‘Please don’t do this to small businesses’: Online shopper shares why you should always abandon your cart at checkout

You'd think abandoning your shopping cart is never a good thing. After all, many look at the practice as a sign of a bad person. But TikTokers are sharing the one instance in which abandoning your shopping cart may be OK—when you're online shopping at big retail stores.

Abandoning one's shopping cart is more commonly done online. The majority of online shoppers actually leave online retailers without securing the items in their online shopping carts.

TikToker Hayley (@hayleyyjay) warns against this practice in a video with over 721,000 views.

“Stop scrolling. I learned a crazy new concept today,” TikToker Hayley (@hayleyyjay) tells her 32,000 followers. "Do you like to window shop online? I do, too. I’m always adding stuff to carts and thinking about them and never actually buying them. But it actually turns out it’s called something.”

Cart abandonment

“It’s called ‘cart abandonment,” she says. “Cart abandonment occurs when a potential customer starts a transaction online on a company’s website but doesn’t complete it.”

Cart abandonment is not limited to just shopping for products.

“This could also include signing up for a subscription,” Hayley explains. “Cart abandonment can lead to loss revenue and missed opportunities for a company."

She then goes to the site Peak Design to demonstrate.

“So, what you don’t want to do is go to their site, add multiple items—let’s just say, 286 items—and add them to your cart, which would save you,” after a pause, she adds, “$30. Then you just don’t want to bounce 'cause it causes a lot of problems. And this is true for anywhere, Amazon, Apple, anywhere. Abandon carts are a big mess.”

Hayley clarifies and asks in the caption, “This is for demonstration purposes only! How many carts do you think [you’ve] abandoned in your life? I used to [‘add to cart’] all the time just window shopping/daydreaming.”

The Daily Dot reached out to Hayley via Instagram direct message and TikTok comment.

Peak Design controversy

Hayley is correct; cart abandonment is responsible for an annual loss of $18 billion dollars in potential revenue for online retailers. However, her warning to not do this to companies is a bit sarcastic.

You see, Peak Design is under fire after its CEO called the New York Police Department to let it know that the backpack on the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter appeared to be one from the company. People accused the company of violating consumer privacy, and Peak Design CEO Peter Dering has since released a statement on its website, saying the following:

"Peak Design has not provided customer information to the police and would only do so under the order of a subpoena. We cannot associate a product serial number with a customer unless that customer has voluntarily registered their product on our site. Serializing our products allows us to track product issues and in some cases quarantine stock if a defect is found. The serial numbers on our V1 Everyday Backpacks were not unique or identifying. They were lot numbers used to track batch production units. We did not implement unique serial numbers until V2 iterations of our Everyday Backpack. If you do choose to register a Peak Design product, and it is lost or stolen, you can reach out to our Customer Service team and have your registration erased, so the bag is not traceable back to you."

Some viewers caught on to Hayley's video.

"I just put $84,000 worth of peak design stuff in my cart. so adhd of me," one quipped.

"Oops! Just window shopped $60K worth of backpacks…..gotta think about that one for a while," another said.

"This is SUCH an A+ troll that half the people don’t even get it’s a joke," a third shared.

The Daily Dot reached out to Peak Design for additional comment.

Why viewers recommend abandoning carts

Other viewers shared that they are guilty of doing this. And many shared that they purposefully do this to trick companies into giving them a discount code.

"I purposefully abandon my cart to get that abandoned cart discount in my e-mail from them afterwards," one said.

"I abandon my cart so I get emails with discount codes," a second shared.

This is true. Many outlets confirm that abandoning one's cart can lead to discounts right in one's inbox. And Voucherify notes it has the intended effect for business. It says that "research suggests that the abandoned cart offers recover between 3% and 11% of orders."

But one warned against doing this to small businesses. “To everyone commenting that they abandon carts on purpose to get the discount code: please dont do this to small businesses," they shared.

@hayleyyjay This is for demonstration purposes only! How many carts do you think youve abandoned in your life? I used to add to cart all the time just window shopping/daydreaming ???? #cartabandonment #marketing #shopping #customer #sales #educational ♬ original sound - Hayley ❤️‍????

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