Reading cart abandonment without inventing villains

Teams arrive hoping we will name a single villain — a button colour, a courier, a marketplace fee. Real exports usually show overlapping causes. Gift-with-purchase rules that appear late in checkout, free-shipping thresholds that jump mid-campaign, and address forms that reject flat numbers all leave similar abandonment shapes.

Our method is deliberately dull. We chart abandonment by step, then overlay known promotions and site notices for the same hours. When a spike lines up with a gift rule going live, we say so. When nothing lines up, we say the evidence is thin and recommend a controlled change rather than a full redesign.

Bring us the promotion calendar alongside the export. Without it, every dip looks like a mystery, and mysteries sell unnecessary rebuilds.