At a glance
Session Quality vs Cart Abandonment is a cross-channel metric that plots a behavioural session-quality signal, frustration markers like rage-click replays, against your cart abandonment rate. It is designed to catch the link between bad experiences and lost carts: when frustrated sessions rise in step with abandonment, you have causal evidence, not just a coincidence, that UX friction is what is emptying carts. That turns abandonment from a mystery into a fixable bug.
| What it counts | A session-quality signal (frustration markers such as rage-click replays) plotted against cart abandonment rate, on a dual axis. |
| Sample type | Backend API data from PostHog session and replay signals, aligned with cart data on the standard data refresh. |
| Why it matters | When frustration and abandonment co-occur, the replays show you exactly why carts are lost. It connects a revenue metric to a watchable cause. |
| Reading the value | Watch whether the two lines move together. Rage-click replays co-occurring with abandonment is the pattern to act on. |
| Currency | percent |
| Time window | 30D |
| Alert trigger | rage-click replays co-occur with abandonment |
| Sentiment key | ph_xc_session_quality_vs_cart_abandonment |
| Roles | owner, marketing |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your PostHog data alongside your connected cart data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A representative reading of Session Quality vs Cart Abandonment for a typical merchant on PostHog. Suppose cart abandonment usually sits around 68% and frustration markers around 4% of sessions. After a checkout change on 22 Apr 26, both rise together: abandonment to 79% and rage-click replays to 13%. The lockstep movement is the tell, the same broken checkout step that frustrates users is the one emptying carts. Opening the flagged replays confirms it in seconds. Cross-reference Replays Containing Rage Clicks and Cart Abandonment Rate for the underlying numbers. For deeper investigation, use Vortex Mind to trace upstream causes; for natural-language exploration, ask Ask Viq.Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why merchants reach for it |
|---|---|
ph_replays_with_rage_clicks | Session Replay sibling: the frustration signal. |
pos_cart_abandonment_rate | Conversion sibling: the abandonment side. |
ph_funnel_dropoff | Funnels sibling: where the funnel leaks. |
ph_xc_funnel_vs_ecom_conversion | Cross-channel sibling: funnel vs platform conversion. |
ph_replay_avg_duration | Session Replay sibling: replay length. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in PostHog’s own dashboard: In PostHog, read the frustration signal from Session Replay filtered to rage clicks, and read the cart-abandonment side from your cart and checkout events or your platform’s own report. Align the two over the same period. Differences usually come from how abandonment is defined rather than from the replay side. Why the Vortex IQ value may legitimately differ:| Reason | Direction | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Abandonment definition. Cart-created minus purchased can be measured several ways. | Variable | Match the abandonment definition. |
| Replay sampling. A frustration signal drawn from sampled replays understates the true rate. | Variable | Account for the sampling rate. |
| Period alignment. The two series must share the same window to be comparable. | Variable | Confirm the periods match. |