It has certainly happened to you: you browse an online store, put a product in the basket, leave, and a little later a notification or a message arrives reminding you.
That is not a coincidence, it is a system running automatically, and it is one of the highest-returning things in e-commerce.
Why do people abandon the basket at all?
The reasons are known and repeated:
- Shipping costs appeared at the end. The single most common reason.
- The purchase process is long or requires registration.
- Price comparison — they leave the basket and check elsewhere.
- Distraction — something interrupted them mid-purchase.
- Doubt about security or about the site itself.
And the first step is not the message, it is reducing those reasons: show shipping early, reduce the steps, and allow purchase without registration.
The first message: a simple reminder
After an hour or two. A short message with a photo of the product and a direct link back to the basket.
Do not put a discount here. A large share of people left for an incidental reason, and the reminder alone brings them back — a discount at this moment simply costs you money for nothing.
The second message: removing the obstacle
About a day later. Here you answer the most common reasons for hesitation: the returns policy, delivery times, payment methods, and customer reviews of that same product.
This message works on trust rather than price, and it is the most important one in the sequence for a new store.
The third message: a final incentive
After three days. Here you can add a simple incentive: free shipping, or a small time-limited discount.
Keep the incentive limited and not repeated, so you do not teach your customers to abandon the basket every time in order to get a discount.
Do not go beyond three
After three messages, anyone who has not completed probably will not. Continuing irritates people and raises unsubscribes.
Better to move them into your ordinary list receiving content and offers periodically, rather than pressing on the same product.
How do you build it in your store?
Most ready-made store platforms have this feature built in or available as a simple add-on. All you need is to enable it and write the messages.
And if you sell through messages rather than a store, the same idea works manually: keep a list of people who asked and did not proceed, and follow up after a day and after three.
And in message-based selling?
In the Egyptian market the abandoned cart is usually an abandoned conversation: someone asked about the price and went quiet.
The same sequence works: a reminder after a day, an answer to the likely objection after three, and an incentive after a week. Most companies abandon these people entirely, and they are the closest source of sales they have.
Measure the effect
Track two numbers: how many opened the message, and how many came back and completed the purchase.
The second is what matters, and comparing it with the setup cost shows quickly that this is among the highest returns available — because after setup the cost is almost zero.
In short
Abandoned cart messages recover a meaningful share of sales that would otherwise be lost, and they run automatically.
Reduce the reasons for abandonment first, then send three messages only: a reminder, an obstacle removed, and a final incentive. The same logic applies to abandoned conversations if you sell by messaging.
This is part of a series on automation — which also covers reasons to use email automation, and building the journey step by step.