The lost cart problem
Most shoppers who add items never check out. Cart abandonment recovery detects these stalled carts and nudges the shopper to return, recovering revenue that would otherwise be lost.
Detecting abandonment
A cart is considered abandoned when it has items but no checkout activity for a defined window, such as one hour. This is naturally modeled with a delayed event or timer that fires if no purchase happens first.
Triggering recovery
- Email or push reminders sent after the window, often with the cart contents.
- Incentives like a small discount on later reminders.
- Frequency caps so shoppers are not spammed.
Architecture
Cart updates emit events. A scheduler sets a timer per cart; the purchase event cancels the timer. If the timer fires, a recovery message is queued.
Key idea
Detect abandonment with a per cart timer that a purchase cancels, then send capped, possibly incentivized reminders.