your cart is not the problem. People do not want the product yet, or the page does not convince them. Work on the store and the product page first.
• Fewer than half the carts reach checkout: something in the cart stops them, most often the price with shipping. Start with step 3.
• Fewer than half the checkouts get paid: something in the checkout stops them: a shipping price they first see there, a sign-in, too many boxes, a missing way to pay. Start with steps 2 and 4.

For scale: across 50 studies, about 70 of every 100 online carts are left without an order (Baymard, updated September 2025). Do not chase that number. With 20 carts a month, you will learn more from why each person left than from any rate.

• Tool: Shopify Analytics and a Google Sheet. Free.
• Time: 30 minutes.
• You will have: one row with four numbers, the list of real abandoned checkouts, and the step to fix first.
• It worked if: you can say, in one sentence, where most people stop: "in the cart" or "at checkout".
• Common mistake: counting your own test orders and bot checkouts. Leave both out, or the numbers point at the wrong step.

2. Buy from your own store on your phone the way a stranger does

Place three test orders on your phone, from the start of a visit to the paid screen, and write down every moment you were surprised or had to think. Then ask other people to do the same, because you know your store too well to see its problems.

Run three tests. Many visitors to a new store arrive from a link on social media, and Instagram and TikTok open that link inside their own app, not in your phone's browser. So test all three:

1. Open your store in your phone's own browser.
2. Post your product link in a private message to yourself on Instagram, and tap it there.
3. Do the same on TikTok.

Each time, start on a product page, add to cart, go to checkout, fill in everything, and stop at the payment button. Time each run. Note which ways to pay appear in each one. If Apple Pay or Shop Pay is missing inside one app, that is what those shoppers see too.

Write down every surprise. A shipping price you did not expect, a sign-in box, a field you did not understand, a page that loaded slowly, a button you had to hunt for. Each line is a fix for steps 3 and 4. If a page takes more than a few seconds on your phone's data connection, speed it up as well.

To check that payments really work, place one real order with your own card and refund it. The first steps to sales on Shopify show how.

Ask 100 people today to try it. Send 100 personal messages to people who fit your buyer and ask each one to go as far as the payment page on their phone and tell you where they would stop. Let ChatGPT or Claude draft the messages from the template below, 10 names at a time; you add one true line about each person. That is about a minute a message. Send them one at a time, from your own email or by Instagram message, not with a bulk tool. If you email more than about 50 strangers a day, set up a second domain first, so your store's own email keeps working. If you already send the "what would stop you buying" ask from the trust guide every day, add this request to those messages instead of writing a second 100. Follow up once, 3 days later, and stop the moment someone says no.

Hi [name], [one true line about them].I've just opened [your store], selling [what it is]. Could you do me a 2-minute favour on your phone? Open this page, add it to your cart and go to checkout, but stop before you pay: [product link]Where did you hesitate, or where would you have stopped? One line is plenty. Honest is more useful than kind.[Your name], [your store]
[For email: your postal address. Not for you? Reply "no" and I won't write again.]

• Tool: your phone, Instagram, TikTok, Gmail, and ChatGPT or Claude for the drafts.
• Time: 30 minutes for your three tests, then about 2 hours for the 100 messages.
• You will have: a list of every surprise, from you and from the people who tried.
• It worked if: at least 5 people in 100 reply with where they stopped, and the same surprise comes up at least twice.
• Common mistake: testing only on your laptop, logged in to Shopify. Your buyers are on a phone, often inside an app, and they have never seen your store before.

3. Show the full price and delivery time before checkout

Show the shipping price and the delivery time on the product page and in the cart, so the total at checkout is never a surprise. Extra costs such as shipping are the top reason shoppers leave a checkout: 40% of US shoppers who left one said so, and 12% said they could not see the total up front (Baymard, updated September 2025).

Pick one simple shipping rule, and use it everywhere. Two that work for a small store:

• Free shipping over an amount a little above your most common order. Shoppers who are close to it can add a second item to reach it, which also helps your average order value.
• One flat price for any order, if your margin cannot carry free shipping. Check it against what one order leaves you, as in pricing your product.

To set free shipping over an amount, go to Settings › Shipping and delivery, open your shipping zone, and add a rate with the price set to 0. Click "Add conditions", choose the order price, enter your minimum, and save. Add it to every zone you ship to.

