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Cart abandonment is a nightmare for WooCommerce store owners: Shoppers add products to their carts but leave without completing the purchase.
Frustrating, right? But here’s the truth: abandoned carts aren’t lost sales—until you let them be.
Over 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned. That means for every 10 potential customers, 7 leave before buying. [Source: Baymard Institute]
If you’re actively recovering those lost sales, you’re leaving serious revenue on the table.
Gone are the days when a simple email series could bring customers back.
Today, you need a Smart Revenue Recovery System—a strategic approach combining personalized emails, SMS reminders, and targeted incentives to re-engage shoppers at the right time.
In this post, we will look at the reasons people abandon their carts, components of the smart WooCommerce cart abandonment recovery system and how to set it up in your store.
Watch this quick video tutorial to recover lost sales and boost revenue with a highly profitable abandoned cart recovery system:
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Let's start right away.
Table of Contents
WooCommerce cart abandonment happens when a shopper adds items to their cart but leaves your store before completing the purchase.
It’s a common challenge for online retailers that results in losing potential revenue, costing businesses billions each year.
Baymard Institute recently did a survey on 2500+ people and found several reasons why people abandoned orders.
Here's a list of some of the most common reasons for WooCommerce cart abandonment:
The top five reasons are:
This study does not even consider the reasons related to buyer psychology in an online store.
Reasons such as:
'I was just browsing' or 'my toddler wanted my attention' or 'I thought I'll come back to it when I have some time'.
These are also big reasons that lead people to abandon the checkout process.
The cart abandonment rate jumps to nearly 75% around Black Friday as shoppers rush to compare options.
That means you’re going to lose potential customers around the holiday season.
But here’s some good news: Some of those people might come back to buy if you send out a well-timed WooCommerce cart abandonment email sequence.
Most WooCommerce cart abandonment plugins treat all users equally, whether they're guest users or not.
You can either offer a blanket discount to everyone or no one!
You can't incentivize them based on the item(s) they were trying to buy, their order total, have already used a coupon code, etc.
But if you always offer a discount every time a user abandons their orders, your system trains them to expect a discount code all the time.
Take a look at this comment that proves this point:
The strategy of offering the same incentive to everyone, irrespective of their cart total, item(s) in the cart, etc., backfires because it reduces profitability.
Worst part? It trains users to expect discounts on abandoned orders!
But let’s say their cart total is above a set threshold. Then, you may want to offer a handsome discount to convert them before your cut-off time.
The existing systems and free plugins aren't flexible and dynamic enough to consider any of this.
That right there is the problem!
In this section, you’ll get the answer to your 'how do you deal with cart abandonment?' query.
To solve the abandonment problem, we have created the Smart Revenue Recovery System.
This system allows you to create WooCommerce cart abandonment sequences by first understanding who’s at the center of it with custom variables.
Here are important components of the system that give you a mindblowing framework for your WordPress abandoned cart strategy:
Our users deploying this system with FunnelKit Automations are having great success with it. Take a look:
Another user, Borja, reported a recovery rate of 20%; that's insane! That's just with WooCommerce cart abandonment cart emails and a series of SMSs:
Impressive? Isn't it?
Let’s look into the three best WooCommerce plugins designed to help reduce cart abandonment and recover lost sales.
After thorough research, we’ve created a comparative review of these cart abandonment plugins.
Go through the unique features and functionalities each plugin offers and find out the best WooCommerce cart abandonment plugin based on our expert opinion.
FunnelKit Automations is the most powerful marketing automation and broadcast CRM for WordPress and WooCommerce.
It’s the best WooCommerce cart abandonment plugin that lets you set up abandoned cart automations. These automations help you send emails, incentivize purchases with dynamic coupons, add multiple reminders, etc., on auto-pilot.
Features of FunnelKit Automations:
Plus, you can even track your abandoned cart recovery performance using the built-in analytics.
Pricing plan:
FunnelKit Automations has a free (lite) version available in the WordPress repository. To unlock extensive functionalities, the premium version costs $99.50 a year.
Customer reviews:
FunnelKit Automations has received 5 out of 5 stars from over 252 reviews and has 20,000+ active installations. [Source: wordpress.org]
This WooCommerce plugin helps you recover abandoned carts and pending orders to boost your business revenue.
With this extension plugin, create follow-up emails and schedule them to be sent at specific intervals. You can also include discount coupons to improve conversions in your online store.
Features of Abandoned Cart Recovery:
Cons:
It’s not the right choice if you’re looking for an all-in-one cart abandonment recovery and CRM solution.
Pricing plan:
The premium plan of the Abandoned Cart Recovery plugin costs $79 annually for its extensive features. It does not offer any free or demo version.
