Abandoned cart analytics

Understand how often customers add products to a cart and leave without completing an order.

Last updated January 22, 2025

In the Abandoned cart panel in Squarespace analytics, you can track cart abandonment trends and measure the success of your abandoned cart emails. This panel gives you insight into:

  • How often customers add products to a cart and leave without completing an order
  • How many of those orders were recovered as a result of the email
  • How changes you make to your store affect abandonment or recovered rates over time

Accessing this feature

The Abandoned cart analytics panel is available in the Basic, Core, Plus, Advanced, Business, Commerce Basic, and Commerce Advanced plans. To learn more visit Choosing the right Squarespace plan

The data available to you depends on your plan. Basic, Core, Plus, Advanced, and Commerce Advanced subscribers have access to abandoned checkout recovery, which generates a few additional data points in the panel. To learn how to upgrade your plan, visit Changing your website billing plan

Review the Abandoned cart panel

  1. Open the Analytics panel, click Sales, then click Abandoned cart.
  2. Click the date range drop-down menu at the top of the panel to filter results by time frame. Data is available starting from January 2014.

The five stages of the abandoned cart funnel

The funnel shows the typical path customers take from abandonment to purchase, represented by these five columns:

  1. Carts 
  2. Abandoned
  3. Recoverable 
  4. Emailed
  5. Recovered

Hover over each column to see the total and the revenue amount.

Note

The funnel doesn't include test orders, subscription products, or memberships to member sites.

1. Carts

Carts represents the total number of visits where a customer added at least one item to a cart.

More details:

  • Each visitor’s cart counts once, no matter how many items they added or if they completed their order.
  • If a visitor removed all products from their cart, their cart still counts toward this number.
  • If a visitor completes their order and starts a new cart, that new cart is counted separately.

Tip

Carts should be the same as Added to cart in Purchase funnel when comparing data in the same date range, with a few exceptions.

2. Abandoned

Abandoned represents the number of customers who added at least one product to a cart and didn’t complete their order within 24 hours.

More details:

  • If the customer returns to your store and completes their order within those hours, they’re not abandoned.
  • Since a cart is considered abandoned after 24 hours, incomplete orders within the last 23 hours and 59 minutes don’t count as abandoned. In other words, if you select Today from the date range drop-down menu at the top of the panel, you won't see any abandoned cart data.

Tip

If this number seems high, learn more in the section below.

3. Recoverable

Accessing this feature

Recoverable data is available from September 15, 2016 on.

Recoverable represents the number of customers who followed all of these steps:

  • Added a product to their carts
  • Logged into their customer account or entered an email address at checkout
  • Didn’t complete their order within 24 hours

A customer is "recoverable" when they meet the necessary criteria to trigger the abandoned cart email.

4. Emailed

Accessing this feature

This column is available in the Commerce Advanced and Premium plans.

Emailed represents the number of customers who followed all of these steps:

  • Added a product to their cart
  • Logged into their customer account or entered an email address at checkout
  • Didn’t complete their order within 24 hours
  • Received an abandoned cart email

This number should always be ≤ (equal to or less than) Recoverable. We don’t track if customers opened the email.

Emailed might be less than Recoverable if:

  • A customer unsubscribed from your marketing emails - They’re counted as Recoverable because they entered an email address. However, they’re not counted as Emailed because we didn’t send them an email.
  • A product is out of stock - If all products in a customer’s cart sold out by the time the email is scheduled to send (about 24 hours after they abandoned), we don’t send them an email. In this case, they’re considered Recoverable, but not Emailed. If at least one product in their cart is still in stock, we’ll still send the email.

5. Recovered

Accessing this feature

This column is available in the Commerce Advanced and Premium plans.

The Recovered column represents the final step in the funnel: How many abandoned carts were recovered, and the revenue worth of those carts. It tracks customers who followed these steps:

  • Added a product to their cart
  • Logged into their customer account or entered their email address at checkout
  • Didn’t complete the order within 24 hours
  • Received an abandoned cart email (usually)
  • Completed the order

Note

Visitors who abandoned and then completed their order without receiving or clicking on the abandoned cart email count toward this number.

