Viewed products and browse abandonment: what's tracked and how

Browse abandonment is the email a shop sends when someone looks at a product and doesn't buy: "Still thinking about the bull bar?". It works on your Website Builder online store.

Set it up

1. Go to Automations → Templates→ and, under Online store, apply Viewed products, didn't buy. It makes a draft with one email that lists what they looked at, with a button back to the last product.
2. Click the Trigger step. Set:

• Start after (minutes): how long after their last look (an hour by default, 30 minutes to a day).
• Products looked at: how many product views before it starts (1 by default).
• Only these products or a category, if you only want it for some of your range. Leave both empty for any product.

3. Check the email (Marketing → Content → Email templates) and press Activate.

The check runs every 15 minutes. Nobody goes through it more than once a week (or the gap you set under How often can a customer go through this?, if that's longer), and it stops by itself if they place an order.

Who it reaches

Only contacts who are opted in to email and whom your store knows. Your store knows someone when they:

• click a link to your site in one of your marketing emails or automations, or
• type their email at your store's cart checkout, or sign up to your newsletter on the site.

Anyone else browsing your store is not tracked at all. A contact who unsubscribes, is suppressed, or is marked do not contact stops being tracked straight away.

It isn't sent to someone who added something to their cart, started a checkout, placed an order, or got an invoice from you after looking (the Checkout abandoned automation covers carts).

Merge tags

These only fill in inside this automation:

• {{viewed_products}}: one line per product with its price.
• {{viewed_products_table}}: a table of the products, each linked to its page, with today's price inc GST.
• {{last_viewed_product}}: the name of the last product they looked at.
• {{last_viewed_url}}: a link to it.

What's tracked, and privacy

• What: which products a known contact viewed and added to their cart on your store, and when. The product's name and price come from your catalogue. No IP address, device details or anything they type is stored with it.
• Where it shows: as Viewed a product online and Added to cart online events, which automations, goals and lead scoring can use.
• Only your own site: links in your emails get a short code added only when they point at your own published website. Links to anywhere else are never changed. The code doesn't contain the person's name or email, only works on your business's sites, and stops working after 30 days.
• On the site: the code is swapped for a cookie on your own site's address only (it lasts 90 days) and is removed from the address bar straight away, so it never reaches Google, Facebook or anyone else. Nothing is shared with other businesses or third parties.
• Cookie banner: if your site shows the cookie banner, nothing is tracked until the visitor presses Accept. If they press No thanks, the cookie is removed.
• Forgetting someone: deleting a contact deletes their browsing history too. Unsubscribing or a suppression stops it from then on.

A forwarded email works for whoever clicks it, as it does with every email tool, so the person it was forwarded to may be counted as the original contact for up to 30 days.

If something's not right

• Nobody is entering: is the automation Active? Has anyone clicked through from a recent email? Emails sent before this was switched on don't carry the code. Is the site's cookie banner on and visitors not accepting it?
• Someone got it after buying: an order placed through Shopify only counts once it's paid and in BuildTrack.