Why decided buyers leave at checkout

A basket is somebody who has already decided. Everything that happens after it is yours to lose, and most of the losing is done by a handful of boring, fixable things rather than by anything about persuasion.

Why people actually leave

Some of it is not abandonment at all: people use baskets to save things, compare prices and think. That portion is not recoverable and chasing it teaches you nothing. The recoverable part is specific.

• Delivery cost appearing for the first time at checkout. The single most reliable cause, and the easiest to remove by stating it on the product page.
• Being made to create an account to buy something.
• A long form asking for information you do not need to fulfil the order.
• Payment method missing. They reach the last step, cannot pay the way they pay, and leave.
• A checkout that is awkward on a phone: small targets, the wrong keyboard for a number field, a card form that loses its contents when you rotate the screen.
• Nothing that says what happens next, so an uncertain buyer hesitates at the final button.

Fix the checkout before the recovery emails

1. 01Show the full price including delivery before the basket, so nothing in checkout is a surprise.
2. 02Allow guest checkout, prominently, not as a link under the login box.
3. 03Ask for the minimum: contact, delivery address, payment. Remove every other field and see whether anything breaks.
4. 04Use the right input types so phones show the right keyboard, and support autofill so a browser can complete the address.
5. 05Show the delivery date, the returns terms and the total on the same screen as the pay button.
6. 06Keep the basket when somebody navigates away and comes back. Losing it is an own goal that nothing else compensates for.

Recovery emails, done without annoying people

They work, and the version that works is not the aggressive one. A short message a few hours later, saying the basket is still there with a link that restores it, does most of the available work. A second after a day or so is reasonable. A third, and anything involving a discount, has two costs: it trains regular customers to abandon baskets deliberately, and it means the people who would have paid full price no longer do.

Two constraints that are not optional in Europe. You need a lawful basis to email somebody who did not complete a purchase, which in practice means they gave you the address and were told what you would use it for. And every marketing email needs a working unsubscribe that is honoured, which is a requirement of the mailbox providers as well as of the law.

Measure the right thing

Abandonment rate on its own is close to useless because it includes all the browsing. What tells you something is the drop between steps: basket to checkout, checkout to payment, payment to confirmation. A large drop at one step points at a specific defect you can go and look at, which is the only kind of finding you can act on.

The minute after the payment

The confirmation screen and the first email are treated as plumbing and they are the moment a buyer decides whether they made a mistake. Somebody who has just paid a shop they had not heard of this morning is looking for reassurance, and most shops give them a receipt.

• Say what they bought, what it cost, and where it is going, so they can check it immediately rather than worrying.
• Say when it will arrive, as a date or a range, and say what happens next and when they will hear from you again. A gap with no expectation set is what produces the where is my order message.
• Say how to reach a person, plainly. The absence of this is what turns a small problem into a chargeback.
• Repeat the returns terms. It costs nothing and it is the thing that makes the next order easier.
• Ask for nothing. No upsell, no review request, no social follow. They have just given you money; let the next thing they hear be the dispatch.

Dispatch and delivery messages do more for repeat purchase than most marketing, because they arrive when the customer actually wants to hear from you. A shop that is quiet between payment and doorstep is a shop the customer has to chase.