Abandoned cart recovery on Wix

Wix can email shoppers who put items in their cart and left without paying. The feature is called abandoned cart recovery, and it is included in the Core, Business and Business Elite plans. You manage it at Abandoned Carts in your site's dashboard, where one toggle turns the email on or off.

Check that toggle first. Wix says the email is automatically activated for some merchants, which means it is not for others. If yours is off, no reminders are going out, however many carts are on the list.

The email is an automation with three parts: a trigger (the cart was abandoned), a delay you can edit, and an action (an email showing an item from the cart with a link back to it). This guide explains what Wix counts as abandoned, how the timing works, how to add a second reminder, and what you can do to win back more orders.

What counts as an abandoned cart on Wix

Not every unfinished visit becomes an abandoned cart. Wix requires all three of these conditions:

1. The customer added items to the cart.
2. No changes were made to the cart for at least an hour, or an hour has passed since the customer closed the tab.
3. Wix has the customer's email address, either because they were logged in to your site or because they completed the "Customer details" step at checkout.

The third condition is the one that limits your numbers. A visitor who adds a product and leaves from the cart page, without logging in or starting checkout, is anonymous. There is no address to send to, so no email goes out. Recovery emails reach the shoppers who got far enough to tell you who they are.

The feature is not limited to products. It covers Wix Stores, Wix Bookings and Pricing Plans.

Which plans include it

These figures are from the comparison table on Wix's plans page. In other words, every plan that can sell includes cart recovery. You don't need to upgrade past Core for it. Sites built in Wix Studio use separate Studio plans, so check your own plan's feature list there.

Turn it on and check it

1. Go to Abandoned Carts in your site's dashboard.
2. Find the toggle for sending abandoned cart emails and make sure it is on.
3. Open the automation to review the sender details, the delay and the email itself.
4. Make your edits, then click Publish Changes.
5. Run a test, described below, before you rely on it.

Wix documents each screen in its article on setting up and managing abandoned carts.

How the timing works

Timing has two layers, and they are easy to mix up.

• The abandonment window. A cart isn't considered abandoned until an hour has passed with no changes. This hour comes from Wix's definition of an abandoned cart.
• The delay. This is the step in the automation that you control. It starts counting after the abandonment window ends.

Wix's own example: set a 2-hour delay and the email arrives after 3 hours, because the first hour passes before the cart counts as abandoned.

To change it, open the automation, click Delay, set the delay type and amount, and click Apply. Wix's documentation explains how to edit the default delay but doesn't publish what the default is, so open your own automation and read the value there. Don't assume.

Choosing a delay

There is no single correct delay, and Wix doesn't publish a recommended one. Think about how your customers buy:

• For low-cost, impulse purchases, a short delay catches people while they still remember what they wanted.
• For expensive or considered purchases, people often leave to compare or to ask someone. A reminder later the same day or the next morning can fit better.
• For business buyers, an email during working hours is more likely to be seen than one late at night.

Pick a starting point, run it for a few weeks, and compare the recovery status of your carts before and after a change.

What you can and can't edit in the email

The two "no" rows matter. The product block and the button are filled in for each shopper by the automation. If you replace the button link with a link to your homepage, the email stops returning people to their cart, which is the whole point.

After editing, click Publish Changes, or your edits will not go live.

Adding a second reminder

The built-in automation sends one reminder. Wix's documented way to send a second one is to create an additional automation with a longer delay before the email is sent. You can include a coupon code in it.

A common structure:

1. First email: a plain reminder with no discount. Some shoppers were interrupted and only need the link.
2. Second email: a longer delay, a different subject line, and, if your margins allow, a coupon.

Be careful with discounts. If every abandoned cart earns a coupon, regular customers learn to leave items in the cart and wait. Keeping the coupon to the second email, and keeping it modest, reduces that risk.

The underlying tool is Wix Automations, which has its own rules and quotas. We cover those in Wix Automations: what to automate first. Wix doesn't state whether abandoned cart emails count against your monthly email allowance, so if you add extra reminder automations, check Automations → Manage Quotas after the first week.

Who won't receive the email

• Anonymous visitors. No email address, no email.
• People who unsubscribed. Wix does not send abandoned cart emails to customers who unsubscribed from your mailing list.
• Anyone, if the toggle is off. The cart still appears on your list, but nothing is sent.

Whether you are allowed to send a reminder to a given shopper can also depend on privacy and email marketing law where your customers live. That is a legal question, not a software one, and this article is not legal advice. If you sell to customers outside the US, ask an attorney. Our overview of cookie consent and privacy on Wix describes the tools Wix provides.

The abandoned carts list and what Wix tracks

The Abandoned Carts page lists carts whether or not emails are active. Carts stay on the list for 30 days.

In the Wix app, each cart shows:

• Customer name and email
• Number of items
• Cart value
• Email status: Sent or Not sent
• Recovery status: Recovered or Not recovered

Each cart also has a shareable link, under More Actions. You can send that link yourself, for example in a personal reply to a customer who emailed a question. A site member's cart can't be viewed through the link.

For a high-value cart, a short personal note with that link can do more than a second automated email. The list gives you the name, the email and the value, which is enough to decide who is worth a personal follow-up.

To measure the effect, track two numbers over time: how many carts appear on the list, and what share of them show as Recovered. If you change the delay or the copy, change one thing at a time so you can see what made the difference.

How to test it

1. Open your live site in an incognito window.
2. Add an item to the cart and proceed to checkout.
3. Enter an email address you can check in the customer details step.
4. Close the tab.
5. Wait for the email. Remember the timing: one hour for the cart to count as abandoned, plus your delay.

During a test, both the "customer" and the site owner receive notifications. When the email arrives, click the button and confirm it opens the cart with the item in it. Check how the email looks on a phone, and check whether it landed in the inbox or in spam. If it went to spam, read Wix emails going to spam.

Recover more by losing fewer carts

A recovery email fixes a problem after it happens. Several settings in Wix reduce how often it happens in the first place.

• Show shipping costs early. Enable "Shipping & delivery rates" in the Cart Page settings so shoppers see delivery cost before checkout. See setting up shipping on Wix Stores.
• Offer express payment. PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay buttons take the customer straight to payment.
• Keep guest checkout. It is the default on Wix. Requiring an account adds a step.
• Trim the form. In Checkout Settings you can make the phone field optional and hide the second address line.
• Offer installments on higher-priced items. US stores on Wix Payments can add Affirm, Afterpay and Klarna.
• Collect the email early. Because recovery depends on having an address, anything that gets shoppers to the customer details step, or logged in, widens the pool you can follow up with.

If carts are being abandoned at an unusual rate, look for a cause before you add more emails: a shipping region with no rule, a payment method that fails, or a slow or broken page on mobile. A structured review of the buying path is what conversion rate optimization is for.

Conclusion

Abandoned cart recovery on Wix is included on every plan that can sell, and it takes little time to check and adjust: confirm the toggle is on, read the delay, edit the copy, leave the product block and button alone, and test it. From there, a second automation with a longer delay and an occasional personal follow-up on high-value carts are the next steps. The emails only reach shoppers whose address Wix has, so a clearer, shorter checkout matters as much as the email. For the full picture of the store, read our Wix Stores guide and our Wix ecommerce SEO guide. If you'd like help setting this up, eSEOspace offers Wix website services. More guides are in our Wix hub.

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