Last updated: November 4, 2026
Say your store had 400 visits yesterday and 8 orders. Somewhere between those two numbers are shoppers who added a product, maybe reached checkout, and left. You open WooCommerce looking for them and find nothing: no "abandoned" filter under Orders, no carts report under Analytics. That is not a settings problem. Core WooCommerce does not record abandoned carts at all. To see them you need a plugin that saves carts as they are built, and you need to know what each plugin can and cannot see. Get that right and the same 400 visits show you 30 saved carts worth $1,400, which is the number a recovery email is written for.
This guide explains what WooCommerce does and does not keep, how to see abandoned carts with a plugin step by step, why guest carts are the hard part, how to work out your abandonment rate, and what to do with the list once you have it.
Key takeaways
- Core WooCommerce has no abandoned cart screen and no "abandoned" order status. Guides that say to filter orders by "Abandoned" are describing a plugin.
- What WooCommerce does keep: pending payment orders, failed orders, and the saved cart of logged-in customers.
- A plugin can only show a guest's cart once it has captured an identifier, usually the email typed at checkout.
- Abandonment rate is carts started minus orders, divided by carts started. The documented average across 50 studies is 70.22% (Baymard, 2025).
- Seeing carts is step one. Recovery emails, a saved-cart link and a conversion funnel are what turn the list into orders.
Does WooCommerce show abandoned carts by itself?
No. Core WooCommerce records an order only when a shopper submits the checkout form. A cart that is filled and left never becomes a record you can list, so there is no abandoned cart report, no abandoned order status and no carts page under Analytics. Any screen that shows abandoned carts comes from a plugin or an extension.
The confusion comes from documentation and tutorials that look official. The WooCommerce.com page titled Abandoned Cart Documentation describes a marketplace extension and tells you to open WordPress Admin > WooCommerce > Abandoned Cart. That menu exists only after you install that extension. A widely shared blog post says to go to Orders, open Order Status and choose "Abandoned". The WooCommerce order statuses documentation lists eight statuses, Draft, Pending payment, Processing, Completed, On hold, Failed, Cancelled and Refunded, and "Abandoned" is not one of them.
What does WooCommerce keep that is close to an abandoned cart?
Three things: pending payment orders, failed orders, and the saved cart of a logged-in customer. Pending and failed orders are shoppers who got to the end of checkout and did not pay. The saved cart is the shopper's own cart, kept so it is there when they log back in, not a report for you.
| What WooCommerce keeps | Where you see it | Who it covers | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pending payment orders | WooCommerce > Orders, filter by Pending payment | Anyone who submitted checkout and did not pay | Checkout abandonment at the payment step. Per the documentation these orders are "generally awaiting customer action". |
| Failed orders | WooCommerce > Orders, filter by Failed | Anyone whose payment was declined | A card or gateway problem, not a change of mind |
| Draft orders (block checkout) | Not listed. Created at place-order time and removed by a daily cleanup per the documentation | Block checkout submissions | Nothing you can act on |
| Logged-in customer's saved cart | Not in admin. Restored when the customer logs in | Customers with an account | That the customer has items waiting, if you query the database |
So without a plugin you can see the shoppers who reached the very last step, and nobody else. Most abandonment happens before that step. Pending orders are still worth a look each morning: a shopper who submitted checkout and did not pay usually hit a payment problem, and StorePinger can send a payment link for pending and draft orders so they can finish without rebuilding the cart.
One more place to look is the conversion funnel in your analytics plugin, if it has one. A funnel counts shoppers at each step, from product page to add to cart to checkout to payment, and the drop between steps is abandonment even when no cart record exists. It will not tell you who left, but it tells you where, which is usually the more useful half.
How to see abandoned carts in WooCommerce with a plugin, step by step
Install a cart recovery plugin, let it run for a day, then open its carts screen. The screen lists each saved cart with the products, the total, the shopper's email if known, the time since the last activity, and whether a recovery email went out. The steps below are the same for most plugins, with StorePinger's menu names as the example.
