Email Capture

How ShapedRecover picks up a shopper's email at checkout, for guests and logged-in customers, on block and classic checkouts.

Recovery starts with an email address. Without one there's nobody to remind, so the moment a shopper types their email at checkout matters more than anything else. This page explains exactly what ShapedRecover saves, when, and the few cases where it deliberately doesn't. How Recovery Works has the short version.

What's saved

Once a shopper can be captured, ShapedRecover saves a cart record, its own copy of the cart:

• the email address,
• the first and last name, if they've typed them,
• the cart contents: each product and variation, its quantity, and its price at that moment,
• the cart total and currency,
• the time it was captured and last changed,
• the consent: when it was given, the checkbox text the shopper saw, and whether it was on the classic or block checkout. See Consent Checkbox.

Nothing else from the checkout is saved: no address, phone number or payment details. The record updates whenever the cart or the email changes, and you can see it in the Carts Table as a Shopping cart.

Because it's ShapedRecover's own copy, the cart survives after WooCommerce forgets it. WooCommerce clears a guest's cart session after 48 hours, but the recovery email can still rebuild the cart days later.

When it's captured

Two things must both be true, in either order:

1. The shopper has typed a valid email address.
2. The consent checkbox is ticked. It starts ticked, so most shoppers never touch it.

As soon as both are true, the cart is saved. ShapedRecover doesn't wait for the shopper to click Place order, or even to leave the email field: about 1 second after they stop typing is enough. It also saves when they leave the field, or tick the box after typing their email. It never sends anything on every keystroke.

That 1-second capture is the whole point. The shoppers you most want to reach are the ones who type their email, hesitate, and close the tab.

If the shopper changes the email later, the same cart is updated with the new address. If they empty their cart, the record is deleted, since there's nothing left to recover.

Tracking has to be on

Nothing is captured while Abandoned Tracking is off in Settings → General, and the consent checkbox doesn't appear at checkout. It's off when you first install ShapedRecover. See Exclusions.

Block and classic checkouts

ShapedRecover works with both WooCommerce checkouts, and captures the same way on each. It never reads the email by scraping your checkout page; it uses WooCommerce's own data.

	Block checkout	Classic checkout
How the email arrives	WooCommerce itself sends the email to your server about a second after the shopper stops typing. ShapedRecover picks it up from there.	WooCommerce sends nothing while the shopper types, so a small ShapedRecover script does: 1 second after typing stops, when the field loses focus, and when the box is ticked or unticked.
Where the consent box sits	Its own Cart Reminder Consent block, inside the checkout's contact information section.	Right under the billing email field.

You don't need to set anything up for either. On the block checkout, the consent block is added for you and locked, so it can't be removed by accident in the page editor. See Consent Checkbox.

Logged-in customers

A customer with an account is handled a little differently, because you already know who they are:

• Their account's email is used, so there's nothing to type.
• Their consent is saved on their account the first time they reach the checkout with the box ticked.
• From then on, their cart is tracked from the moment it has an item, without visiting the checkout at all. If they add something and wander off, that's a "Cart abandoned" cart, and campaigns with the Cart abandoned trigger can email them.

A customer who has never reached the checkout, or who unticked the box, isn't tracked until they visit the checkout with it ticked. So the Cart abandoned trigger only ever reaches customers who've given consent on an earlier visit. See Triggers & Timing.

As soon as a cart reaches the checkout, it counts as a checkout abandonment, whoever the shopper is.

Logged-in users with an excluded role, Administrator and Shop Manager by default, are never tracked. See Exclusions.

One cart per visit

Each shopper's visit (their WooCommerce session) has one cart record. Changing products, quantities or the email updates that same record rather than starting a new one.

What about a shopper who comes back later? ShapedRecover continues an existing open cart only when it's sure the cart belongs to this shopper:

• it was started in this same browser session, or
• it belongs to the logged-in customer's account.

An email address on its own is never enough, because anyone can type anyone's address. If ShapedRecover reused a cart just because the email matched, a stranger typing your customer's address could take over their cart, empty it, or cancel their reminders.

The trade-off: some shoppers end up with two open carts with the same email, each with its own reminders. It happens to a guest who comes back in a new browser session, or a customer who started a cart as a guest in an earlier visit and then logged in. (Logging in during the same visit keeps one cart.) You'll see both in the Carts Table. It sorts itself out: an order from that shopper stops both, and otherwise both eventually become Lost.

A shopper who comes back through a recovery link continues their original cart, since the link points straight at it, as long as that cart is still open (Shopping or Recoverable) and they haven't unticked consent. See Recovery Link.

Built-in protection

A few checks keep junk and abuse out of your data:

• Invalid email addresses are ignored. A half-typed address like maya@exam isn't saved.
• Capture is rate-limited: at most 10 new or changed addresses per minute from one visitor, counted both per browser session and per IP address. A real shopper never comes close, but a bot trying to fill your database with fake carts is stopped. Over the limit, the update simply isn't saved. Shoppers who share one IP address (an office network, say) share that budget, which matters only on a very busy store behind a proxy that hides shoppers' own addresses.
• Your checkout never breaks because of ShapedRecover. On the block checkout, capture rides on WooCommerce's own requests, so even a refused update leaves the checkout working normally.

When nothing is captured

A shopper isn't captured when:

• Abandoned Tracking is off,
• they untick the consent box (and anything already saved is deleted at once),
• they're logged in with an excluded role,
• their address is on your Never Track list (Pro),
• you chose Stop Tracking for their cart in the last 2 days,
• or they never type an email. A guest who browses and leaves without reaching the checkout can't be contacted, so there's nothing to save.

Exclusions covers the settings behind these.

Where to go next

• Consent Checkbox: what shoppers see, and what unticking does.
• Exclusions: keep staff and test orders out.
• Test the Recovery Flow: watch capture happen on your own checkout.