prevention
Cart Abandonment Prevention vs. Recovery — What Actually Works
Recovery emails win back a fraction of lost carts hours later. Prevention stops the exit while the shopper is still on your store. Here's how the two differ.
Roughly seven in ten carts never make it to checkout. That number has barely moved in a decade, which tells you something: the standard playbook is not solving the underlying problem.
Most stores respond with recovery — an automated email an hour later, maybe an SMS the next morning. It works, to a point. But it starts from a losing position, and it is worth being precise about why.
Recovery only reaches a fraction of abandoners
A recovery email requires an email address. That means the shopper reached a step where you captured one — checkout, or a newsletter signup earlier in the session. Every anonymous visitor who bailed at the cart page is unreachable.
So recovery does not address 70% of carts. It addresses the slice of that 70% you happened to have contact details for, minus everyone who does not open the email.
Prevention works on the whole audience
Prevention intervenes while the shopper is still on the page — when intent is at its peak and no competitor has their attention.
The trigger is behavioural: exit intent, a stall on the cart page, repeated hesitation around shipping costs. The response is immediate — an offer, a reassurance, an answer to the objection that was about to cost you the sale.
No email address required. No waiting.
The honest comparison
| Prevention | Recovery | |
|---|---|---|
| When it acts | In-session, before exit | After the shopper has left |
| Who it reaches | Every visitor | Only those who gave an email |
| Intent level | Peak | Cooled |
| Requires contact details | No | Yes |
Navona is a prevention tool. It does not send recovery emails, and it is not a replacement for Klaviyo or Omnisend. If you are running recovery flows, keep them — this sits in front of them and shrinks the pool they have to work on.
Where to start
Work out what abandonment is actually costing you before changing anything. Multiply monthly revenue by your abandonment rate divided by one minus that rate — that is the revenue walking out mid-session.
Then look at where shoppers drop. Abandonment at the shipping step is a pricing problem. Abandonment on the cart page is usually hesitation, and that is the one prevention is built for.