Checkout Recovery — Remplace checkout abandonment recovery for Shopify

Checkout abandonment is the highest-intent drop-off in ecommerce. A visitor who reached checkout already decided to buy — something stopped them at the last step. Remplace's checkout return trigger is specifically designed to re-engage these visitors the moment they come back.

What Remplace detects on checkout return

When a visitor goes to checkout and comes back (via Back button, tab switch, or SPA navigation), Remplace detects four data points in real time: the checkout step they abandoned (address, shipping, or payment), the full cart snapshot with product names and variants, the exact shipping cost they saw (via Shopify Admin GraphQL API), and whether they are a returning customer with prior orders.

The checkout return trigger flow

  1. Visitor adds to cart, goes to checkout, sees the shipping cost or payment form, and navigates back to the store.
  2. Remplace detects the return within milliseconds. The bar opens with a message tailored to the checkout step: "Saw you checking out — did the shipping cost change your mind?" or "Back from payment — can I help you finish?"
  3. The agent pre-generates a discount automatically (bypasses the normal intent threshold). A discount card appears in the chat with a session-restore URL that takes the visitor back to exactly where they left off, with their cart intact.
  4. The session-restore URL is Shopify's own abandonedCheckoutUrl from the Admin GraphQL API — it restores the cart, address, and shipping method selection.

Step-aware messaging

The agent's opening message changes based on which checkout step the visitor abandoned: address/contact step (early hesitation), shipping step (most common — often cost-related), or payment step (highest intent, most urgency). Safari does not expose the checkout path in the referrer due to ITP, so Safari gets a generic recovery message.

Cart snapshot persistence

If Shopify clears the visitor's cart during the checkout session (which happens on some store configurations), Remplace uses the cart snapshot captured before the visitor navigated away. This ensures the agent references the correct products even if the live cart is empty on return.

Performance

Checkout return is Remplace's highest-converting trigger at 17% engagement rate. It fires automatically for all merchants — no configuration required.