48% of consumers say unexpected costs are the main reason they don't complete an online purchase. 25% don't trust the site to enter their card information. And despite that, the standard strategy for most brands remains the same: send an email with a discount and wait.
Email works. But it only addresses the part of the problem you already know about.
There's another part of the problem you don't know about, and email will never reveal it. For that part, you need to call.
The problem with assuming you know why they left
For every 10 potential buyers who add an item to their cart, only 3 complete the purchase if the store doesn't optimize its checkout. This applies worldwide. In Mexico, where retail e-commerce reached a value of 941 billion pesos in 2025 with a growth of 19.2%, brands that do manage to reduce this gap have a real advantage over those that don't.
The most common mistake is not having a recovery flow. It's having one based on assumptions.
It's assumed that the customer left due to price. A 10% coupon is sent. Sometimes it works. But if the customer left because they couldn't find the return policy, or because their payment method wasn't available, or simply because they didn't trust the brand, that coupon does nothing.
The only way to know why they left is to ask them.
What we've seen in the stores we work with
We've been working with Shopify brands for years, and the most common reasons for abandonment are not always what the team assumes. Generally, the patterns fall into three categories:
Lack of trust
This is the most frequent and also the hardest to detect from analytics. The customer arrived with the intention to buy, filled in their data, reached the payment step, and something made them doubt. It could be that the return policy was not visible. It could be that the checkout branding looked different from the store. It could be that the brand was unfamiliar to them.
19% of users abandon their cart due to concerns about site security and data protection. This number increases when the brand is relatively new or when the checkout does not clearly convey that the transaction is secure.
What doesn't appear in any report is the specific version of that fear in the context of your store. Only the customer can tell you that when someone asks.
Shipping costs
Many users reach checkout and discover additional charges for shipping, taxes, or fees. This negative surprise generates distrust and leads to abandonment.
The problem is not always that shipping is expensive. Sometimes it's that the cost only appeared at the very last step, and the customer felt misled. Or that it wasn't clear how many days it would take. Or that there was no express shipping option when the gift was for that week.
79% of people return to their cart if shipping is free. This says a lot about how much weight this issue has in the purchase decision.
Payment methods
About 55% of users who leave their carts without completing the purchase do so due to payment difficulties.
In Mexico, this has its peculiarities. A significant portion of buyers still prefer to pay in cash, by transfer, or with options like OXXO. Others need to pay in installments for the ticket to be affordable. If your store doesn't have these options, the customer who arrived with the intention to buy leaves without purchasing, and the recovery email won't solve anything for them.
Why calling reveals what email cannot
The abandoned cart flow in Klaviyo recovers the customer who was already ready, but got distracted or needed a push. Those are the ones who open the email, click, and buy.
The other 90% were not ready. Due to some friction in the process. And that friction is exactly what you need to know to improve your checkout.
Calling them is not to sell to them at that moment. It's to investigate. The difference between these two intentions completely changes the conversation.
When someone calls and says, "I just want to understand what happened, I'm not going to sell you anything, do you have 5 minutes?", the customer lets their guard down and speaks honestly. That honesty is UX and CRO information that you can't get with any analytics tool.
With 10 calls you already have patterns. With 20, you have enough evidence to prioritize checkout changes with certainty, not assumptions.
How to structure calls
The order of the questions matters. Each one reveals a different category of problem and together they build a complete diagnosis of why customers leave.
Before calling, go to Shopify, go to Orders, filter abandoned checkouts from the last 30 days, and sort them by amount from highest to lowest. Start with those with the highest ticket or closest to your average ticket. Export those with a phone number and you have your list.
Calls work best within the first 24 to 48 hours. After that time, the customer no longer remembers the details, and the conversation loses value.
The five questions we recommend, in this order:
"Did you see the shipping costs before leaving?"
Identifies if the problem was an unexpected cost or if the customer left before reaching that information.
"Was there anything in the process that made you doubt or caused friction?"
Brings to light technical, trust, or UX problems that don't appear on the analytics dashboard.
"What information were you missing to make a decision?"
Reveals what needs to be added or made more visible on product pages, policies, or checkout.
"At what point did you decide not to proceed?"
Identifies the exact step where the flow breaks down. This gives your team a concrete intervention point.
"Did you buy the product elsewhere? Why there?"