Say it before checkout. Put the three short lines on shipping, delivery and returns under your Add to cart button, as the trust guide shows. Then put the shipping line in the cart too. In the theme editor, open the cart template and add a text block, if your theme has one. If not, put the line in the announcement bar at the top of every page. Answer what else buyers ask, such as size, use and ingredients, in a product description that sells.

Free shipping over $[X] · Arrives in [N–N] days · Free returns within [N] days

Do not hide the cost with a discount code. A code teaches people to leave and wait for one, which is the same trap as running sales too often.

• Tool: Shopify's shipping settings and theme editor. Free.
• Time: 45 minutes.
• You will have: one shipping rule, shown on the product page, in the cart and at checkout.
• It worked if: 4 of 5 people who try your store can tell you the total with shipping before they reach checkout.
• Common mistake: leaving a line like "Shipping calculated at checkout" in your cart. It means the shopper meets your shipping price at the last step.

4. Cut your checkout to the fewest fields and turn on Shop Pay and Apple Pay

Remove every box at checkout that you do not need, never make people sign in, and let them pay with a wallet they already use. In the same Baymard survey, 18% of shoppers who left a checkout said the site made them create an account and 17% said the checkout was too long.

Shorten the form. Go to Settings › Checkout and set:

A good checkout has about 7 boxes to fill. The average US checkout shows about 15 (Baymard). Count yours on your phone after you save.

Turn on the wallets. Shop Pay lets people who saved their details on another store pay without typing them again. If it is not on yet, the trust guide shows the one setting. Then go to Settings › Payments, click "Manage" in your Shopify Payments section, tick Apple Pay and Google Pay under "Wallets", and save. There is no extra fee.

Show the fast buttons on the product page. Go to Online Store › Themes › Edit theme. Open Products › Default product, click "Buy buttons" in the product information section, and turn on "Show accelerated checkout buttons". Shoppers then see a wallet button next to Add to cart, which skips the cart for one product.

• Tool: Shopify's checkout, payment and theme settings. Free.
• Time: 30 minutes.
• You will have: a checkout with no sign-in, only the boxes you need, and Shop Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay on.
• It worked if: your phone test from step 2 now takes under 2 minutes from cart to the payment button, and a wallet button shows on your product page on your own phone.
• Common mistake: adding a checkout app for "upsells" or extra fields. Every new box or pop-up is one more place to stop. Add one only after this checkout works.

5. Turn on the free abandoned checkout email in Shopify

Turn on Shopify's own abandoned checkout email today, so everyone who leaves after typing their email gets a link back to their cart a few hours later. It is free on the Basic plan and up, and it does not count towards your monthly email allowance.

If you use Klaviyo, or plan to, build the reminder there instead, with its 2 emails, as in Klaviyo flows for a new store, and leave Shopify's email off. One shopper should get one set of reminders, not two.

Otherwise, turn on Shopify's. Go to Apps › Messaging, then "Automations". On "Abandoned checkout emails by Shopify", click the actions icon, then "Edit settings". Tick "Send abandoned checkout emails automatically". Under "Send to", choose who gets it. Under "Send after", pick the shortest delay offered, up to 4 hours. Shopify's own advice is to send the first reminder 2 to 4 hours after someone leaves. Click "Save".

If you sell to people in the EU or the UK, their email rules are stricter than in the US. Check whether you may email people who did not tick your marketing box before you choose to send to everyone.

Rewrite the email. Click "Customize email". Keep the cart link and the product. Add one short paragraph that answers the three biggest reasons people leave: the cost with shipping, the delivery time, and returns. Sign it with your name and a reply address you read. Leave out any discount: a first reminder with money off teaches people that leaving checkout pays.

Subject: Your [product] is still in your cartHi [first name],You left [product] in your cart. It's saved here: [cart button]In case it helps: shipping is [free over $X / $X], it arrives in [N–N] days, and if it's not right you can send it back within [N] days for a full refund.Any question at all? Just reply. I read every email myself.[Your name], [your store]

• Tool: Shopify Messaging, free for abandoned checkout emails. Klaviyo's free plan if you build the flow there.
• Time: 30 minutes.
• You will have: one live reminder that goes to everyone who leaves checkout, written in your words.
• It worked if: you start a checkout with a second email address, leave, and the email arrives after the delay you chose, with a cart link that opens your cart.
• Common mistake: turning on both Shopify's email and a Klaviyo flow, so one shopper gets two reminders an hour apart.

