CartBounty – Save and recover abandoned carts for WooCommerce

Preguntas frecuentes

When is the cart saved?

As soon as the user adds an item to the cart – it automatically is visible to store administrator under CartBounty abandoned carts. At this stage the cart is a ghost cart until an email address, or a phone number is provided from one of the following locations:

• Exit Intent popup or Early capture tools
• WooCommerce Checkout form
• User’s account if he has logged in

As soon as CartBounty has user’s contact information, the ghost cart is turned into a recoverable cart. Once the user places an order – abandoned cart is instantly removed from the list of abandoned carts.

If you would like to enable Unfinished order recovery, please consider upgrading to CartBounty Pro.

When is a cart considered abandoned?

A shopping cart is only considered abandoned after a period of 60 minutes from the last user’s activity with the shopping cart. If you see a «shopping» status in the CartBounty abandoned cart status column, it means the user is still shopping.

Any notifications or reminders will be sent out only after the cart is abandoned and the «shopping» status is gone.

Example. Let’s say you have setup your first abandoned cart recovery email or text message to be sent out after 5 minutes. The user will receive it after around 65 minutes = 60 minutes + 5 minutes.

How to send abandoned cart recovery messages?

Once the cart is abandoned, an automated reminder or a series of multiple reminders over a period can be sent out to the user to remind about items in the shopping cart.

The free version of CartBounty offers basic solution for sending abandoned cart recovery emails using default WordPress mail server. This recovery option works best if you have a small to medium number of abandoned carts.

Upgrade to CartBounty Pro to setup and send automated abandoned cart recovery emails and SMS text messages using these integrations:

• ActiveCampaign* offers exceptional ways to automate your abandoned carts using If/Else statements to create different actions and triggers when to send out emails.
• GetResponse* is a beautifully designed email marketing platform to save and recover online abandoned shopping carts.
• MailChimp* offers a forever Free plan that you can use to send abandoned cart recovery emails.
• BulkGate* is a perfect channel for sending personalized, time-sensitive SMS text messages like abandoned cart reminders.

If your emails are not reaching your recipients or they end up in the spam box, you might try switching from your default WordPress mail server to an SMTP. To do this just install one of the available WordPress SMTP plugins available in the WordPress plugin directory.

What are ghost carts?

Ghost or guest cart is a shopping cart that can’t be identified. The user has added one or multiple items to the cart but hasn’t provided any contact information that could be later used to recover it.

You might be wondering why someone would want to save such carts. There can be many reasons, here are a few:

• Monitor live shopping cart activity and have a better overview of what is happening in your store
• Find which are the most popular products added to the cart
• Information about the potential revenue from abandoned carts

CartBounty settings allow you to disable ghost carts or allow them only from specific countries.

¿Cómo funciona la tecnología de intención de salida?

Exit Intent technology is a clever mechanism for tracking user behavior like mouse movements, scroll speed and scroll direction to identify and help predict user’s intent to leave the site. Once the intent to abandon the store is detected, a popup is presented to engage the user. The goal of Exit Intent popup is to encourage user to finish the order or get user’s contact information which later can be used in abandoned cart recovery.

Learn more about Exit Intent Technology and the principles of Mobile Exit Intent popup.

How to use CartBounty templates?

Public facing portions of CartBounty like Exit Intent popup and WordPress recovery emails can be easily adjusted using plugin settings. However, if you require more, you can use CartBounty templates that come along with the plugin or make use of the available actions and filters.

You will find all available template files inside /plugins/woo-save-abandoned-carts-pro/templates folder. When you open these files, you will notice they all contain hooks that allow you to add, edit or remove content without the need to edit template files themselves. This method protects against plugin upgrade issues, as the template files can be left completely untouched.

Please copy the template file you require to your active theme to keep your customization intact after plugin updates. You can copy them to either one of these locations:

• your_theme_name/templates/emails/cartbounty-email-light.php
• your_theme_name/templates/cartbounty-exit-intent.php
• your_theme_name/cartbounty-exit-intent.php

Now you can edit your copied template file and it will override the CartBounty default template file.

What Actions and Filters are available?

Along with the customization options available in plugin settings, CartBounty also allows the use of different hooks for advanced customization. These hooks are an excellent way if you are looking to alter or extend the features of CartBounty without modifying the core files of the plugin.

Below you will find a list of hooks available in CartBounty alongside different examples. When using these actions and filters to modify the plugin, please add your code in the functions.php file of your theme.

General hooks

Filtros:

• cartbounty_from_email
• cartbounty_waiting_time
• cartbounty_include_tax
• cartbounty_price_format
• cartbounty_display_currency_code

Here is an example how to change the From email that sends out notification emails using «cartbounty_from_email» filter. Please add it to your theme’s functions.php file:

function change_from_email( $html ){
    return 'your@email.com';
}
add_filter( 'cartbounty_from_email', 'change_from_email' );

Example how to customize default waiting time after which the cart is considered abandoned using «cartbounty_waiting_time» filter from 60 minutes (default time) to 30 minutes. Add it to your theme’s functions.php file:

function change_waiting_time( $minutes ){
    return 30; //Minimum allowed time is 20 minutes
}
add_filter( 'cartbounty_waiting_time', 'change_waiting_time' );

Example how to display abandoned cart product prices excluding taxes:

add_filter( 'cartbounty_include_tax', '__return_false' );

Exit Intent hooks

Exit Intent template contains different actions and filters that allow you to create new, edit, replace, or remove existing content including the main image in Exit Intent window.

