The owner thought her acquisition costs were too high. We found the real problem in 15 minutes: 71% of shoppers were leaving without buying, and nothing was following up with them.
A homeware and lifestyle store came to Chatpliance because their customer acquisition costs had increased significantly over the previous 18 months. They were spending more on paid social to drive the same revenue. The owner’s instinct was that she needed better ads.
We started with the audit. I asked her to share her store analytics for the previous 90 days.
What the Data Showed
In 90 days: 11,400 sessions, 2,840 carts added, 820 completed purchases. That is a 71% cart abandonment rate. The problem was not the rate — that is close to industry average. The problem was that she had no recovery mechanism. Zero. When someone abandoned a cart, they received nothing.
Using her average order value of $73 and a conservative 28% recovery rate, the monthly opportunity was approximately $1,370–$1,900 in recoverable revenue. Annualised: over $22,000 per year in revenue sitting in abandoned carts, untouched.
What We Built
We installed Revex and configured a three-sequence cart recovery flow. Email one arrives one hour after abandonment — personalised with the specific items in the cart, no discount, just a friendly reminder. Email two at 24 hours — a question about whether they had any questions we could answer. Email three at 48 hours — a time-limited 8% discount code.
We also added AI product Q&A to her store. When we reviewed the abandonment sessions in detail, a significant portion involved customers who had spent a long time on a product page before leaving — pre-purchase questions going unanswered were contributing to the abandonment rate.
Month One Results
$2,340 recovered from cart sequences. 31% reduction in product page abandonment after the Q&A widget activated. Total recoverable revenue in month one: approximately $3,200 against a $249/month platform cost.
She had been spending money trying to bring new customers in through the front door while a significant revenue gap was open at the back. The fix was not better ads. It was a recovery system for traffic she already had.