Case Study
The Cart That Emptied Itself
Customers could add products to the cart. The cart just refused to keep them.
Challenge
Customers could not add items to the cart and checkout.
Outcome
Complex technical analysis to troubleshoot and resolve the cart issue. Customers were able to start placing orders again.
Key Results
- Identified and resolved cart saving issue
- Orders successfully placed.
An online store was running a seasonal sale. Traffic was up 45%. Orders were flat.
The first sign was a handful of support emails: “I added three items and my cart is empty.” Then dozens more. Analytics showed carts being created at record rates and almost none reaching checkout. Thousands a day is sales was disappearing.
They’d already tried clearing caches, disabling plugins one by one, and switching themes. Another developer had tried. Nothing changed, and nothing logged an error. It was the kind of bug that never shows itself when you’re watching.
The cause was a session race condition. Two requests were updating the session at the same moment, and one was quietly overwriting the other, so the cart was wiped. It only happened under real traffic, never in testing.
We fixed the session handling by writing custom Wordpress hooks and rebuilt the cart request flow. Carts held, and checkout completions recovered.
The worst bugs don’t throw errors. They only show up when real customers do.
Losing sales and can’t see why? Tell us what’s happening.
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