The most honest benchmark against your competition you can get without hiring anyone.
What you build with 2 weeks of calls
With 10 calls, you already see which problem repeats. With 20, you have enough evidence to prioritize changes with certainty.
What founders and e-commerce managers typically find when doing this exercise for the first time:
Shipping costs that appear only at the last step. Payment methods that the customer was looking for and couldn't find. Return policies that weren't visible when the customer needed them. Mobile friction issues that don't exist on desktop. Distrust towards the brand that no discount can solve.
That information is worth more than any analytics report. And the cost is 5 minutes per call.
If you want to delve deeper into how to optimize checkout once you have the data, you can read our article on 14 strategies to reduce cart abandonment in your e-commerce.
The guide we prepared to make this easier
So you don't have to build the process from scratch, we created a complete guide with everything you need to make these calls in a structured way and get the most value out of them.
The guide includes:
- A Call Tracker where you record each call, one row per customer, with the 5 questions and a guide in each column to know what to look for in each answer.
- An Automatic Dashboard that summarizes patterns as you fill out the tracker. No manual formulas. You just fill it in and the dashboard tells you which problem is most common.
- An Audit Checklist with 25 review points to audit your checkout in less than 30 minutes, with the recommended action and where to do it in Shopify for each case.
Leave your email in the pop-up and we'll send it directly to you.
Frequently asked questions about abandoned carts
Why do I have so many abandoned carts in my store?
In the first six months of 2024, the abandoned cart rate in Mexican e-commerce grew by 14%, according to a ClearSale report. It's not an isolated problem for your store. What does vary from brand to brand is the specific reason. The most frequent are shipping costs that appear only at the last step of checkout, distrust towards the brand or site, and payment methods that the customer was looking for and couldn't find. The problem is that analytics tells you how many leave, but not why. For that, you have to ask.
What are the main reasons for abandoned carts in e-commerce?
The most common reasons are unexpected additional costs such as shipping or taxes, the obligation to register for an account, overly long or complex payment processes, and a lack of trust in the site's security. In Mexico, we must add the lack of local payment methods such as OXXO, transfer, or monthly payments, which are relevant for many segments of buyers. What we have seen with the clients we work with is that distrust is the most underestimated cause because it does not appear in any report.
What is a normal abandoned cart rate?
Globally, the abandoned cart rate in 2024 is 70.19%, according to data from Baymard Institute and Statista. On mobile, the figure rises to 80%. If your rate is in that range, it doesn't mean something is broken; it's the industry average. If it's above that number, there's something specific in your checkout or your proposal that's worth investigating.
How do I know exactly at what step of the checkout my customers are leaving?
In Shopify, you can view checkout reports and abandoned checkouts by step. This tells you where they leave. What it doesn't tell you is why. We recommend using Microsoft Clarity for the latter, as it shows you the actual behavior of your users. However, the most direct and least expensive way is to call them. 10 calls to customers who abandoned a high-ticket cart will give you more actionable information than weeks of heatmap analysis.
Is the abandoned cart email enough to recover sales?
It depends on why they left. Email works well for the customer who got distracted, who wanted to think a little longer, or who needed a small incentive to decide. That's approximately the 10% who end up buying. The other 90% left for a reason that email cannot solve: a shipping cost they didn't expect, a payment method they couldn't find, or a question no one answered. To understand what happened to that 90%, you have to talk to them.
How can I reduce cart abandonment on Shopify?
The first step is to understand what is causing the specific abandonment in your store, because solutions depend on the diagnosis. That said, the changes with the greatest impact are almost always three: making shipping costs visible before checkout, placing the return policy in a location that the customer can find without searching for it, and adding the payment methods that your customer segment prefers. The audit checklist included in this post's guide helps you review these 25 points in less than 30 minutes.
What is the abandoned cart rate and how is it calculated?
It is the percentage of users who add products to their cart but do not complete the purchase. It is calculated by dividing the number of carts that did not result in a sale by the total number of initiated carts, multiplied by 100. In Shopify, you can see it in the conversion report of the sales funnel.
When is the best time to call a customer who abandoned their cart?
Within the first 24 to 48 hours after abandonment. After that time, the customer no longer remembers the details of the process, and the conversation loses much of its value as an investigation.
Are you interested in further optimizing your checkout and conversions?