6. Email every person who leaves checkout yourself within 24 hours

Every day, write a short personal email to each real person who left checkout in the last 24 hours, and ask what stopped them. A big store cannot do this. You can, and each answer tells you exactly what to fix.

Write to each one, like a short customer interview by email. Go to Orders › Abandoned checkouts and open each checkout from the last 24 hours that is not a bot. Click the customer's email under their details. Your email app opens with their cart link already in the message. Send the link only to that person: anyone with it can finish that checkout. Add the text below, with the product they left, and send it from your own address. ChatGPT or Claude can fill in the template for each person in seconds; you check the product name and the first line. Write in the morning for yesterday's checkouts, so the automatic email from step 5 has already gone.

Follow up once. If they have not replied or bought 2 days later, send one more line. That is three emails in all, counting the automatic one, and then stop. Stop at once if they say no or buy.

Log every answer word for word in your sheet: date, product, what they said. Sort each into one reason: cost or shipping, delivery time, did not trust the store, checkout problem, not ready yet, or other. Answer every reply the same day, the way you would answer your first users. If someone names a bug, fix it that day.

Ask every new buyer too. In the same daily pass, send each new buyer one question: "What nearly stopped you from buying?" Buyers tell you which doubt almost won. Their words also make the best testimonials and product reviews later, and good lines for customer videos.

Subject: Your [product]Hi [first name],I'm [your name], I run [your store]. I saw you got as far as checkout with [product] yesterday and didn't finish. No pressure at all, but was something unclear or wrong? A one-line reply helps me a lot.If you still want it, your cart is saved here: [cart link][Your name]
[If you'd rather I didn't write again, just say so.]

Hi [first name], one last note from me. If [the cost / the delivery time / something on the site] was the reason, tell me and I'll fix it for the next person. Thanks either way.[Your name]

• Tool: Shopify's abandoned checkouts page, your own email, and a Google Sheet.
• Time: about 5 minutes a person, so about 15 to 30 minutes a day at this size.
• You will have: every real abandoned checkout written to by name, and a growing list of reasons in the buyers' own words.
• It worked if: at least 1 in 5 people you write to replies, and after 20 emails you can name the most common reason.
• Common mistake: a sales email with a discount. Ask a real question and keep it short. People answer a person; they ignore a promotion.

7. Watch every visit with an Add to cart in Microsoft Clarity

Install Microsoft Clarity, a free tool that records how visitors move through your store, and every day watch each recording where someone added to cart. You will see the moment they stop: a long pause on the price, a scroll to find shipping, a button that does nothing.

Install it. In the Shopify App Store, find "Microsoft Clarity: AI Insights" and click "Install". Review the permissions and click "Install" again. Click "Go to app settings", check that "Clarity JS" is turned on, and click "Save". Data starts to appear within a few hours.

If you sell to the EU, the UK or Switzerland: since 31 October 2025, Clarity needs a consent signal from your cookie banner for visitors from there. Without it, recordings of those visitors may be limited. Use a cookie banner that passes consent to Clarity, and do not turn off the banner to get more recordings.

Watch the right recordings. Clarity marks some actions on its own, including "Add to Cart", "Begin Checkout" and "Purchase". On the Clarity dashboard, find the "Add to Cart" event and click its recordings icon. Watch up to 20 a day, starting with the newest. Skip your own visits. Watch the last 30 seconds first: where did they scroll, what did they tap, how long did they stay on the cart?

Clarity cannot see inside Shopify's checkout unless you are on Shopify Plus. So the recording ends when the shopper clicks "Check out". What happens after that, you learn from your own test in step 2 and from the emails in step 6.

Write one line per recording in your sheet: where they stopped and what they did just before. Three people stopping at the same place is a fix for Sunday. If Clarity shows many visits that only tap the same few spots at random, they may be bots. Leave them out, as you did with the bot checkouts in step 1.

