The statistic is haunting for every store owner: approximately 70% of all online shopping carts are abandoned before checkout is complete. This means that for every 10 sales you make, you likely lost roughly 23 potential customers who were interested enough to add items to their cart but walked away at the last second. While you will never recover 100% of these—some people are just "window shopping"—recovering even a fraction of them can increase your revenue by 10-20% without spending a dime on new ads. At The SaaS Hub, we classify cart recovery as "low-hanging fruit." The customer has already shown intent; they just need a nudge.
The first step in recovery is understanding why they left. Consistently, the number one reason cited in consumer surveys is "unexpected shipping costs." If a customer sees a $20 item, goes to checkout, and suddenly sees a total of $35 due to shipping and taxes, the "sticker shock" causes them to bail. The best fix is transparency. Display shipping costs on the product page or offer a "Free Shipping Threshold" bar. If you can’t fix the cost, you must fix the communication. Using apps from The SaaS Hub that calculate shipping in the cart drawer before checkout can reduce this friction.
Email recovery remains the most reliable method. A standard "You left something behind" email is good, but a sequence is better. The first email should go out within one hour. It should be helpful, not salesy. "Did your Wi-Fi crash? We saved your cart." The second email, sent 12-24 hours later, creates social proof. "This item is selling fast." The third email, sent after 48 hours, is where you might offer a small discount code (e.g., 5% or 10%) to close the deal. However, be careful not to train your customers to wait for this coupon. Segment your audience so that frequent abandoners don't always get the code.
Push notifications are a newer, more aggressive frontier. If a customer has opted into web push notifications (via apps like PushOwl), you can send a message directly to their browser or mobile screen. These have higher visibility than email but shorter lifespans. They are best used for immediate recovery—sending a notification 30 minutes after abandonment creates a sense of immediacy. Because these don't get buried in a "Promotions" tab like Gmail, the click-through rates are often higher, though the conversion rate may be slightly lower than email.
Retargeting ads on Facebook and Instagram act as the safety net. If you have the Facebook Pixel installed (which every Shopify store should), you can serve dynamic product ads (DPA) showing the exact image of the product the user left in their cart. This keeps your brand top-of-mind as they scroll through their feed later in the day. While this costs money (unlike email), the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) for dynamic retargeting is usually the highest of any ad campaign type because the audience is so warm.
Finally, consider the "save for later" functionality. Sometimes a user abandons not because of price, but because they aren't ready to buy right now. Allowing them to move items to a wishlist or "save for later" list keeps them in your ecosystem. The SaaS Hub features several wishlist apps that can send alerts when a saved item goes on sale or is low in stock, effectively turning an abandoned cart into a future sale. By combining these strategies—transparent pricing, email sequences, push notifications, and retargeting—you create a safety net that catches sales that would otherwise slip through the cracks.
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