You spend on ads to bring a customer to your store, they pick a product, add it to the cart — and leave. This isn’t rare: the average cart abandonment rate for online stores is close to 70%, according to research Baymard Institute has collected over many years. Seven out of ten customers who reached the cart didn’t buy.
The good news is that these are the cheapest sales you can win back: the customer knows you, chose the product, and was one step away.
Why customers abandon their carts
Before any recovery messages, fix what drives customers away from the checkout page itself. The most common reasons:
- Unexpected costs: shipping or fees that appear for the first time at the last step. Show shipping costs, or the free-shipping threshold, on the product page.
- Forced account creation: allow guest checkout, and ask customers to create an account after the order if you want to.
- Long steps and too many fields: every unnecessary field is another reason to leave — especially on mobile.
- Payment options: in the Gulf and Egypt, missing cash on delivery, instalments or Apple Pay is enough to lose a large share of buyers.
- Trust: an unclear returns policy, no visible way to contact you, or a checkout page that looks different from the rest of the store.
- Comparison shopping: customers who add to cart to save a product while they compare prices. These are exactly who recovery messages win back.
Recovery messages: timing matters more than wording
A recovery message works because it arrives while the customer still remembers the product. A sequence of three messages is enough for most stores:
| Message | Timing | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| First | About an hour later | A simple reminder of the product, its image and a link back to the cart as they left it |
| Second | After 24 hours | An answer to a common hesitation: shipping, returns, sizing or cash on delivery |
| Third | After 48 to 72 hours | A final reminder — and only here might an incentive (free shipping or a small discount) make sense |
Don’t lead with a discount in the first message. Customers who learn that abandoning a cart earns them a discount will abandon it every time, and you’ll pay that discount to people who would have bought anyway.
WhatsApp or email?
In Arab markets, WhatsApp is read far more than email — and that’s what we see in our clients’ accounts. For one kitchenware store in Saudi Arabia, automated WhatsApp messages sent 10,749 messages over seven months and recovered 469 of 2,806 abandoned carts (16.7%), with sales of more than SAR 144,000.
Email is still useful as a second channel and for customers who didn’t leave a number, but make WhatsApp your first channel if your customers are in the Gulf or Egypt — and respect the rules: few messages, useful content, and a clear way to opt out.
What makes a recovery message work
- The customer’s name, the product name and its image — not a generic message.
- A link that restores the cart exactly as it was, not one to the home page.
- A service tone, not pressure: “Did you run into a problem with your order?” works better than “Your cart is expiring!”.
- A real contact number that a person answers — many people who abandon a cart have just one question.
How to measure the result
Track three numbers each month: the share of carts abandoned, the share of those recovered, and the value of recovered sales. If the first falls, your checkout improvements are working; if the second rises, your messages are working. And always compare the recovered value with the cost of the tool, the messages and any discounts, so you know the net value they added.
