Cart abandonment survey

Recover lost sales and understand user intent

Cart abandonment surveys are beneficial, when cart abandonment rates are a significant concern, and where recovering even a small percentage of abandoned carts can lead to revenue gains.

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What it solves & why businesses use it

A cart abandonment survey helps businesses identify the reasons customers abandon their carts, which provides valuable insights into potential obstacles or friction points in the purchasing process. By collecting feedback from users who leave without completing their purchase, the cart abandonment survey allows businesses to better optimize their website, checkout process, and conversion funnels to recover lost sales and improve customer experience.

This survey helps answer:

  • Why didn’t the customer complete the checkout process?

  • Was it a pricing issue, a lack of information, or a usability barrier?

  • How can we improve the shopping experience to reduce abandonment rates?

When & how to use it

Cart abandonment surveys are best triggered based on behavior when users leave the site with items still in their cart. Key use cases include:

  • Post-cart abandonment: After a customer leaves the cart page without completing their purchase.

  • Mid-checkout: When users enter the checkout process but do not proceed to payment or confirmation.

  • After inactivity: If users add products to the cart but remain inactive after spending time on the site.

How it looks

A typical cart abandonment survey appears as a popup that asks for quick feedback right after a cart is abandoned. It usually contains:

  • A simple, direct question like, “What stopped you from completing your purchase?”

  • Multiple-choice options could include reasons like "Too expensive", "Shipping costs were too high", "Found a better deal elsewhere" , "Payment process was too complicated", and more.

  • Optionally, an open text field could provide more detailed feedback.

  • Follow-up options, like offering a discount code, free shipping, or an incentive to return to the cart.

How cart abandonment surveys are analyzed

The cart abandonment survey data is usually analyzed by:

  • Identifying common reasons for abandonment, such as pricing concerns, long checkout processes, or lack of product details.

  • Response rates: Measuring how many users participate in the survey compared to those who abandon their carts to get the effectiveness of the survey prompt.

  • Correlation with recovery efforts: After offering incentives (like discounts or free shipping), comparing abandonment rates before and after the survey to measure if the changes led to more completed purchases.

By combining survey results with behavioral data, businesses can pinpoint exact friction points and optimize their checkout experience to reduce abandonment rates.

What recipes cart abandonment surveys are combined with

Cart abandonment surveys are often paired with other strategies to improve recovery and conversion rates:

  • Exit-intent: Display a cart abandonment survey when a user is about to leave the page, combined with special offers (e.g., discounts, free shipping) to entice users to complete the purchase.

  • Discount offer: Use the cart abandonment survey with a discount, free shipping, or special offer to recover abandoned carts.

  • Product recommendations or bundles: After abandonment, show a product recommendation with similar or complementary items or a bundle option, which can help re-engage users who may have left due to not finding the right product.

How to set up an abandoned cart survey

Creating a cart abandonment survey pop-up in Claspo is pretty straightforward and a great way to find out why your visitors leave without buying.

Step 1: Choose a template

Head over to Claspo’s template library — there are over a thousand pre-made widgets to pick from. The templates are already designed with smart layouts, sizes, fonts, and spacing, so you don’t need to worry about visuals — they're good to go right out of the gate. For this example, we’ll go with one that includes both closed-ended questions (using radio buttons) and an open text field. That way, you cover common reasons for hesitation but still leave room for unique responses that you might not have thought of.

Step 2: Customize it

Claspo’s editor is drag-and-drop, so customizing your widget is super simple. Just click any element to tweak it from the right-side settings panel: change colors, sizes, shapes, positions, and even add effects like shadows or animations.

Need to update the answers? Just click on the Radio buttons component, go to General > Edit options, and make your changes.

Each template also comes with built-in ‘Success’ and ‘Error’ screens so your users know if their submission went through. And yes, you can customize those too.

Step 3: Set the display rules

Now it’s time to decide when the pop-up should show up. In our case, we want to target people who added something to their cart but then went quiet. That usually means they got distracted — and might leave without checking out.

Important!

To make this work, your site needs to have a Data Layer set up.

In the When to display section:

  • Keep When all conditions are met selected.

  • Enable Not active on the page that detects inactivity. The default timer is 3 minutes, which is a solid starting point. But feel free to adjust based on what you know about your visitors.

