Why shoppers abandon carts and how to win them back: checkout, shipping, trust, and reminder messages that recover the order.
An abandoned cart is one of the most frustrating things for a store owner: a customer searched for your product, liked it, added it to their cart, then vanished before paying. The good news is that this customer is very close to buying, and a large share of these carts can be recovered once you understand why the shopper hesitates at the final moment. This guide breaks down the reasons carts are abandoned, then walks through practical steps that bring the customer back to complete the order.
The reason is rarely that the customer changed their mind about the product. More often the obstacle is in the path itself: surprise shipping costs that appear at the last step, a long checkout that forces registration, the absence of a payment method they trust, or simply a doubt about the store's credibility. Sometimes the customer is only browsing and comparing, intending to return later, then gets distracted. Each of these causes has a cure, and the first step is to look at your store through the customer's eyes and go through the full experience as if you were buying from it.
Every extra step at checkout costs you a share of your customers. Ask for the least information possible, allow guest checkout without forcing account creation, and keep the form short and clear. Show a simple progress indicator so the customer knows how much is left, and avoid surprises at the final step. A clean checkout completed in one or two screens on mobile makes a bigger difference than you might imagine, because most abandonment happens precisely at this stage.
What scares customers away most is shipping fees that appear suddenly at payment. Be upfront from the start: show shipping cost and time on the product page or early in the cart, not at the final step. If you have a free-shipping threshold, state it clearly, because it is a strong incentive to raise cart value. A customer accepts a reasonable cost they know in advance, but rejects the feeling of being surprised or misled. Transparency in shipping is not a courtesy, it is a condition for completing the order.
The moment a customer enters their details, they want reassurance that they are in a safe, serious place. Show trust signals clearly: the browser security indicator, familiar payment methods, a clear return policy, and real contact information. Honest reviews from past customers and genuine product photos reassure the hesitant. Any ambiguity at this moment is read by the customer in favor of backing out, so make everything that builds trust visible, not hidden.
Many store platforms let you send a reminder to a customer who left their cart, and this is one of the most effective tools because it speaks to someone who showed clear buying intent. A good message is short, warm, and unpushy: it reminds the customer of what they left, carries a direct link that returns them to their cart as it was, and perhaps answers a question that may have been the reason for their hesitation, such as shipping or returns. Timing matters: a reminder after a few hours is usually better than waiting days. Do not overdo it, one or two polite messages beat a chase that annoys the customer.
Some customers need one small final nudge. A simple incentive such as free shipping above a certain threshold, or an honest reminder that stock is limited without artificial fear, can settle the decision. But it is more important to remove the real reason for hesitation than to paper over it with a discount. If your customers back out because of a vague return policy, then a clear policy is more useful than any discount. Watch which step customers most often leave at, and fix that specific step.
Cart recovery is not something you do once, it is a habit of continuous measurement. Track your abandonment rate in your store dashboard, at which step it happens, and how many carts your reminder messages recover. Test one change at a time: simplify a step, clarify shipping, or adjust a message, then measure the effect. Small improvements accumulated over months noticeably raise your order completion rate, and every point you gain here is direct profit from visitors who were about to leave.
At Nasj we design Salla stores with tidy checkouts that reduce friction, and we arrange how shipping, trust, and payment methods are presented so the customer feels at ease and completes the order. We build clear product and landing pages that pave the way to the buying decision, and connect your store to measurement tools so you can track where carts are lost and how to recover them.
If your store's abandonment rate is higher than it should be, reach out to Nasj and let us review the buying journey step by step and turn abandoned carts into completed orders.