Ridgeline Outdoor Co.
We analyzed 280,000 abandoned carts to find the exact reasons buyers were leaving — then systematically eliminated every one of them.
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Ridgeline Outdoor Co. is an enterprise sporting goods and outdoor equipment brand on Shopify Plus processing over $28M annually across three storefronts. Their cart abandonment rate had climbed to 79% — 16 points above the industry average — despite strong product demand and positive brand sentiment. The marketing team had been running Klaviyo abandoned cart flows for two years with diminishing open rates, effectively chasing revenue that should not have been lost in the first place. Creative Labs was engaged to conduct a root-cause analysis of checkout abandonment and eliminate the systemic issues rather than continue recovering a fraction of the loss after the fact.
Key Performance Highlights
31-point abandonment reduction
79% → 48% cart abandonment rate
$2.1M recovered annually
From checkout completion rate improvement
44% lift in Shop Pay adoption
From accelerated payment UX changes
19% higher average order value
From post-add-to-cart upsell optimization
The Challenge
A 79% Abandonment Rate Hiding Four Distinct Failure Points
The Klaviyo abandoned cart data showed that 79% of customers who added an item to cart never completed a purchase — but it did not explain why. FullStory session recordings of 4,200 abandoned checkout sessions revealed four distinct abandonment patterns: shipping cost shock (43% of abandoners left after seeing the shipping fee on step two of checkout), forced account creation (22%), payment method friction (18% abandoned when their preferred payment method was not prominently featured), and mobile keyboard overlap obscuring form fields (17% of mobile sessions).
Each pattern was addressable, but required different interventions — some UX, some commercial policy, some Shopify configuration. The project required coordinating checkout UI changes via Shopify checkout extensibility, Klaviyo flow restructuring, and commercial policy adjustments into a coherent 60-day program.
Strategic Execution
Systematic Checkout Failure Elimination Across Four Abandonment Vectors
Shipping Cost Transparency & Threshold Testing
Shipping cost shock was the single largest abandonment driver. We implemented a checkout progress bar with a dynamic free-shipping threshold indicator using Shopify's Checkout Extensibility APIs — showing buyers exactly how much more they needed to add to unlock free shipping before they reached the shipping step. We A/B tested flat-rate $5.99 vs. free shipping above $75. The free-shipping threshold variant reduced shipping-related abandonment by 58% and increased average order value by 19%.
Accelerated Checkout & Payment Method Optimization
Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay were moved to the top of the checkout page as primary CTAs using a custom Checkout UI Extension — above the fold on mobile. The guest checkout path was simplified to remove redundant form fields. These changes reduced payment-friction abandonment by 71% and increased Shop Pay adoption rate by 44%, which further reduced fraud-related order holds.
Mobile Checkout UX Remediation
The mobile keyboard overlap issue was resolved through viewport meta tag corrections, input field repositioning in the checkout extensibility template, and switching email and phone inputs to trigger the correct mobile keyboard type. A sticky 'Continue to Payment' button was added that remained visible above the keyboard. Mobile checkout completion rate went from 18% to 27%.
Abandoned Cart Flow Restructuring & Win-Back Cadence
With systemic abandonment significantly reduced, the remaining 48% abandonment rate was addressed through a restructured Klaviyo flow: immediate save-cart link (15 min), social proof + review block (2 hours), limited inventory urgency signal (24 hours), and a 10% discount for first-time purchasers only (48 hours). The restructured flow recovered 14% of remaining abandoned carts — up from 6% recovery on the previous single-email flow.
The Outcome
A $2.1M Revenue Recovery That Compounded Every Month
Cart abandonment fell from 79% to 48% — a 31-point reduction achieved in 60 days. The improvement translated to $2.1M in annual revenue that was previously being abandoned at checkout. Average order value increased 19% as the free shipping threshold incentive drove larger basket sizes.
Shop Pay adoption increased 44%, reducing fraud-related chargebacks by 22% as a secondary benefit. The restructured Klaviyo abandonment flow recovered an additional 14% of remaining abandoned sessions, extending the total recovery to a program ROI of 11.2× the engagement cost. The checkout framework became the production template across all three Ridgeline storefronts.
“We knew our abandonment was too high but we assumed it was an industry reality. Creative Labs proved it wasn't — most of it was fixable UX and configuration problems. Getting that $2.1M back without spending a dollar more on acquisition was the cleanest win we've seen.”
James Okafor
Director of eCommerce, Ridgeline Outdoor Co.
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