Work06 · Shopify app

Live · Shopify App Store

Cart Spy

Somebody filled a cart, then walked out.

They wanted what was in it, so the reason they left is probably somewhere in your store. Cart Spy follows each cart through checkout, replays the visit, maps taps and scrolls, and uses AI to suggest why the shopper left.

Open on the Shopify App Store (opens in a new tab) What we built
Cart Spy's home screen inside Shopify admin, filled with example data. Across the top, today's sales and counts of visitors, active carts and checkouts. Below, a Revenue at risk panel with a seven-day chart of abandoned carts, and a Why Abandonment? panel that sorts carts into browsing, pricing and shipping.
Screenshot from Cart Spy's App Store listing · example data

What a merchant sees on opening the app

  1. The top rowToday's sales, visitors, carts and checkouts, read at a glance.
  2. The Revenue at risk panelWhat the carts that never became orders were worth.
  3. The Why abandonment? panelThe question a merchant opens the app to answer.
  4. The past seven daysLost carts by day, so a bad day stands out from the week.
What it is
Shows Shopify merchants why shoppers abandon carts
Platform
Shopify app
Status
Live
Visit
Shopify App Store ↗ (opens in a new tab)

(01) · The problem

A count of lost carts is where the guessing starts.

Someone who fills a cart wanted what was in it. If they walk away at checkout, something in the store put them off, and that's good news, because a store can be fixed. The trouble is, a count of lost carts can't show you where to start.

So you guess at the shipping cost, the payment step, a slow page or a button nobody understood. You could change all four and still not know which one mattered. Cart Spy lets you look before you change anything.

What a count tells you
A cart was abandoned.That is the whole message, and it says nothing about where or why.
What Cart Spy shows
  1. How far each cart got through checkout.Stages
  2. You can watch the visit back.Replay
  3. The AI suggests a reason to check.Insights
Where carts leave checkoutDiagram

(02) · What we built

We built four ways to look at a lost cart.

Each answers a question a merchant asks when a cart goes quiet. Between them, one vague number turns into a short list of things to check.

About the pictures: the funnel and replay are screenshots from Cart Spy's App Store listing, and we drew the heatmaps and insight card to explain them. Every figure and word in them is made up for the example.

  1. A · Cart-stage tracking

    It shows the checkout step where each cart stopped.

    Cart Spy tracks each cart through checkout, stage by stage. If most people leave at shipping, it shows at shipping, and the other steps can wait.

    Worth a look: the step where shipping gets added.

    Cart Spy's Checkout Funnel card, with example data. Bars for checkout started, contact info, shipping, payment and order complete, each shorter than the last with the drop at each step, and a list of what went wrong at checkout.
    Checkout funnel · App Store listing screenshot · example data
  2. B · Session recording and replay

    Watch the visit the way the shopper saw it.

    Cart Spy records sessions so you can play them back like a video, and see where the shopper went, what they clicked and the moment they gave up.

    Watch for: a scroll back up to the total.

    Cart Spy's session replay window: speed, step and play controls with a timeline across the top, and below it an example store's product listing as the shopper saw it, tents with prices and photos.
    Session replay · App Store listing screenshot · example store, address hidden
  3. C · Click and scroll heatmaps

    Heatmaps show where shoppers tap and how far they scroll.

    The click map lights up the parts of a page people press. The scroll map fades as fewer of them get further down, which is bad news if your shipping cost sits below the fold.

    On a phone: is shipping above the fold?

    Heatmaps · illustration · example page
  4. D · AI abandonment insights

    The AI suggests a likely reason in plain sentences.

    Cart Spy's AI abandonment insights give you somewhere to begin. Treat what they say as a lead, and check it against the replays and heatmaps, which are in the same app.

    Before changing anything: watch a handful of those visits.

    Insight card · illustration · the tip is ours

(03) · How the AI fits

Treat what the AI says as a lead worth checking.

Watching replays is slow, and most owners don't have the afternoon for it. So Cart Spy's AI gives you a short summary of why shoppers may have left. The tracking, replays and heatmaps are still in the app, so you can watch a few visits and make up your own mind.

  1. 01

    The shopper wanted the product

    So look at your checkout before you blame the buyer. A delivery cost that turns up late is a good first suspect.

  2. 02

    A hunch is cheaper, if you trust it

    If instinct is enough, you won't need Cart Spy. It's for owners who'd rather watch a few visits before a weekend of fixes.

  3. 03

    Change one thing at a time

    Make the change the evidence points to first, then give it a week of carts before you touch anything else.

(04) · How it runs

We built Cart Spy, and we still run it.

  1. We designed and built it

    Cart tracking, session replay, heatmaps and the AI insights are our own work, from a small studio in Melbourne.

  2. Merchants install it from the Shopify App Store

    It's listed there as a public app, alongside Spambuster, our other Shopify app.

  3. We keep it running

    Cart Spy is one of six products we look after, so its fixes and updates come from the people who wrote it.

(05) · For you

Here's what we could build for your store.

Got a Shopify app in mind?

We've built two Shopify apps and still run both. Tell us what yours should do, or which job in your store you're tired of doing by hand, and we'll tell you how we'd start on it.

Email contact@jola.com.au Start a project

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Our other Shopify app Spambuster Stops spam and bot submissions on Shopify store forms, using Google reCAPTCHA.
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