- Install and activate the plugin. In StorePinger, cart recovery is a Pro feature and a cart is saved the moment something is added to it.
- Decide what counts as abandoned. Most plugins use a time since the last activity. StorePinger sends the first reminder email 3 hours after the cart went quiet by default and the second after 24 hours. You can change both.
- Place a test cart from a private browser window. Add a product, go to checkout, type an email address, then close the tab.
- Open the plugin's carts screen. In StorePinger the saved cart appears with its products and value, and a WordPress dashboard notice shows how many carts are waiting.
- Check the status column. A cart should move from waiting, to reminder sent, to recovered once the order is paid. Recovered orders in StorePinger count only once paid, so a reminder that led to a pending order is not counted as a recovery.
- Come back the next morning and read the list by value, highest first. Those are the carts worth a personal email if the automatic ones do not land.
The abandoned cart recovery page shows the screen and the email flow in detail.
Why can't I see guest shoppers' carts?
Because a cart only becomes recoverable once the plugin knows who it belongs to. A logged-in customer is known from the start. A guest is unknown until they type an email address, which on a standard checkout happens on the checkout page. A guest who adds to cart and leaves before checkout is counted, but cannot be emailed.
This is the single most misunderstood point about cart recovery. Plugins differ mainly in how early they capture the email.
- At checkout. The email field is read as soon as it is typed, before the order is placed. This is what CartFlows describes on its site: "Capture user details the moment they're entered at checkout." StorePinger works the same way at checkout, and adds a "save your cart" email box for shoppers who are leaving, so a guest can leave an address before reaching checkout.
- At add to cart. Some plugins show a popup asking for an email when the shopper adds a product. Abandoned Cart Lite for WooCommerce lists "Email capture when Add to Cart is clicked" as a Pro feature on its WordPress.org page. This captures more addresses and annoys more shoppers.
- Never. A cart with no email is still useful. It tells you which products are abandoned most, which is a product page or shipping problem, not an email problem.
Check where the email field sits on your own checkout, on a phone. If it is below the name and address fields, some shoppers leave before they reach it. Moving it to the top is a small change with a direct effect on how many carts you can email.
Two practical consequences. Put the email field at the top of the checkout form so it is typed first. And treat the captured address with care: it was typed to buy, not to subscribe. StorePinger keeps one unsubscribe list for cart reminders and campaigns, with a confirm step, so a shopper who opts out of one is not chased by the other.
How to find your abandoned cart rate
Abandoned cart rate is the number of carts started minus the number of orders, divided by the number of carts started. If 100 shoppers add something to the cart and 30 buy, 70 carts were abandoned and the rate is 70%. You need a plugin or a funnel report to count carts started, because WooCommerce only counts orders.
A worked example, not a customer result. In one week a store records 250 add-to-cart events from 250 different visits, 90 shoppers reach checkout, and 60 orders are paid.
- Cart abandonment rate: (250 minus 60) divided by 250, which is 190 divided by 250, or 76%.
- Checkout abandonment rate: (90 minus 60) divided by 90, which is 30 divided by 90, or 33%.
- Cart-to-checkout rate: 90 divided by 250, or 36%.
The two rates point at different fixes. A high cart abandonment rate with a normal checkout rate means shoppers change their minds before checkout: price, shipping cost shown late, slow delivery. A high checkout abandonment rate means the form or the payment step is losing people. The difference between cart and checkout abandonment has its own guide. For context, the Baymard Institute puts the average documented cart abandonment rate at 70.22% across 50 studies, updated September 2025, so 76% is unremarkable.
What should you do once you can see the carts?
Four things, in order: let the automatic reminders run, read the list by value every morning, watch why the big carts were left, and fix the cause rather than only the symptom. A list of carts is a list of reasons your store loses money, and the reasons repeat.
- Let the reminders run. Two emails with a one-click link back to the saved cart recover a share of carts without any work. Our abandoned cart email examples show what to write.
