The most common response to cart abandonment is the same in almost all businesses: sending an email with a discount within a few hours. Before doing so, it's worth looking at a heat map and a recording of actual sessions — because it's almost never the price that makes someone leave.
A sales report says how many carts are abandoned. A heat map and session recording show in what exact step and what the person was doing just before leaving: rereading the shipping cost, hesitating about a form field, or simply staying still for a few seconds before closing the tab.
Applying this process with a B2B e-commerce client, cart recovery increased to 70% — without a single aggressive discount. The key was not a better written email, it was knowing exactly which step to intervene in thanks to the heat map, and continuing to review it month by month instead of calling it a day.