• Tool: Microsoft Clarity, free.
• Time: 15 minutes to install, then 30 to 45 minutes a day.
• You will have: a line in your sheet for every cart visit, saying where the shopper stopped.
• It worked if: after 20 recordings, you can name the one place where at least 3 people stopped.
• Common mistake: watching random visits with no cart. Most people leave a new store in seconds, and those recordings tell you about your traffic, not your cart.

8. Every Sunday, count your carts and fix the one step where most people stop

Every Sunday, copy the week's four numbers from the Conversion rate breakdown report, count the reasons from your emails and recordings, and fix the one thing named most. One fix a week lets you see which fix worked.

Take the numbers. In Analytics › Reports › Conversion rate breakdown, set the dates to the last 7 days, human sessions only, and copy the four numbers into a new row. Add the week's orders from strangers, not friends, and the number of abandoned checkouts that came back and paid.

Count the reasons. Add up the week's reasons from step 6 and step 7, and use this rule for the fix:

• Cost or shipping named most, or many carts and few checkouts: change the shipping rule or the price line (step 3). Do not add a discount code.
• A checkout problem named most, or many checkouts and few orders: repeat your phone tests from step 2 and remove the next box or surprise (step 4).
• Did not trust the store: work through the trust guide: your name and face on the store, proof, and first reviews.
• Not ready yet or just looking: that is normal. The email in step 5 covers them. Once you have about 100 people on your list, a welcome series and a popup that is not just a discount bring more of them back.

Judge by count, not by week. At 20 carts a month, one order more or less is luck. Judge each fix after 20 more checkouts. At this traffic, skip A/B tests: they would take months to finish. Use orders to compare across months, because Shopify's session numbers changed on 21 September 2026.

Keep ads small until this works. Meta ads send more strangers to the same surprises, and you get clicks but no sales. Fix the cart first, then check what an order can pay for. Retargeting ads to people who left a cart only make sense once that audience passes about 1,000 people. Until then, your emails do the job for free. If carts stay empty, the fix is more of the right visitors: creators who post about products like yours, short videos, free Google listings and ChatGPT shopping. Keep it inside the budget you set. Tag every link you share with UTM parameters, so you can see which visitors add to cart. Once a month, put these numbers into your monthly marketing review.

• Tool: Shopify Analytics and your Google Sheet.
• Time: 30 minutes every Sunday, plus the fix.
• You will have: one row of numbers a week, the reasons counted, and one fix shipped.
• It worked if: after 20 more checkouts, more of them are paid than before the fix, and the reason you fixed is named less often.
• Common mistake: changing five things in one week. When orders go up, you cannot tell which change did it, and when they go down, you cannot tell which to undo.

Once more of your carts become orders, the next job is to make each order worth more and to bring buyers back, with a win-back email for the ones who go quiet.

Your abandoned cart checklist for the next 4 weeks

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Work through this list with an AI assistant

It drafts the work and keeps track of what is done.

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Step 1 · Find out where your carts are lost

• Copy the four numbers from Shopify's Conversion rate breakdown report for the last 30 days.
• Open your abandoned checkouts, mark the bots, and name the step to fix first.

Step 2 · Buy from your own store on your phone

• Run three test checkouts on your phone and write down every surprise.
• Ask 100 people who fit your buyer to go to the payment page and say where they would stop.

Step 3 · Show the full price and delivery time before checkout

• Set one shipping rule and show it with the delivery time on the product page and in the cart.

Step 4 · Cut your checkout and turn on the wallets

• Shorten the checkout form in Settings › Checkout.
• Turn on Shop Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay, and the accelerated checkout buttons.

Step 5 · Turn on the free abandoned checkout email

• Turn on one abandoned checkout email, rewrite it in your words, and test it.

Step 6 · Email every person who leaves checkout yourself

• Every dayEmail every person who left checkout yesterday, and follow up once after 2 days.
• Every dayAsk every new buyer what nearly stopped them from buying.

Step 7 · Watch every visit with an Add to cart

• Install Microsoft Clarity on your store.
• Every dayWatch every recording with an Add to Cart and write down where each shopper stopped.

Step 8 · Count your carts and fix one step

• Every SundayWrite down the week's four numbers, count the reasons, and fix the one named most.

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