In Mexico, 84% of online shopping carts get abandoned before checkout, according to the 2026 Online Sales Study from the Mexican Association of Online Sales (AMVO). It is a number that looks alarming until you look closer: it is not one problem, it is at least four, and each one calls for a different response than the one almost everyone uses, a single “you left something in your cart” email.
The 84% mixes four different reasons
AMVO identifies four reasons behind the abandonment: limited payment methods, buyer distrust, poorly optimized mobile experiences, and consumers who use the store to search and compare without immediate purchase intent. High shipping cost remains the number one reason within the site itself. Four causes, four different customers: the one who hesitated over paying by card does not need the same message as the one who was just comparing prices, and neither needs the same thing as the one who left the moment they saw the shipping cost at checkout.
How to tell the reason apart without asking the customer
Most of this information already lives in the abandonment event itself, no survey required:
- Measure the checkout step where the visitor left. If abandonment clusters at the shipping screen, the problem is cost, not trust. If it clusters at payment, you are missing options (cash on delivery, installments, local wallets).
- Cross abandonment with device. An abandonment rate much higher on mobile than desktop signals experience friction, not price.
- Separate first-time visitors from repeat ones. A new visitor who abandons on first contact was probably comparing, not deciding; that profile does not respond to a coupon, it responds to content that resolves doubt (reviews, guarantees, delivery times).
- Test the recovery message by reason, not one for the whole list. The shipping-cost abandoner responds to a free-shipping threshold; the payment-hesitant one responds to seeing the option they were missing, not a generic discount.
Treating the 84% as a single number is the same trap as lumping acquisition, conversion and retention into one revenue line: it hides that completely different profiles are mixed into the same figure. It is the diagnostic work we do in data-driven growth in Mexico: before sending more traffic to the same checkout, confirm which of the four reasons is actually costing sales.
If your abandoned cart flow is one identical email for everyone, you are probably solving one reason well and none of the other three.