Abandoned carts and recovery messages

Where carts come from, the three reminder messages, and what each status on the Abandoned Carts page means.

What it does

When a customer reaches checkout and leaves without ordering, the cart appears on the Abandoned Carts page. If cart reminders are on, Tous Connect sends them up to three WhatsApp messages, and stops as soon as they order.

Where carts come from

Carts only arrive if your checkout tells us about them. There are two ways:

Razorpay Magic Checkout, or another checkout provider: open Settings → E-Commerce, find Carts from your checkout provider, choose your provider and press Make my webhook address. Paste the address into your provider's dashboard. The exact steps appear with the address.
Shopify's own checkout, WooCommerce or a custom store: use Cart tracking webhooks on the Developer page. Deliveries must be signed with the Signing secret shown there.

Watch out: Connecting your Shopify store in Settings does not send us carts. A store using Shopify's own checkout still needs the Cart abandonment webhook from the Developer page.

Good to know: The checkout address is shown only once, when it is made. It works like a password, so keep it private. Lost it? Press Make a new address and paste the new one into your provider. The old one stops working at once.

A customer who leaves before typing a phone number can't be followed up, because there is nobody to message. The card counts these separately.

Settings → E-Commerce, the Carts from your checkout provider card with Razorpay Magic Checkout connected: when the last abandoned checkout arrived, the address with its key hidden, the counts, and the Make a new address and Remove buttons

The three messages

Each cart gets up to three messages. The default timing is:

Message 1: 10 minutes after the cart arrives
Message 2: 12 hours after message 1
Message 3: 12 hours after message 2

Choose the templates and change the timing in Settings → E-Commerce → Customer messages, under Cart, in Templates and timing. Press Save Settings when you're done.

Good to know: Messages go out on a regular background check, so one can arrive a few minutes after its time. They are not held back at night.

Watch out: If two messages are less than 24 hours apart, the screen warns you. WhatsApp limits how many marketing messages one person gets, and messages close together are more likely to be blocked. The 12-hour defaults show this warning. You can still save: it's a risk, not a certainty.

Settings → E-Commerce → Customer messages, the Cart group: the Abandoned cart card with its switch, and the Templates and timing panel below it with the three template dropdowns, the three timing boxes and the yellow warning

Templates, and the Default text message

Each message's dropdown lists your approved templates, plus Default text message.

A template can reach any customer. In its text, {{1}} is filled with the customer's name (or "there"), {{2}} with the link back to their cart, and {{3}} with the cart value as a number.
Default text message is plain text with the cart link. WhatsApp delivers plain text only to customers who messaged you in the last 24 hours, so everyone else is skipped. That message stays due, and goes if they message you later.

Good to know: If your template has a link button whose address changes per customer, use your own store's address followed by {{1}}, for example https://yourstore.com/{{1}}. The button then opens that customer's own cart on your store.

The Cart card's switch turns reminders on once the templates you chose are approved and your checkout is connected. Until then, the card says what is missing, for example Needs a template or Needs your checkout connected.

Who is not messaged

People who opted out, or whom you blocked.
People who said no to marketing, when the template is a Marketing template.
Customers who have ordered. Their cart is marked Recovered and stops.
Someone whose earlier cart was stopped by WhatsApp's marketing limit in the last 24 hours. Their new cart starts as stopped.

The Abandoned Carts page

Open Abandoned Carts in the sidebar. At the top, pick a date range: All time, Today, Yesterday, Last 7 days, This month, Last 30 days or Custom range. The range is on the day a cart started, in Indian time. The cards and the list both follow it.

Active: carts still open, including ones stopped by WhatsApp's limit.
Recovered: carts whose customer ordered.
Recovered Value: the total value of those carts.
Recovery Rate: recovered carts out of finished ones. A cart is finished when it is recovered, dismissed, expired, stopped, or has had all three messages.

Below the cards are four tabs: Active, Recovered, Dismissed and Expired. Search by name or phone looks through the carts on screen. Each view shows the newest 200 carts. Narrow the date range to see older ones.

The Abandoned Carts page on desktop: the date range buttons with Last 7 days selected, the four cards, the Active tab, and rows showing their message progress, each with Send now and Dismiss

What each status means

0 of 3 sent, 1 of 3 sent, 2 of 3 sent: how far the reminders have got.
3 of 3 sent: every message has gone. The cart stays in Active. To follow up, message them from the Inbox.
Stopped: WhatsApp's limit: WhatsApp refused a message because this person has had enough marketing messages for now (error 131049). No more reminders go automatically. You can still message them from the Inbox.
Recovered: the customer ordered.
Dismissed: you dismissed it.
Expired: still open 60 days after it started. It moves to the Expired tab, is never deleted, and is never messaged again.

Actions on a cart

Send now sends the next message straight away, without waiting for its time, even when reminders are switched off. It shows on Active carts that still have a message to send. If the message can't go, the button says so.
Dismiss stops the cart and moves it to the Dismissed tab. There is no undo.
Press the customer's name or row to open their conversation in the Inbox, or their contact if there is no conversation yet. Back brings you to the same list.

Good to know: Every reminder sent appears in the customer's conversation in the Inbox, so you can see exactly what they got.

When a cart counts as recovered

A cart is marked Recovered when the same phone number orders:

from your connected Shopify store, within 60 days of the cart starting, or
as reported by the Cart recovered webhook on the Developer page.

Orders tagged as an RTO reship don't count. A cart counts as recovered whether or not a reminder reached the customer first.

Watch out: Matching is by phone number only. If the customer orders with a different number, the cart stays open. If neither of the two ways above is set up, no cart is ever marked recovered, and a customer who has bought can still get reminders.

Still need a hand?

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