Percentages between columns

The percentages between columns are the rates of customers who moved to the next step.

For example, in the screenshot below, of the 4674 carts, 79% were abandoned.

Screen_Shot_2021-12-21_at_5.23.29_PM.png

Line graph

Accessing this feature

The line graph doesn't appear in the Squarespace app.

The graph at the bottom of the panel tracks changes to abandoned carts and recovery over time. Hover anywhere over the chart to see data for a specific time.

This chart is useful for seeing:

  • If making a specific change in your store affected abandonment or recovery rates, like changing the subject line of your abandoned cart recovery email, or a major redesign. As a best practice, keep track of when you make major content changes to see how your data responds.
  • How many abandoned cart emails were sent per day.

Click the Daily drop-down menu to change the time scale. Time scale options depend on the number of available data points.

Potential discrepancies

Carts in Abandoned cart vs. Added to cart in Purchase funnel

If you don't have express checkout enabled, Added to cart in Purchase funnel analytics and Carts in Abandoned cart analytics should be identical when you’re looking at the same date range. They both represent customers who added at least one product to their carts. However, there might be slight differences depending on the time of day a visitor was shopping:

  • In Purchase funnel, Added to cart is based on the start of a visit where a customer added a product to a cart.
  • In Abandoned cart, Carts is based on the time when a customer added a product to their cart, regardless of when the visit started.

Depending on the date range you’re viewing, their cart could count in one panel and not the other. For example, a customer might have had a late-night shopping session, where they opened your site before midnight and added a product to their carts after midnight.

Express checkout and Abandoned cart analytics

If you have express checkout enabled on your site, customers go straight to a checkout page after clicking on a product instead of adding it to a shopping cart first. While your site doesn't have a cart, you'll still see data in the Abandoned cart analytics panel:

  • Carts represents the total number of visits where a customer initiated checkout with a product.
  • Abandoned represents the number of customers who initiated checkout but didn’t complete their order within 24 hours.

Why customers abandon carts

Cart abandonment is part of the nature of online shopping. The industry average abandonment rate is about 70%. However, many factors could make this number different for you.

If your abandonment rates are higher than you expected, this could be completely normal. For example, customers might click around your store but aren’t ready to buy anything yet. They could get distracted or change their minds for personal or budgetary reasons.

Tips to reduce abandonment rates

What Squarespace does

With Squarespace, you have access to many features to help prevent as much abandonment as possible. For example:

  • Abandoned cart emails help you win back customers who abandoned.
  • Shipping and billing addresses automatically populate with a Google-powered list of autocomplete suggestions.
  • You can accept a variety of payment methods. By offering methods like PayPal, Apple Pay, or Venmo, customers can pay without having to enter credit card details.
  • We design all templates for a great browsing experience to reduce the barrier to purchase.

Store setup strategies

These additional strategies might help you improve your rates:

  • Offer more than one payment method so customers can pick one they prefer.
  • Link to a clear return policy on your checkout page.
  • Keep custom checkout forms short.
  • Display shipping and pickup information in a prominent place, like in the product's Additional Info field or in your site's footer, so customers can get an idea of the total ord​​er cost upfront before starting the checkout process.
  • Enable Link by Stripe so customers can save their billing and shipping information.

Enable customer accounts

When you enable customer accounts, customers can save information like their name, email address, and payment method to check out more quickly in the future. If a customer is logged in, we can send the abandoned cart email earlier in the purchase funnel because we don't have to wait for them to enter their email address at checkout.

Enabling customer accounts could lead to an increase in sales and a dip in your recovery rate, since more customers will receive the email to begin with.

FAQ

Can I see open rates for the email?

No. It isn’t currently possible to see open rates for the abandoned cart email.

Can I see a list of abandoned customers’ email addresses?

No, not at this time.

Why are Recoverable, Emailed, and Recovered 0?

If the number in the Abandoned column is greater than 0 and the other stages in the funnel are 0, your billing plan doesn't include access to this data. To start recovering revenue and get more information in this panel, upgrade to the Commerce Advanced or Premium plans.

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