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An abandoned cart is not a lost customer. It is someone who chose a product, then stopped before paying. Sometimes they were comparing, sometimes they were interrupted, often something made them hesitate. A reminder is there to remove that doubt, not to insist until they give in.
This guide is for teams that sell online and want to recover some of those sales without damaging their relationship with customers. It complements the five numbers to track every week, where the gap between cart additions and payments is one of the signals to watch.
In short
About seven carts in ten are abandoned, according to the Baymard Institute’s compilation of 50 studies, and a good share for reasons the site can fix.
Before sending reminders, fix what makes people leave: costs shown too late, forced account creation, unclear return policy.
In France, a reminder that pushes someone to buy goes to a person who has consented to it; creating an account is not enough to make someone a customer.
Two or three messages, spaced out and useful, then silence: beyond that, you annoy more than you sell.
Why do shoppers abandon their cart?
The Baymard Institute has been compiling published studies on the subject for years. Its average, and the reasons given by the US shoppers surveyed, draw a fairly clear map of what is at stake:
documented average cart abandonment rate
of shoppers who abandon cite extra costs that were too high (shipping, tax, fees)
cite being required to create an account
cite an unsatisfactory returns policy
The same page notes that 42% of the US shoppers surveyed had abandoned because they were “just browsing” and not ready to buy. No reminder will change their mind quickly, which is one more reason not to pester them.
Fix the site before writing to anyone
The best reminder is the one you do not need to send. Most of the reasons cited can be fixed on the site:
- Show costs early. The delivery cost, or the threshold for free delivery, right on the product page. A surprise at checkout drives people away more surely than a price known in advance.
- Allow checkout without an account. Offer account creation after the order, not before.
- Make the returns policy visible, with a period and conditions readable in one sentence.
- Show the total before payment, taxes and delivery included.
These points belong to the product page as much as to the checkout: what buyers look for before paying goes through them one by one.
Who are you allowed to write to?
This is the question most often forgotten. The CNIL, the French data protection authority, distinguishes marketing messages, which push people to buy, from transactional messages tied to an order. Its page on electronic communications to prospects and customers sets out the principle: electronic marketing to individuals rests on prior consent. An exception applies to people who are already customers, for similar products, provided they were informed and can easily object.
Simply creating an account is not enough to establish a commercial relationship.
In practice, a visitor who entered their address at the start of checkout without ever buying, or ticking the box accepting marketing emails, is not a target for a reminder that urges them to complete their purchase. Provide a clear consent box, not pre-ticked, in the checkout. Rules differ between countries, and for a specific case a lawyer’s opinion remains the reference.
How many messages, and when?
Shopify considers a checkout abandoned when it remains incomplete for more than ten minutes after the customer has entered their email address, and lets the merchant choose the delay before the automatic email. The exact delay matters less than the logic of the sequence:
- The reminder.
A few hours after abandonment: the cart, the product image, a direct link to pick up where they left off. No discount.
- The answer to the doubt.
The next day: what reassures (delivery time, returns, a real person to contact), tied to the most common reasons for abandoning.
- The last message, if needed.
A few days later, and only if it brings something new: genuinely limited stock, a replacement product. Then stop.
The first message often does most of the work, because it reaches people who were simply interrupted. The following ones are there to remove a specific doubt; if all they say is “you forgot something”, they wear people out.
Watch out
An automatic discount teaches customers to abandon
A discount code sent with every abandoned cart ends up being known: some customers abandon on purpose to get it. Keep the discount for cases where price really is the reason, and never in the first message. A fake deadline (“only 2 hours left” when it is not true) is, for its part, an unfair practice according to the European Union’s page on commercial practices.
What a good reminder contains
- The product itself, with its image and price, so the person recognises it immediately.
- A single button, leading back to the filled cart, not to the home page.
- An answer to common doubts: delivery, returns, secure payment.
- A visible unsubscribe link, which the law requires for marketing and courtesy requires everywhere.
- A service tone, not a reproach.
Writing these messages follows the same rules as an email campaign: our guide to running an email campaign covers the subject line, deliverability and follow-up.
What we apply ourselves
A reminder is only worth as much as the product page it leads back to. On an online plush toy store that we are putting back on its feet, we started with the catalogue: 653 products reviewed, 26 fields defined, 481 product pages enriched and all of them reviewed. We do not publish a cart recovery rate here: without a before and after measurement on that store, it would be an invented number.
Measuring without fooling yourself
Count the orders placed after a click in a reminder, but mentally subtract the ones that would have come anyway: some shoppers come back on their own. The right indicator remains the gap between carts and payments, tracked every week. If your platform needs one more app to send these reminders, run the calculation described in our article on the cost of Shopify apps: the built-in feature is often enough to start. And if part of your carts come from advertising, what makes a Google Shopping campaign rise or sink also plays out in the checkout. Finally, the platform decides what is built in: we compare the options in Shopify or Medusa, and product feeds in our guide to Google Shopping and marketplaces.
If you want to review your checkout and your reminders, our ecommerce service starts with a review of your store, before any new app.
Frequently asked questions
How many reminders should follow an abandoned cart?
Two or three at most, over a few days. The first reminder, a few hours after abandonment, reaches people who were simply interrupted. The second answers common doubts about delivery or returns. A third is only justified if it brings new information. Beyond that, the risk of unsubscribes and irritation outweighs the sales you hope for.
Should the reminder include a discount?
Not straight away. A systematic discount teaches some customers to abandon their cart to receive it, and it eats into margin on sales that would have happened without it. Keep it for cases where price really is the reason for hesitating, late in the sequence, and never in the form of a fake deadline.
Can you send a reminder to a visitor who has never bought?
A reminder that urges them to buy counts as marketing, and in France the CNIL points out that it rests, in principle, on the prior consent of individuals. Creating an account does not, on its own, make the person a customer. So collect clear consent, with a box that is not pre-ticked, before sending this kind of message.
Do SMS reminders work better than email?
SMS is more intrusive, and the consent rules for electronic marketing apply to it as they do to email. It can suit customers who have explicitly accepted it, and purchases where timing matters. For most stores, email remains the default channel, with SMS an option reserved for those who chose it.
Sources
- CNIL, electronic communications to prospects and customers, June 2026, in French (new tab)cnil.fr
- Shopify Help, abandoned checkouts (new tab)help.shopify.com
- Your Europe, unfair commercial practices (new tab)europa.eu
CNIL, electronic communications to prospects and customers, June 2026, in French
Read on cnil.fr(new tab)Jim · founder of Brain Plus AI
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