- Sort by value. A $400 cart deserves a look at the session, a $12 cart does not.
- Watch the session. A session recording of a high-value abandoned checkout usually shows the reason in under a minute: a shipping rate that appeared late, a coupon that failed, a form that would not validate on mobile.
- Check the funnel. If 40% of shoppers leave at the shipping step, no email fixes that. The conversion funnel shows the step. The guide to reducing cart abandonment covers the fixes.
- Offer a coupon only on purpose. StorePinger lets you choose a discount and the carts it applies to, and gives each shopper a unique one-time coupon that expires. Coupons are never sent automatically. A store that discounts every abandoned cart teaches shoppers to abandon.
How to see which products get abandoned most
Group the saved carts by product and compare each product's abandoned count with its orders. A product that appears in many abandoned carts and few orders has a page problem, a price problem or a shipping problem. This report needs no email addresses, so it works for guest carts too, and it is often the most valuable thing the carts list tells you.
A worked example, not a customer result. Over two weeks the carts list shows product A in 48 abandoned carts and 20 orders, product B in 12 abandoned carts and 25 orders. Product A's abandonment share is 48 divided by 68, or 71%. Product B's is 12 divided by 37, or 32%. Open product A's page in a private window on a phone, add it to the cart, and go to checkout. In most cases the reason is visible: a shipping rate that only appears at checkout, a size chart missing, a delivery time that reads as weeks. StorePinger's session recordings, stored on your own hosting with inputs masked, let you watch what shoppers saw on that page without guessing.
How to see abandoned carts from the mobile app
The StorePinger app for iPhone and Android shows live visitors and sales and pushes notifications for visitors and orders, plus app alerts for low stock, traffic drops, possible checkout problems and failed payments. It is a fast way to notice a checkout failure while you are away from the desk.
The app does not replace the carts screen in WordPress. It tells you something happened and how much it is worth. The dashboard is where you read the products, the email status and the recovery result, and where you choose which carts get an offer. The mobile app section lists what the app shows.
Which abandoned cart data should you keep, and for how long?
Keep the cart contents, value, timestamps, source and the email address if the shopper typed one, for as long as your recovery sequence runs plus a reporting window. Delete or anonymise what you do not use. Store the data in your own database rather than a third-party service if you can, because it is customer data you are responsible for.
StorePinger stores carts in the store's own WordPress database and hosting, sends nothing about visitors to StorePinger and does not store IP addresses. Its visitor tracker sets no cookies, and cart recovery uses one small first-party cookie to bring a returning shopper back to their saved cart. Pro keeps 90 days of history and Agency keeps a year. If you use a cloud recovery service, read where the cart and email data go and for how long. The privacy comparison on the Google Analytics alternative page covers the same question for analytics data.
Common mistakes
- Looking for an "Abandoned" order status. It does not exist in core WooCommerce.
- Counting pending orders as all abandonment. They are the last step only. Most carts never get that far.
- Expecting every cart to have an email. Only carts whose owner typed one, or logged in, can be emailed.
- Caching the cart and checkout pages. Cached pages break cart saving and order attribution. Exclude them in your caching plugin.
- Running two cart plugins. Two trackers, two reminder sequences, twice the emails to the same shopper.
- Treating captured emails as a marketing list. They were typed to buy. Keep reminders and campaigns on one unsubscribe list.
- Ignoring the products column. If one product is abandoned far more than others, the problem is on that product's page, not in your emails.
Conclusion
WooCommerce will not show you abandoned carts, and knowing that saves an afternoon of clicking through menus that do not exist. Install a plugin that saves carts from the first add-to-cart, test it with a private window, and read the carts list by value every morning. Expect most carts to have no email and treat them as product feedback. Expect the rest to respond to two well-timed reminders with a one-click link back to the cart. If you want the carts list, the reminders, the save-your-cart box, the session recordings and the funnel in one plugin that keeps everything in your own database, the StorePinger cart recovery page explains how it works and what the free plan includes. For the bigger picture of where your buyers come from, see sales by source.