Cart

So, you’ve worked hard to present your products on your store and potential customers are willing to buy from you. In order to place an order, they will have to go through the checkout process. It’s crucial to make it as easy and straight-forward as possible.

Usually, when a customer makes the decision to buy a product, they add it to their shopping cart (also used: bag, basket). Previewing the cart can be organized in a number of different ways, usually depending on what you sell and whether the majority of your orders contain one or multiple products.

Some store owners prefer to have a dedicated “Cart” page. When a customer adds a product to their cart, they can go to the cart page and preview what is in their cart, as well as additional information they might helpful before placing an order like shipping details or accepted payment methods.

Not all stores have a separate “Cart” page though, as many prefer to use a cart drawer or a pop-out module.

These are usually great in terms of UX, as they allow the customer to stay on the same page when checking their cart. In most cases, cart drawers/pop-outs use JavaScript, so they are usually more dynamic and interactive. While they normally work very well, depending heavily on JavaScript could potentially cause some issues on some devices, for example old ones or devices with small screen sizes.

Best Practices

Regardless of how you choose to display the shopping cart on your store, there are some features your customers will expect:

  • A list of all the items in the cart, usually including the product image thumbnail, title and details about the selected variant (like color or size etc.)
  • An option to remove an item from the cart
  • An option to adjust the quantity of any of the items in the cart
  • A Checkout (call to action) button

Additionally, many stores include other helpful features like:

  • An option to leave a note with additional details to the merchant
  • An option to gift-wrap the whole order on individual items
  • Useful information like a message with a cart subtotal threshold to qualify for a free delivery

Lately, it’s becoming increasily popular to offer express checkout buttons on the cart page. These are quick pay options like paying via PayPal, Apple/Google Pay or Amazon Pay.

BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) options are also more popular than ever, so you might want to include relevant information about this as well.