Customer testimonial:
Abandoned Cart Recovery for WooCommerce has received 4.7 out of 5 stars from 23 reviews and has 2,000+ active installations. [Source: woocommerce.com]
This abandoned cart plugin helps you recover abandoned carts in your WooCommerce store through periodic reminders and personalized offers.
Features of Abandoned Cart Pro for WooCommerce:
Pricing plan:
The free version, also called Abandoned Cart Lite for WooCommerce, is available in the WordPress repository. Upgrade to the premium version, which starts at $149 annually for a single store.
Customer reviews:
Abandoned Cart Pro for WooCommerce has received 4.1 out of 5 stars from 81 reviews and has 20,000+ active installations. [Source: wordpress.org]
FunnelKit Automations is an all-in-one CRM plugin that is the best WooCommerce cart abandonment plugin.
Here, you can easily track recoverable, recovered, and lost carts and set up various automations for your WooCommerce business.
It completely justifies its price tag for the features it offers.
Our experts recommend this plugin to automate your business processes, manage your contacts, send email or SMS broadcasts, and integrate with other applications to unlock effective features.
With the other two plugins, you get limited email customizations, and those plugins are only for sending abandoned cart reminders and recovery.
Unlike with FunnelKit Automations, you’ve got a powerful solution at your fingertips.
It's the best abandoned cart plugin for WooCommerce. It lets you set up a timed sequence of automated emails to recover abandoned WooCommerce carts and offer discounts through personalized coupon codes.
Furthermore, FunnelKit Automations provides pre-built automated recipes that can be imported and used as is with little customization.
We have various recipes for achieving different use cases, such as post-purchase workflows, welcome sequences, cart abandonment automations, and more.
Please note that FunnelKit Automations has both the Lite (free) and the Pro (premium) versions. Here, we’ll use the Pro version for additional features such as creating coupons, adding conditions, setting up SMS, and more.
Follow our documentation on installing FunnelKit Automations on your WordPress website.
Let’s learn how to build a WooCommerce cart recovery system with FunnelKit Automations.
Follow the step-by-step process mentioned below to set up the WooCommerce cart abandonment workflow:
FunnelKit Automations live captures prospects’ email addresses as soon as they fill them out on the checkout page.
This is similar to other WooCommerce abandoned cart plugins, but it also captures what the customer was trying to buy and the total amount in their cart.
Go to the ‘Settings’ section in FunnelKit Automations to enable it.
Under Carts, check the ‘Enable Cart Tracking’ option.
This works out of the box to help you capture the buyer’s email and cart details as soon as they start filling them out on the checkout page.
Go to the ‘Automations’ section in FunnelKit Automations and hit the ‘Create Automation’ button.
Here, you’ll see various pre-built recipes available for the Lite (free) version as well as the Pro (premium) version.
Click on ‘Start from scratch’.
Name your automated campaign: ‘WooCommerce cart abandonment recovery’.
Clicking on ‘Create’ will set up a new automation campaign and redirect you to the workflow window.
Events are the triggers based on which your automation runs.
On the workflow screen, click on ‘Select an Event’.
Now, select the ‘Cart Abandoned’ trigger from the WooCommerce tab and click on ‘Done’.
Configure this event by clicking on it and selecting ‘Multiple Times’ under the number of runs.
Click on ‘Save’ when done.
Well done! You have successfully set up the event trigger of your abandoned cart automation.
Here, we will create a simple automation that will send 1 email after 30 minutes of delay.
To do so, click on the (+) icon and hit ‘Delay’.
Here, we will add a 30-minute delay to our workflow.
Click on the ‘Save’ button once done.
Actions are a series of steps that contacts must take when they enter your automation based on the event trigger you specified.
FunnelKit Automations provides a variety of actions, such as creating contacts, adding a tag, sending emails and SMS, and many more.
To specify the send email action, click on the (+) icon and hit ‘Action’.
Select the ‘Send email’ action under Messaging and click on ‘Done’.
This will be the email your users will receive when the WooCommerce cart abandonment event triggers.
The email creation window will appear on your screen.
Design and customize your abandoned cart email in WooCommerce from here.
Shopper’s email address
We’ll use the same email address as the one entered by the user on the checkout page here.
To do that, go to 'Merge Tags'.
Copy the 'Cart Billing Email' merge tag.
Paste it into the email address field.
Subject line and preview text
Enter an attractive subject line and preview text for your WooCommerce cart abandonment emails.
Refer to our post on abandoned cart subject lines and email preview text to get noticed quickly.
Email body content
Select the template type for simple text-based emails, HTML, or the Enhanced Visual Builder to design beautiful emails.
Let’s select the ‘Visual Builder (New)’ to design an attractive email.
You’ll see many pre-designed email templates that are ready to be imported and customized as per your requirements.
