How to See and Recover Abandoned Carts on Shopify During Black Friday
To see abandoned carts on Shopify during Black Friday, install a cart analytics app such as Cartlytics. It lists every cart on your store live, with its products and value, and marks a cart as abandoned when the shopper leaves it. You can then send a recovery email automatically, trigger your Klaviyo flow, or turn the cart into a draft order.
Shopify's own abandoned checkout email is not enough on the busiest weekend of the year. It only starts when a shopper reaches the checkout and types an email. Most carts are left before that point, and Shopify shows you nothing about them.
Why Black Friday carts get abandoned
On Black Friday shoppers open many tabs, compare prices and fill carts in several stores at once. Many carts are a shortlist, not a decision. The shopper who wins is often the store that reminds them first.
Discounts also make shoppers wait. A shopper adds a product on Thursday, then waits to see if the price drops further on Friday or Cyber Monday. If you can see that cart, you know exactly which products people are waiting on.
What Shopify shows you, and what it does not
Shopify Live View shows how many visitors and orders you have right now. It does not show the contents of each cart. The Abandoned checkouts page lists checkouts where the shopper entered contact details, which is a small part of the carts left behind.
So on Black Friday you see the sales, but not the carts that almost became sales. Those carts are where a recovery email earns the most.
How to see and recover them, step by step
Set this up a week before the sale, so you have normal days to compare with when the traffic arrives.
Install Cartlytics and let it collect a few days
Install from the Shopify App Store. It needs no code and no theme edit, and carts start to show within minutes. A few normal days before Black Friday give you a baseline, so you can see what the sale changes.
Watch the Activity page during the sale
The Activity page shows each add to cart and removal as it happens, with the product and the traffic source. During a flash sale you see which campaign brings carts and which products people add.
Filter the Carts page by Abandoned
On the Carts page, filter by status to see only abandoned carts, and by product or source to find a pattern. A cart shows its products, its value and where the shopper came from.
Turn on Cart Recovery before Friday
On the Cart Recovery page, set when a reminder goes out with the Cart inactive for rule. For impulse buys during a sale, one hour works well. Add a Cart value above rule if you only want to chase larger carts.
Check your daily email limit
When Cartlytics sends the emails for you, each plan has a daily limit. On a sale day you can reach it. Connect Klaviyo, SendGrid, Mailgun or Postmark to send from your own provider with no daily limit from Cartlytics.
What a good Black Friday reminder looks like
Keep it short and show the products that are in the cart. Say when the sale ends, because that is the real reason to come back now. Do not add a second discount on top of the sale price unless your margin allows it.
When Cartlytics sends the email, it goes only to shoppers who subscribe to marketing in Shopify, at most one per cart. If the shopper orders before it goes out, the reminder is cancelled.
Common questions
How do I see abandoned carts on Shopify during Black Friday?
Install a cart analytics app such as Cartlytics. It lists every cart live with its products, value and traffic source, and marks a cart abandoned when the shopper leaves. Shopify itself only lists abandoned checkouts, where the shopper already typed contact details.
How soon should a Black Friday recovery email go out?
Sooner than on a normal week. During a sale, shoppers decide within hours, so one hour after the cart goes inactive works well for most stores. For expensive products, three to four hours gives the shopper time to compare.
Will bot carts inflate my bill on Black Friday?
No. Cartlytics bills on orders, not on carts or sessions, so a surge of bot traffic on Black Friday never changes your price. Plans start free for 25 orders a month, then $9 for 1,000 orders.
Does Cartlytics slow down my store during peak traffic?
No. Cartlytics tracks carts through a Shopify Web Pixel, which runs in Shopify's sandbox and loads asynchronously. It adds no theme code.
Get ready before the sale
Install Cartlytics for free this week, so you see a few normal days before Black Friday and every cart during it.
Install Cartlytics for free