Why are my active carts continuously rising with minimal visitors?

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

Core Issue:
Merchants report abnormally high active cart counts in Shopify’s Live View analytics (ranging from hundreds to thousands) despite having only a handful of actual visitors. This discrepancy has persisted for weeks to over a year for some users.

Key Findings:

  • The issue appears isolated to Shopify’s Live View; Google Analytics shows normal traffic patterns
  • No third-party cart/checkout integrations are involved in reported cases
  • Shopify Support attributes the behavior to bot activity: bots reuse the same checkout tokens to create multiple sessions, artificially inflating cart numbers

Business Impact:

  • One merchant reports complete sales drops (to zero) during spike periods, with recovery only after Shopify intervention
  • The problem recurs cyclically even after support “fixes” it
  • At least one user reports sales never recovered after a year of this issue

Resolution Status:

  • Ongoing/Unresolved: Shopify developers are “aware and constantly improving” the issue, but no permanent fix has been deployed
  • Affected merchants must repeatedly contact support for temporary resolutions
  • Some users are considering migrating to alternative platforms due to lost revenue and platform reliability concerns
Summarized with AI on November 1. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
8

Hi Mac,

Thanks for responding to my Active Carts response. To answer your questions; Yes, it’s specifically happening in my Shopify live view. No, I don’t see the same problem in my Google analytics. I do not have any cart or checkout page integrations with any 3rd party apps or gmc link. I will reach out through chat assistant for help. Thanks

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