Acciones:

• cartbounty_exit_intent_start
• cartbounty_exit_intent_after_title
• cartbounty_exit_intent_before_form_fields
• cartbounty_exit_intent_end

Filtros:

• cartbounty_exit_intent_close_html
• cartbounty_exit_intent_image_html
• cartbounty_exit_intent_title_html
• cartbounty_exit_intent_description_html
• cartbounty_exit_intent_field_html
• cartbounty_exit_intent_button_html

Aquí tienes un ejemplo de cómo añadir subtítulos adicionales después del título principal usando nuestro gancho de acción `cartbounty_exit_intent_after_title`. Por favor, añádelo al archivo «functions.php» de tu tema:

function add_extra_html_after_title() {
    echo "<p>Additional subtitle here...</p>";
}
add_action('cartbounty_exit_intent_after_title', 'add_extra_html_after_title' );

Ejemplo de cómo cambiar la imagen principal usando un filtro:

function modify_image( $html ){
    return '<img src="http://www.link-to-your-custom-image-here..."/>';
}
add_filter( 'cartbounty_exit_intent_image_html', 'modify_image' );

Ejemplo de cómo cambiar el título principal usando un filtro:

function modify_title( $html ) {
    $custom_title = 'Your text here...';
    return preg_replace('#(<h2[^>]*>).*?(</h2>)#', "$1 $custom_title $2", $html);
}
add_filter( 'cartbounty_exit_intent_title_html', 'modify_title' );

Example how to change the description using a filter:

function modify_description( $html ){
    $custom_description = 'New description here...';
    return preg_replace('#(<p[^>]*>).*?(</p>)#', "$1 $custom_description $2", $html);
}
add_filter( 'cartbounty_exit_intent_description_html', 'modify_description' );

WordPress email hooks

WordPress abandoned cart reminder template uses multiple actions and filters which can be used to alter the contents an appearance of the email.

Acciones:

• cartbounty_automation_before_title
• cartbounty_automation_after_title
• cartbounty_automation_after_intro
• cartbounty_automation_after_button
• cartbounty_automation_footer_start
• cartbounty_automation_footer_end

Filtros:

• cartbounty_automation_title_html
• cartbounty_automation_intro_html
• cartbounty_automation_button_html
• cartbounty_automation_copyright
• cartbounty_automation_footer_address_1
• cartbounty_automation_footer_address_2
• cartbounty_automation_unsubscribe_html

Example how to add additional content right before the main title in WordPress recovery reminder email:

function cartbounty_automation_add_extra_title(){
    esc_html_e( 'Additional content before main title', 'woo-save-abandoned-carts' );
}
add_action( 'cartbounty_automation_before_title', 'cartbounty_automation_add_extra_title' );

An example how to use a filter to alter the main title:

function cartbounty_alter_automation_title( $title ){
    return '<h1 style="font-size: 60px; padding-bottom: 30px;">'. __('My new title', 'woo-save-abandoned-carts') .'</h1>';
}
add_filter( 'cartbounty_automation_title_html', 'cartbounty_alter_automation_title' );

Example how to replace existing button name from «Complete checkout» to «Return to cart»:

function cartbounty_alter_automation_button( $button ){
    return str_replace( 'Complete checkout', __('Return to cart', 'woo-save-abandoned-carts') , $button);
}
add_filter( 'cartbounty_automation_button_html', 'cartbounty_alter_automation_button' );

How to change the default footer address. By default, it is taken from WooCommerce store address you have entered, but you can change it using a filter:

function cartbounty_alter_automation_footer_address_1( $address ){
    esc_html_e('First address line...', 'woo-save-abandoned-carts');
}
add_filter( 'cartbounty_automation_footer_address_1', 'cartbounty_alter_automation_footer_address_1' );

function cartbounty_alter_automation_footer_address_2( $address ){
    esc_html_e('Second address line...', 'woo-save-abandoned-carts');
}
add_filter( 'cartbounty_automation_footer_address_2', 'cartbounty_alter_automation_footer_address_2' );

How to prevent bots from leaving ghost carts?

If you have noticed unusual amounts of multiple new ghost carts being left almost at the same time, from one country and consisting of a single product, it might be that they are left by bots who are visiting your store.

Bots can be divided into two groups – good ones and bad ones.

• Good bots. The most common example of a good bot could be a web crawler. It is a bot that is sent via a search engine like Google to index your shop. Online store owners generally welcome these bots, because it keeps their content and products visible in the search engine results and hopefully will attract new visitors
• Harmful bots. These bots are visiting your store for malicious purposes. Their actions range from mildly harmful to potentially critical. Bad bots are scanning your store for weak spots, security holes, ways to take over your store, steal your visitor credit card data etc. Besides that, they are also increasing stress on your server thus slowing down your store

Harmful bots are the ones that might be responsible for leaving new ghost carts on your website. While this is not dangerous, it can be frustrating and annoying. Here are three solutions that will help you to deal to with them:

1. The quick solution is to simply disable ghost carts from being saved by CartBounty. You can do this in the CartBounty Settings tab. As easy as this solution is, it only deals with consequences and does not stop these harmful bots from visiting your store, continuously searching for new vulnerabilities, and slowing down your shop
2. A better solution would be to install a WordPress plugin that helps to prevent bots from visiting your store. You could try out a couple of different plugins, but this might be a good starting point: Blackhole for Bad Bots. This way you will block harmful bots from wandering around your store and keep ghost carts enabled to see what your customers are shopping for
3. If you would not like to install a new plugin and you have a developer who is able to help, you could try this solution. At first you will have to find your server access logs and find which of these entries have been left by bots. After that you can use .htaccess file to block these bots from further visits. Here is a good article on how to block bad bots which will provide more about this topic

In addition, the Pro version allows you to select if guests from specific countries should be able to leave ghost carts thus making sure that bots coming from countries you do not sell to are not able to leave ghost carts.