Then scroll down to On pages and click Add condition. From the dropdown, choose the Data layer event. In the eventName field, enter add_to_cart, in the variable field — ecommerce.items[0].item_id, and select ‘exists’ from the drop-down list.

Now the pop-up will only show for visitors who added something to the cart and then paused activity.

Step 4: Integrate your other marketing tools

Claspo works smoothly with all the usual suspects, such as email platforms, CRMs, CDPs, and more. You can easily send responses where they’re needed for follow-ups, audience segmentation, or automation.

Fully designed survey templates

Explore our full library and find the perfect template to launch your next campaign in no time.

Proven recipes to collect feedback

No matter what your goal is, there’s a widget for that. Explore pre-designed, user-friendly templates and find the perfect fit for your next campaign.

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What is cart abandonment?

According to cart abandonment rate statistics from the Baymard Institute, the average shopping cart abandonment rate is approximately 70%, indicating that a substantial majority of online shoppers abandon their carts before completing checkout. 

Cart abandonment refers to the situation when a customer adds products to their online shopping cart but leaves the site without completing the purchase. It means the shopper had purchase intent but failed to finalize the order. This can occur at any point during the checkout flow, particularly on the checkout page. 

It’s a key metric in e-commerce because it highlights friction in the buying process. It also directly impacts the conversion rate and overall revenue of any online business.

Why do users abandon their carts?

There are several common reasons why online shoppers abandon their carts without completing a purchase. According to the same research done by the Baymard Institute, the five most frequent issues include:

  • Unexpected costs like tax or fees (39%) 
  • Slow delivery (21%)
  • Concerns about payment security (19%)
  • Mandatory account creation (19%)
  • Complicated or long checkout process (18%)

These reasons point to friction in the checkout stage or a poor user experience. Identifying the exact pain points for your e-commerce business is crucial to reducing cart abandonment and improving your conversion rates.

What is a cart abandonment survey?

A cart abandonment survey is a short feedback form shown to users who add items to their cart but leave without completing the purchase. Its main goal is to collect qualitative data on the reasons for cart abandonment and help online businesses reduce the cart abandonment rate.

Abandoned cart surveys are typically triggered on the shopping cart page or during the checkout stage, either when a user has been inactive for some time or is showing signs of exit intent

How to use a shopping cart abandonment survey effectively

To get meaningful results from a cart abandonment survey, it’s not enough to just display a form — you should think it through. Here’s how to make it work for you:

1. Ask clear, targeted cart abandonment survey questions

Typically, there’s only one question in a cart abandonment survey, which goes something like:  “What stopped you from completing your purchase?” or “Why didn’t you complete your purchase?”. Keep it like that: simple and straightforward. 

Offer multiple-choice answers based on common abandonment reasons (check the list above). Consider adding a free-text field as a second step for unique feedback, but keep the field optional. 

2. Trigger the survey at the right time

We’ve already mentioned that generally, you should show the popup survey either when the user is about to leave or has been idle for some time. This captures feedback at the exact stage of abandonment. Exit intent is generally a more accurate sign of cart abandonment. 

But you can actually test both scenarios with Claspo’s A/B testing. Create different display rules for the same widget and see which one yields better results for you. 

3. Keep your survey form to the point

Check Claspo’s shopping cart abandonment survey templates, and you’ll see that all of them have two steps: multiple choice and a free-text field. As tempting as it might be to ask more questions, keep it simple. The shopper is already leaving, so they’re not in the mood for an interview. 

4. Analyze and act on the data

Probably the most important piece of advice. Don’t collect data just to store it. Usually, the survey is implemented as an ongoing part of a greater cart abandonment strategy. So, make sure to review the survey responses regularly actually do something about the friction points.

5. A/B test survey formats

Try different survey templates, question structures, and timing to see which combination brings the most actionable feedback and leads to a measurable increase in conversion rate.

Collect actionable feedback with Claspo

Claspo is a simple drag-and-drop builder with a wide range of ready-made templates — all you need to do is pick one and customize it to fit your brand. Our flexible display rules let you precisely target the right audience at the right moment.

Plus, with Claspo, you can also run customer satisfaction surveys and exit intent surveys to gather even more valuable insights and improve both user experience and business profitability.

Try our free plan now and start collecting meaningful feedback from your customers!