Goal: Build an automation in Shopify Flow to identify customers who add items to the cart but never proceed to checkout.
Issue: The native “Recover abandoned cart” Flow template only triggers when a customer reaches the checkout stage, so it does not capture pre-checkout cart abandonment.
Context: Shopify Flow is an automation tool on Shopify Plus; “abandoned cart” in built-in triggers typically means checkout started but not completed, whereas the need here is cart-level abandonment before checkout.
Status: Request for a method or workaround to trigger on add-to-cart followed by no checkout activity. No solution or decision provided yet; discussion remains open.
Summarized with AI on February 17.
AI used: gpt-5.
I’m using Shopify Plus and I need to create a flow in Shopify Flow that captures customers who add products to their cart but don’t reach the checkout page.
The problem: The native “Recover abandoned cart” template doesn’t work for this. From what I’ve seen, this trigger only fires when the customer reaches the checkout. I need to capture the moment before that: when the product is in the cart but the customer abandons it without even seeing the payment screen.
If it does not work you should probably report it at https://community.shopify.dev
Pretty sure you wouldn’t make it in Flow alone if the trigger does not work.
Maybe try something relevant in Customers-> Segments and use “Customer joined segment” in Flow…
Checkout, cart, and product browse, are all different abandonment types, and if ran all at the same time, they will not fire if the abandonment type that the customer does doesn’t match it. Product Browse fires if leaves before cart. Cart fires if leaves before checkout. Checkout fires if leaves after clicking checkout.
Cart will not require checkout. Cart does require add-to-cart.
In Shopify’s default template workflows for Abandoned Product Browse, Abandoned Cart, and Abandoned Checkout, each have their own set of requirements later in the workflow, such as not being sent within the last 14 days.
If you want to get to the abandoned carts in Shopify Flow, you need to either go to the default workflow for Abandoned Cart, or create your own with “Customer left online store without making a purchase” and “Abandonment type is equal to CART”. This will filter out everyone that reached checkout, because Abandoned Checkout is not the same.
Notice in the Abandoned Checkout the last run was at 9:58, which has 1 completed, the Abandoned Cart ran at the same time but was not completed because the abandonment type was checkout and not cart. You can see this in the Recent Runs tab. You can see where exactly in the workflow it fails. If you have Abandoned Product Browse, Abandoned Cart, and Abandoned Checkout running simultaneously, you will see that the incorrect type will fail while the correct one goes through.
I think if you’re comfortable working with Shopify apps and a bit of code, can consider building a custom app + small theme script to handle this or using Shopify Web Pixels / Customer Events to track the behavior you need.
If you dont’ want to build it yourself, can want to look for an app that already supports this kind of setup. Some marketing or tracking apps can:
I’ve already tried this in my store, but the same thing happens: the customer has to reach checkout for the trigger to work. What I want to achieve is that when a customer adds a product to their cart and abandons the website after a certain number of days, I send them an email. This flow is already implemented by Shopify, but it doesn’t work as it should.
El funcionamiento del flow es muy extraño, y a la hora de ejecutarse el cliente tiene que pasar por el checkout, no solo si llega al carrito. ya eh probado el flujo muchas veces pero en datos de usa este flujo de trabajo, dice
“abandonment”: {
“abandonmentType”: “CHECKOUT”
},
Cosa que no se si este bien, ya que luego se le pone la condición de abandonment.abandonmentType = CART
You are just reading that wrong. The panel you see on the left is the “preview” that tells you data from a selected customer. Look at your screenshot again.
The arrow points to the customer you chose to preview. What this tells you is that this workflow DID fire, because the customer left without making a purchase. The flow STOPS there because abandonment type was “checkout”.
You’re not doing anything wrong, you’re just perceiving the information wrong. Choose a different customer, and see what it says. Or, do it yourself. Add something to cart, wait a few minutes, then leave the store. Wait until the workflow starts running. You will see this here:
I think I’m having a problem with my store recognizing sessions, since it’s headless, and I’ve tried to abandon the cart myself but it’s not recognized in the flow. The last session was yesterday.
I don’t know. Maybe you have some issues with it being headless. I couldn’t judge that. Without seeing some screenshots of the recent runs list and some details on this workflow, it’s hard to say anything.
Do you run all the tracking stuff Shopify injects into theme code via content_for_header?
I guess not. Then how backend can know about stuff going on on the frontend?
Then Shopify only sees your Checkout abandonments since checkout does run all the proper tracking.