Import a WooCommerce cart abandonment email template. We’ve imported the ‘Abandoned Cart 1’ template here.
You’ll see content blocks, including general and WooCommerce, on the left. And the workspace on the right.
Begin by uploading your business logo.
We’ll use the shopper’s first name merge tag here.
Here, we have used multiple merge tags to show dynamic values in our email, such as the user’s first name, abandoned date, and more.
We've also changed the background color here.
This template already has cart items that list all the products in the shopper’s cart.
In addition, it has the cart link inside your WooCommerce cart abandonment email, which contains a recovery link merge tag hyperlink.
You can even add coupons, user testimonials, social icons, etc., to help shoppers trust your brand.
Next, preview your beautiful cart abandonment email with FunnelKit Automations’ visual email builder.
You can even send a test email from here to see how it looks on your email.
Make sure to activate your automation by turning the toggle to ‘Active’.
Now that you know how to create automation in FunnelKit Automations, let’s talk about setting up different smart revenue recovery system components.
Let’s add each of the components of our Smart Revenue Recovery System to our workflow in FunnelKit Automations:
Text messages are opened on average within 90 seconds, compared to 90 minutes for email.
Also, SMS has an open rate of 98%+ with 90% of messages opened within three minutes.
Therefore, adding SMS to your campaign can increase its effectiveness, especially when paired with great email templates for your WooCommerce cart abandonment recovery emails.
SMSs have a way higher click-through rate of 36%, as compared to 3.2% of emails:
Send the SMS within 2-4 hours of sending your first email for the best results.
Use emojis to make your WooCommerce cart abandonment SMS stand out in their cluttered inboxes.
FunnelKit Automations connects with Twilio and Bulkgate, popular tools that provide voice calling, messaging, and SMS services.
All you need to do is select the ‘Send SMS’ action from the workflow.
Now, create your SMS content to be sent to your users.
Well done! Here, we have created our automation that sends an SMS 4 hours after your cart recovery email.
📝 Quick Note: You need to have Twilio credits and the premium version of FunnelKit Automations to access the Twilio connector.
Plus, you can send images by SMS if you reside in the US and Canada.
Timing your recovery emails is the key to getting lost sales back.
It’s crucial to send your first email within an hour for optimal conversions.
As per the statistics from Barilliance, a cart recovery campaign saw an uplift of 20.3% in conversions when it sent the first email just after 30 minutes of cart abandonment.
Furthermore, the best practice is to send a total of three abandoned cart recovery emails with set delays.
Here’s an example with the stats:
Follow this simple strategy:
FunnelKit Automations lets you set up well-timed emails by adding delays to your workflows.
Here's how you can set up the delay in your WooCommerce cart abandonment sequence:
FunnelKit Automations lets you set delays in the contact’s time zone to serve users in multiple locations.
Brilliant, isn’t it?
Everybody loves discounts!
Therefore, offering limited-time discounts is a brilliant strategy to create a sense of urgency and boost conversions.
You can easily do that in FunnelKit Automations and even further!
FunnelKit Automations lets you create time-bound, personalized coupon codes to encourage them to come back and complete the purchase.
You don't have to go to WooCommerce to set your coupons - FunnelKit Automations takes care of that too!
Click on the (+) icon and hit action.
Add ‘Create Coupon’ action to your workflow.
Take a look at the coupon creation window in FunnelKit Automations:
It’s a complete package!
FunnelKit Automations lets you set up advanced conditions to serve the right audience.
What if you want to send discounted coupon codes to shop abandoners with high-value carts or new users in your ecommerce store?
This is what rule-based offers are - Offering discount coupons whenever users meet a certain condition.
It’s a brilliant strategy to not train your users to become price-sensitive or unwilling to buy any item without a discount.
You can do this with FunnelKit Automations’ smart rule engine.
Let’s say we want to offer a 10% discount only to shoppers with a cart total of $50 at the time of abandonment.
All you have to do is click on the (+) icon and select ‘Condition’.
Click on the 'Cart Total' rule under Carts.
Now, select the drop-down to ‘is greater than’ and enter the value of 50.
Next, under ‘Yes’, add the ‘Create Coupon’ action and create a coupon value of 10%, as we discussed in Pt. 3 (above).
Once done, add the ‘Send Email’ action next to the coupon code.
Then, include that coupon code in your email.
You can even include conditional rules in your emails to display the right incentivized offers to the right users.
That’s it! This is what your WooCommerce cart abandonment workflow will look like:
Now, a dynamic coupon will be sent to the users who have abandoned their cart with a total value of over $50.
Track stats so that you know how many carts are getting abandoned and how many of those are being recovered.
Knowing your numbers will help you tweak your strategy.
You may find out that offering a higher percentage discount is a better strategy for you- then be it, do that.
