Abandoned cart: the questions left unanswered before buying

Part of every abandoned cart in an online store starts with a question nobody answered: how much shipping costs to the Azores, whether the order arrives before Friday, whether a size 38 runs small. The customer doesn't ask, or asks and gets no answer, and leaves. Here we separate the abandoned carts an answer prevents from the ones no conversation will fix.

Article summary

• An abandoned cart is a purchase the customer starts and leaves halfway, and some of these abandonments come from pre-sale questions left unanswered.
• The questions that most often stall an online purchase are about the total cost with shipping, the delivery time, size or measurements, and the returns policy.
• Other abandoned carts have technical causes, such as a long checkout or being forced to create an account, and a conversation won't fix them.
• An answer to a pre-sale question is worth more while the customer is still on the page than in an email sent hours later.
• The ShopGuru agent answers pre-sale questions with the store's catalogue and policies, and logs as a gap any question it can't answer.
• A cart recovery email with promotional content, such as a discount, may count as direct marketing, and in Portugal sending it follows the consent rules of Article 13-A of Law 41/2004.
• A 30-minute call with a ShopGuru engineer is enough to look at the questions your store gets before the purchase.

Why an abandoned cart is left halfway through the purchase

The Baymard Institute, which researches online store usability, puts the average cart abandonment rate at 70.22%, based on 50 studies. That number says little about any one store. The reasons say more.

In a Baymard survey of US online shoppers, after removing those who were just browsing, these were some of the reasons given for abandoning at checkout:

The last column is our reading, not Baymard's. In a Portuguese store, the list gains questions of its own, such as shipping costs and delivery times to the Azores and Madeira.

"A cart abandoned because of a question is a question the store never got to hear." ShopGuru

Pre-sale questions and technical friction need different fixes

We hold a position not everyone shares: before changing the checkout or sending more emails, it's worth knowing how many abandoned carts are questions. A question is solved with an answer. Technical friction is solved in the checkout, the platform or the payment methods.

Mixing the two up is expensive. A store that answers every abandoned cart with a discount gives away margin to customers who only wanted to know the delivery time. A store that only works on its checkout still leaves unanswered the customer who didn't know whether the sofa would fit through the door.

The questions left unanswered before the purchase

Almost all pre-sale questions fall into a few groups, and each group has its answer somewhere in the store:

• Total cost: how much shipping is to the customer's address, islands included, and from what amount it's free.
• Delivery time: when it arrives, whether it can arrive before a given date, whether in-store pickup exists.
• Size and measurements: whether the fit is narrow, whether the furniture fits, whether the part is compatible.
• Returns: whether it can be exchanged, within how many days, who pays for return shipping, with the rules we covered in online store returns and exchanges.

When the answer is on the product page and the customer asks anyway, the problem is how the page presents it; we covered that in product pages that answer customers' questions. When the answer isn't anywhere, it's a gap: your team answers it once and the answer becomes part of the store knowledge.

When the answer arrives matters more than the recovery email

A cart recovery email arrives hours later, when the customer has already compared prices in another store or changed their mind. It works as a reminder. It doesn't answer the question that made them leave, because nobody knows what it was.

An answer given on the page itself, in the widget or on the store's WhatsApp, arrives while the cart is still open. That's why we put pre-sale ahead of recovery: first answer the people who ask, then remind the people who left.

"A recovery email reminds the customer of the cart. It doesn't answer the question that left it behind." ShopGuru

A pre-sale example in a home textiles store

A fictional example. At 9:40pm on a Thursday, a customer in Funchal has a duvet and two duvet covers in the cart and asks in the store's widget how much shipping to Madeira costs and whether the order will arrive before the weekend.

The agent answers with this store's rules: it calculates shipping for that cart from the islands rate table and says the carrier's delivery time to Madeira is 3 to 5 working days, which rules out the weekend.

The customer also asks whether the covers fit a 160 cm bed. The product page doesn't say. The agent replies that it will check with the team and logs the gap. In the morning, Rita, from the store's team, answers, and the customer gets the reply in the same conversation thread.

If the question comes up again, the agent prepares a product page proposal with the missing measurement, for your team to approve. If the customer buys, the purchase counts as an assisted sale: the agent took part in the conversation, which doesn't mean it caused the sale.

What your online store's conversion rate doesn't show

An online store's conversion rate tells you how many visits end in a purchase. It doesn't tell you why the others didn't: a shipping increase, an item out of stock or a new question about a product that has just launched.

Pre-sale conversations fill in that missing part, in the customer's own words. At ShopGuru, the store report brings together what customers asked, why they didn't buy and which gaps are still open. We don't promise a higher conversion rate; what the store gains from the start is knowing which questions went unanswered, and on which products.

"The conversion rate tells you how many customers left. The conversations tell you why." ShopGuru

Abandoned cart emails and consent

For many stores, the answer to an abandoned cart is an automated email. In Portugal, electronic direct marketing to individuals is governed by Article 13-A of Law 41/2004, and the Portuguese data protection authority's (CNPD) guideline on direct marketing communications (in Portuguese) sums up the conditions.

According to the CNPD, without a prior customer relationship, sending requires prior and express consent. With that relationship, and for products similar to those the customer has already bought, consent isn't required, but the customer must be able to refuse, easily and free of charge, when their details are collected and in every message.

Someone abandoning their first cart has usually not bought anything from the store yet. If the email has promotional content, such as a discount to complete the purchase, the consent question carries more weight. It's a point to check with whoever handles data protection for the store. Answering a question the customer asked themselves, in a conversation they started, tends to be a different situation.

Frequently asked questions

Does answering pre-sale questions replace the recovery email?

No. The answer arrives while the customer is still deciding; the email reminds people who have already left. A store can use both, as long as the email follows the consent rules.

How can you tell abandoned carts come from questions?

Compare the questions asked before purchase with the products most often left in carts. If the questions cluster around shipping, delivery times or sizes, there are questions to answer. The conversations your store already has are one of the starting points of the Diagnostic.

Can the agent offer a discount to close the sale?

Only if the store owner decides so. A discount is an action, and for each type of action the store owner chooses whether the agent does it on its own, asks for approval or never does it. They can also set a percentage limit above which the discount asks for approval.

Where to start

The first step is to read the questions customers ask before buying and separate the ones your store can already answer from the ones that went unanswered. In a first 30-minute call, a ShopGuru engineer does that exercise with your store's team. Book a call.

About this article

Written by ShopGuru's engineers. Published on 26 October 2026. The store, the customer, Rita and the delivery times in the example are fictional. The average abandonment rate and the reasons come from the Baymard Institute (page last updated on 22 September 2025); the reasons refer to US shoppers. The direct marketing conditions come from CNPD Guideline 2022/1, approved on 25 January 2022, which interprets Article 13-A of Portuguese Law 41/2004. This article is for information only and is not legal advice.