6 Cart Abandonment Options for WooCommerce

You’re here… so you’re likely aware of the staggering statistic stating that close to seventy-percent of all online carts are abandoned. Which also means you recognize cart abandonment as one of the most important problems facing your online store. Not good.. you need some cart abandonment options.

So what should you do about cart abandonment?

Beka Rice, the head of Product for Skyverge/Jilt recommends combining cart abandonment prevention efforts with a process for reclaiming abandoned carts. Wondering how to get started on your prevention efforts for abandoned carts? Let’s start with understanding the top ten reasons people give for abandoning their online shopping cart.

Top 10 Reasons People Abandon Their Cart

1. Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees)
2. The site wanted me to create an account
3. Too long / complicated checkout process
4. I couldn’t see / calculate total order cost up-front
5. Website had errors / crashed
6. I didn’t trust the site with my credit card information
7. Delivery was too slow
8. Returns policy wasn’t satisfactory
9. There weren’t enough payment methods
10. The credit card was declined

As you can see, everything matters to people trying to decide whether they trust your store enough to make a purchase or not. For instance, fifty-nine percent of consumers say they factor shipping cost into their ordering decision. Watch this video or keep reading for some options you have to assist with abandoned carts.

6 Cart Abandonment Options for WooCommerce in 2024

Cart Abandonment Option #1: Abandoned Cart Lite for WooCommerce (Free Plugin)

You can install Abandoned Cart Lite for WooCommerce in your WordPress backend. Activating the plugin adds an additional sub-menu under WooCommerce aptly titled “Abandoned Carts.” This newly created sub menu of WooCommerce is where all of your cart abandonment efforts are held when using this plugin, which is not complicated. This plugin lets you change the amount of time that defines an abandoned cart (aka the cart abandoned cut-off time) expressed in minutes. You can also choose to have an email notification sent to the store admin each time an abandoned cart is successfully recovered. Try Fully Managed WooCommerce Hosting from Nexcess >> The Abandoned Cart Lite plugin includes abandoned cart reporting by product, as well as by order. And the product reporting includes totals for both abandonment and recoveries per product. The one thing to note about this plugin is that, while it’s free, it may have a cost to run – as it could slow your store’s performance because of the way it writes to the database. And a slow site can impact your conversion. That’s something you’ll need to test.

Cart Abandonment Option #2: YITH Recover Abandoned Cart for WooCommerce (Free Plugin)

The free version of the YITH Recover Abandoned Cart for WooCommerce plugin allows you to manually trigger an email to your logged in users that abandon their cart. And while the free version also allow you to set the amount of time you want to pass before a cart is considered abandoned, that’s the extent of the settings for the free version. This bare-bones approach to the free plugin is something you should carefully consider before choosing this plugin. The ability to track abandoned carts of unregistered shoppers is only possible in the premium version.

Cart Abandonment Option #3: Retainful – WooCommerce Abandoned Cart Recovery Emails and Next Order Coupons (FREE Plugin)

Retainful is a popular abandoned cart recovery plugin for WooCommerce stores. The free plugin lets you automatically send a series of cart recovery email reminders (aka drip campaign) at well-timed intervals. Your customers can recover carts with a single click and complete the purchase. With Retainful, you can capture all the carts including guest carts, collect email, set a cut-off time for abandoned carts in order to trigger recovery emails. And you have the full control over the email scheduling. The emails can include the cart summary and personalized shortcodes. It can stop sending the emails automatically as soon as the cart is recovered. Most importantly, you can also track the performance of your abandoned cart email campaigns. You can view the list of customers who have abandoned carts, view live carts (customers using the cart at that moment) and measure revenue made with recovered carts as well. And the biggest plus with Retainful is that you can do more than just automating cart recovery email notifications. It helps you drive repeat purchases by sending single-use coupons for next purchases within the order notification emails itself. This helps you retain your customers and motivate them to purchase again.

Cart Abandonment Option #4: Abandoned Cart Pro for WooCommerce (Plugin is $119/yr)

This is the full-featured commercial version of the Abandoned Cart Lite, which we covered above. The plugin sells for $119/year/store from TYCHE Softwares. One thing to consider before use, this plugin uses WP-Cron to send emails. That means your website is acting as your email server, and is dependent on WP-Cron (which can be managed by your host). That’s not always the best way to set things up….and if your host deactivates WP-Cron automatically on every WordPress installation, this plugin will not work for you. The good news is that you’d know pretty quickly if it won’t work. And the even better news is that you can test it on your site using the Lite version and then upgrade to this Pro edition. That all said, they do offer a 30-day money back guarantee. My favorite feature (and I wish all retargeting software did this) is that it stops sending emails automatically once a customer either makes a purchase or uses a cart recovery link.

Cart Abandonment Option #5: Follow-Ups for WooCommerce (Plugin is $99/yr)

Follow-Ups for WooCommerce is a paid solution, $99/year/site, sold and supported in the official WooCommerce extensions store. Follow Ups for WooCommerce integrates with many other WooCommerce plugins. For example, when you add Follow Ups to a store running WooCommerce Subscriptions, the integration supports sending follow ups to your subscribers around their subscription ending as well as follow ups based on their next payment being due.

Cart Abandonment Option #6: CartHook – (SaaS starts around $600/yr)

CartHook is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution. This means the work it’s doing is off of your server, and that you don’t need to install updates every time a new feature arrives. Cart recovery best practices are built into CartHook. The first thirty days with all customers serve as a free trial. And the amount of revenue that your store recovers during the free trial determines which paid plan you’re on going forward. Plans start at $50/mo for up to $1K in recovered revenue each month. CartHook automatically creates campaigns that have the three outbound emails per missed order. There aren’t any limits to how many total emails you send out each month. As for email scheduling with CartHook, you can choose from a list of preset delays for emails.

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