It may pay off to write product-aware abandonment emails.
Here's where you can see the analytics for cart abandonment:
These stats will help you take your cart abandonment strategy to the next level.
No room is left for any confusion.
We studied several cart abandonment emails that you can refer to.
And we've created a mini-library of some well-written emails that deserve a mention.
The first WooCommerce cart abandonment email example is from the popular store, Top Shop, who sends this email to customers abandoning their carts.
The good thing about this email is that it looks nice and simple.
The email serves as an instant reminder to users that their cart is saved and they are so close to getting their favorite item.
They've included the phone number too, so if someone wants to get in touch, they have the option!
The ‘Continue Shopping’ button takes people straight back to their cart.
Here's an example of a well-written product-aware recovery email from Beardbrand:
The major plus point of this email is the P.S. section that gives a stamp of approval to the product they intend to buy.
Being able to send product-aware emails is an important use case that you can achieve through FunnelKit Automations.
Personalization will increase your recovery rates against your WooCommerce abandoned carts.
Another brilliant WooCommerce cart abandonment email example from Morphe.
They're offering an incentive in the form of a 20% discount:
It's a pretty decent attempt at converting visitors. But you must note that their system will send this discount email to just about everyone - whether their cart total is $50 or $20.
You can change that in FunnelKit Automations.
What a brilliantly well-written email from Rudy’s!
This email is offering free shipping as an incentive for customers to complete their purchase:
It uses the catchy heading - ‘Don’t put this off like a software update’.
Secondly, the email is short, crisp and to the point; there are no unnecessary images or HTML content.
Finally, the free shipping coupon that is about to expire - conveys a built-in urgency.
Overall quite an action-producing email, and we’re sure it converts high too!
We’re incredibly impressed by this email from Billy Gene. It's very contextual and serves as a powerful reminder.
This email literally came within the first hour of abandoning the cart:
Do you know what works in favor of this email?
The user is instantly able to connect the dots and know what they need to do next.
Here are the answers to some commonly asked questions about cart abandonment recovery in WooCommerce:
1. What is cart abandonment recovery for WooCommerce?
Cart abandonment recovery for WooCommerce is a strategy to recover lost sales when shoppers abandon their carts and leave without completing the purchase.
The abandonment rate for WooCommerce carts is more than 70%.
2. Does WooCommerce have abandoned cart?
Yes, WooCommerce has abandoned carts. But you have to install an extension plugin that lets you send cart abandonment emails only.
FunnelKit Automations is an all-in-one CRM that lets not only lets you set up the smart abandoned cart recovery system. You can also automate your entire WooCommerce store processes, send email/SMS broadcasts, and more.
3. How do I find abandoned carts in WooCommerce?
WooCommerce alone doesn’t have the feature to provide details about abandoned carts without an additional extension.
However, you can see these details in FunnelKit Automations. Go to the ‘Carts’ section in FunnelKit Automations - Under the ‘Recoverable’ carts - you'll see this:
This is the section where you can see all the data about your recoverable, already recovered, and lost carts, along with details such as contact name, email ID, date the user abandoned the cart, items in the cart, cart total, status, and more.
This is how you can check your WooCommerce abandoned carts in FunnelKit Automations.
4. How do I send abandoned cart emails in WooCommerce?
You can send abandoned cart emails in WooCommerce with FunnelKit Automations.
It lets you track abandoned carts, set up abandoned cart automated sequences with timed delays, coupons, actions, conditions, goals, and more.
5. My WooCommerce cart abandonment recovery is not working. What to do?
We recommend using a trusted cart abandonment plugin like FunnelKit Automations in your WooCommerce store.
Make sure the cart tracking option is enabled inside FunnelKit Automations settings and that you’ve set up proper abandoned cart automation in place.
You can even set up A/B testing paths to test different variations of subject lines, email design, CTAs, coupon codes, and more.
This will ensure the proper working of your WooCommerce cart abandonment recovery workflow.
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Cart abandonment is a serious issue for everyone—some business owners acknowledge it, while others ignore it.
In this post, we helped you acknowledge it and understand the concrete steps to combat it.
While various plugins offer cart recovery solutions, they aren’t as flexible as FunnelKit Automations.
FunnelKit Automations is the best automation builder plugin in the market, and it keeps WooCommerce as the priority.
You can set up all kinds of automated workflows, such as cart abandonment, post-purchase follow-ups, welcome sequences, shipping-related automations, and more.
With pre-built automation recipes, discount coupon creation, advanced rule-based workflows, and many more features, FunnelKit Automations is the best WooCommerce cart abandonment plugin that you can wish for.
💡 Don’t let abandoned carts drain your revenue. Put a smart cart abandonment email sequence into action today and watch your recovered sales grow!
