In any online store, some customers fill a cart and then do not complete the purchase. Abandoned cart recovery is the attempt to win some of those back. This piece is about it in Odoo eCommerce.
What an abandoned cart is
An abandoned cart is exactly that: a customer who put products into a cart, showing genuine intent to buy, but then did not complete the purchase. They got partway, choosing products, and stopped before checkout was completed. Abandoned carts happen in every online store, for many reasons, and an abandoned cart is, in a sense, an almost-sale: a customer who was interested enough to fill a cart but did not finish.
What abandoned cart recovery is
Abandoned cart recovery is the attempt to win back some of those almost-sales: following up with the customers who abandoned a cart, to encourage them to come back and complete the purchase. Odoo eCommerce supports abandoned cart recovery, so a store can follow up on abandoned carts rather than simply letting them go. The follow-up is, in effect, a reminder or a nudge to the customer who left a cart, an attempt to recover the almost-sale.
Why abandoned cart recovery is worthwhile
Abandoned cart recovery is worthwhile because an abandoned cart is a customer who was genuinely interested, interested enough to choose products and fill a cart, and a customer with that much genuine interest is a customer worth following up. Some of those customers, followed up, will come back and complete the purchase, sales the store would otherwise simply have lost. Recovering even some of the abandoned carts is genuine extra sales, from customers who had already shown they were interested. It is, in that sense, some of the most worthwhile follow-up a store can do, because the customers were already part-way to buying.
Doing it well
An honest note on doing abandoned cart recovery well. The follow-up to an abandoned cart should be a genuine, appropriate nudge, a helpful reminder, not an aggressive pestering. A customer who abandoned a cart may have a genuine reason, and the follow-up should be a reasonable invitation to come back, done well, rather than something that irritates. Abandoned cart recovery done well, with an appropriate, genuine follow-up, recovers some of the almost-sales and serves the customer reasonably; done as aggressive pestering, it can put customers off. A store should set up abandoned cart recovery to follow up genuinely and appropriately.
The takeaway
Abandoned cart recovery in Odoo eCommerce is the following up with customers who filled a cart but did not complete the purchase, to win some of those almost-sales back. It is worthwhile because an abandoned cart is a genuinely interested customer, and recovering even some of them is genuine extra sales the store would otherwise have lost. Do it well, with a genuine, appropriate follow-up, a helpful nudge rather than aggressive pestering, so it recovers sales while serving customers reasonably. For how we approach Odoo, see our ERP practice.