Hi! I found a workaround for preventing bots to actually place orders (though this doesn’t solve the problem of abandoned checkouts). Note we are on the “Basic” Shopify plan, so we don’t have the option to add Recaptcha to check out, which I believe would otherwise solve this issue.
Here’s our workaround:
Download the Shopify Flow app (free). There’s then a template within the app called “Capture payment if order is not high fraud risk”. This basically leverages Shopify’s Fraud analysis, which typically flags Bot activity as “High Fraud Risk”. If Shopify then flags the order as High Fraud Risk, it will not automatically capture payment and instead prompts you to check the order and manually accept payment if deemed OK. See attached screenshot.
And then my workaround for abandoned checkouts is only a partial solution and doesn’t work all the time (I’m not sure why!). I again use the Flow app to tag those customers that were created by Bot activity and which created the abandoned carts. This way, I can easily segment out the fake accounts and then delete those customers and just Archive / ignore the abandoned carts (not ideal but it’s the best solution I’ve found). For me this has worked because all the bots have the same street address (street, 10 apt, 2). So I just set up a flow that recognizes that address and tags the customer as FAKE. See attached screenshot.
