Cart Abandonment Popup: Playbook & Best Practices [2025]

A cart abandonment popup is a legit way to increase your ecommerce sales.

This simple yet effective onsite tool can help you capture potential customers who are trying to leave your store without finishing a purchase.

This guide will give you everything you need to know to get started right.

In this post:

• What is a cart abandonment popup?

• Cart abandonment popup playbook

• Best practices for cart recovery popups: design and copy

• Examples of cart abandonment popups

What is a cart abandonment popup?

A cart abandonment popup is an exit popup campaign displayed to the visitors who added items to the shopping cart but attempt to leave. Cart abandonment popups appear on checkout or other pages, serving as reminders for incomplete orders and often offering incentives to encourage finishing the purchase.

Cart abandonment popups can be triggered by exit intent or AI to catch visitors at the moment they're leaving. Messaging typically features concise, benefit-focused copy to maximize engagement. Some popups also include product recommendations or extra incentives to reinforce purchase intent.

Cart abandonment popup playbook

This playbook breaks down the highest-performing cart recovery popup campaigns we see Shopify brands using today. Click them to see how they work.

Best practices for cart recovery with exit popups in ecommerce

After reviewing hundreds of A/B tests involving cart recovery popups in our research, we have found these seven practices to be the most effective:

• Use numeric discounts (e.g., “10% OFF”) generated up to 27% more clicks than empathic or emotional messages like “Oh, too bad you’re leaving…”

• Show the discount instantly in the popup revealing the code right away (instead of by email) led to more code applications and higher revenue

• Keep messages concise and numeric “DISCOUNT10”–style copy boosted engagement by 7–20% and recovered 8–14% of abandoning mobile shoppers on average

• Avoid emotional or urgency-heavy phrasing neutral or benefit-focused headlines increased engagement by 15% without hurting revenue

• Use clear, quantified value framing quantified (numeric) offers outperformed emotive ones in 68% of tests, increasing downstream revenue 8–15% despite flat CTR

• Align timing with intent triggering at the exit moment ensures relevance and maximizes recovery potential

How to create a cart abandonment popup

These are the essential steps to make an exit intent cart recovery popup:

1. Create and customize a campaign

2. Check display settings

3. Publish, monitor, and A/B test if needed

If you need recommendations of apps for your campaigns, check out this list of abandonment cart recovery apps for Shopify.

In this tutorial, I'll show you how to recover abandoned carts with Wisepops exit popups on Shopify. Rated 4.7 by Shopify users, this app lets you set up high-converting campaigns in minutes using pre-built templates and AI triggers.

Use for free for 14 days. No cc needed, start instantly. Learn more about Wisepops

Step 1: Create Your Campaign

Log into your account and click "New popup campaign."

Select the cart recovery template to speed up your setup.

Here are some of the templates available:

Customize the design to match your brand, then add a numeric discount code like "10% OFF"—our data shows this drives up to 27% more clicks than emotional messaging.

In the last window, this template has a block for adding product recommendations.

You can promote a few items as a way to keep abandoners browsing:

Step 2: Check display dettings

Review your display settings. Exit intent is enabled by default and works great for cart recovery. You can also use AI triggers for smarter timing.

If you're on Shopify, you'll also be able to further customize the trigger. In Display Rules > Advanced, you'll find native Shopify campaign display options.

By default, they're set up for cart.item_count is greater than 0. This ensures popups only show when carts have items. But you can customize these settings:

Note: Keep messages concise: "DISCOUNT10" or "Save 10%." Skip urgency-heavy language—neutral, benefit-focused headlines increased engagement 15% without revenue loss.

Step 3: Publish, monitor, and A/B test if needed

Save and publish your campaign, then track conversion lift in your popup tool's dashboard. The most important metrics are clicks, CTR, attributed revenue, and pages per visitor.

Also consider A/B testing different copy and targeting tactics (numeric vs. emotional copy, discount depth, AI trigger vs traditional exit intent timing delays, etc.) to find what recovers the most abandoned carts.

Cart abandonment popup examples

Let's see how successful businesses use cart recovery popups to get sales.

1. OddBalls

You can add discounts to cart abandonment popups, which is a popular way to recover sales.

This is the strategy that OddBalls used here. The brand shows this campaign to those who added an item to the cart but left to another page and then attempted to leave from there.

There's a discount code, a button to apply it to the cart in one click, and a message saying that the offer is valid for only 24 hours.

2. Mungo & Maud

This cart recovery popup nails the psychological urgency playbook. The "DO NOT DILLY DALLY!" messaging paired with a ticking countdown creates FOMO that actually feels playful rather than pushy—perfectly aligned with a luxury pet brand's voice.

The cart summary keeps friction minimal while the 10% discount incentivizes action without devaluing the brand.

Also, it's a smart move showing exactly what's being abandoned (Preppy Dog Collar, Tortue Dog Bag) rather than generic messaging.

3. Nutrimuscle

Nutrimuscle uses urgency and scarcity as its primary recovery lever—"Your selection is in high demand" combined with a 24-hour availability window. Their cart recovery popup strips away discounts entirely, instead relying on FOMO to push checkout completion.

For product categories like supplements (which is what Nutrimuscle sells) where trust and research matter, this approach respects the customer's decision-making process rather than pressuring them into a hasty purchase.

4. Prada

Prada shows this cart abandonment popup on the checkout page. It has no incentives but rather serves as one more way to prevent customers from leaving the website.

Note that this checkout popup shows the item in the cart, offering customers one more glimpse of the attractive product they will miss out on if they decide to leave.

5. NET-A-PORTER

The cart abandonment popup has a distinctive design, resembling a window that overlays the right side of the screen. It shows the product in the cart and asks the visitor if they're still interested in getting it.

Again, this cart abandonment example appears on the exit (so, technically it's an exit popup example as well). So, customers see it only when they try to leave the website.

6. Dolce & Gabbana

This is an awesome example of a cart abandonment popup because it:

• appears only on checkout (doesn't interrupt shopping)

• emphasizes the exclusivity of items in the cart with "complete your purchase before they're gone"

• gives a way to contact customer support to get help with the order

Summary

Cart abandonment popups are an important tool for ecommerce brands to recover potentially lost sales. As you've just seen, even companies like Prada, TOMS, and Dolce & Gabbana use cart abandonment popups.

By incorporating strategies such as unique discounts, free samples, and countdown timers, you should be able to recover your fair share of sales. So, start using cart abandonment popups today and see the difference they can make in your sales.