Exit Intent

Exit intent is a category of detection used across e-commerce to trigger something — a popup, a message, an offer — before a shopper leaves. What counts as "about to leave" is deliberately left undefined here: the specific behaviors a detection system watches for are an implementation detail, and different tools use different ones.

The concept isn't specific to cart abandonment. Exit intent can trigger a newsletter signup prompt on a blog, a discount on a product page, or an offer on a cart — the same underlying idea of noticing a likely departure and acting before it happens applies to purchase and non-purchase pages alike.

Exit intent detection is inherently probabilistic: it estimates that a shopper is leaving, but it can't know for certain. It will sometimes trigger for a shopper who was going to come back anyway, and sometimes miss a shopper who leaves with no detectable signal at all. Any system built on exit intent has to accept both kinds of error.